David Young

Tapawingo Springs I

David Young was born and raised in Birm­ing­ham, Alabama. As a young boy, his love of nature was nur­tured dur­ing long south­ern sum­mers spent wad­ing in neigh­bor­hood creeks. These explo­rations even­tu­ally took him fur­ther afield as he trav­eled to state and national parks on camp­ing trips.

After grad­u­at­ing from high school, he attended Duke Uni­ver­sity for two years before trans­fer­ring to the Uni­ver­sity of Ver­mont, where he enrolled in the Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies pro­gram. Dur­ing his years in Ver­mont, he served as an envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies teach­ing assis­tant and vol­un­teered with sev­eral envi­ron­men­tal advo­cacy groups.

Turkey Creek I

Then wan­der­lust took hold and he trav­eled to the West Coast, even­tu­ally set­tling in the San Fran­cisco Bay area for a year. How­ever, his roots in the east proved too strong to sever, so he pulled up stakes and moved to New York City.

Trad­ing forests and streams for the con­crete jun­gle proved to be a sur­pris­ingly easy tran­si­tion. For fif­teen years he worked in audio-visual pro­duc­tion and pub­lic rela­tions. But nature’s pull was felt once more and for the past twelve years he has worked as a land­scape gar­dener, cre­at­ing gar­den oases in the urban land­scape and serv­ing as groundskeeper for a pri­vate estate in New Jersey.

Tapawingo Springs II

In 2005 he began exper­i­ment­ing with dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. The imme­di­ate feed­back pro­vided by this tech­nol­ogy cat­a­pulted him to a new level as a pho­tog­ra­pher, giv­ing him free rein to exper­i­ment and explore. The recur­ring theme of nature has taken cen­ter stage once more as he returns to the forests and streams of his youth with cam­era in hand. You might say the prodi­gal son has waded home.