Erin Babnik is known internationally as a leading photographic artist, educator, writer, and speaker. Her ambitious and expressive style of landscape photography brings together an unusual integration of adventurous exploration, progressive techniques, and formal education in the arts. In her writing and public speaking, Erin explores topics with a unique blend of art historical, philosophical, and instructional ideas, an approach that has made her one of the most notable voices among the current generation of landscape photographers.

Erin’s dedication to the medium of photography evolved out of her years working as an art historian, photographing at archaeological sites and in museums for the purposes of teaching and research. Previously, she had experimented with photography creatively in art school, working with both film and early digital cameras to explore the potential for photography to communicate ideas in graphic design projects. Full immersion in the art of photography would come some years later, however. After transferring to UC Berkeley’s Ph.D. program in Art History, she began to produce photographs for her dissertation and for lecturing as an instructor of undergraduate courses. It was at this point that her interest in photography became an obsession. Her goal of producing a high-quality archive of photographs for educational purposes ultimately led to the pursuit of compelling images as ends in themselves.

Erin spent the last six years of her academic career moonlighting as an assignment photographer and slowly transitioning to her current focus on wilderness photography, ultimately developing that passion into a full-time profession. Erin now travels worldwide to teach photography workshops and to give talks about her work and about the genre of landscape photography. Erin is honored to be a Canon Explorer of Light and is also a member of the illustrious nature photography team Photo Cascadia