Meet Terry Toedtemeier Oregon ’s premier landscape photographer traces his connection with the land to his geology studies at OSU By Michele Taylor
	Toedtemeier proudly shows off one of the more than 5,000 historical images of the Pacific Northwest preserved at the Portland Art Museum.

One year before Terry Toedtemeier, ’69, graduated from OSU, he stepped out of an OSU geology department four-wheel-drive pick-up in Wheeler County, Ore., and felt the cretaceous seafloor crunch beneath his Vibram-soled boots. Underfoot, he identified the gravel’s fossil ammonite shells that housed squid-like creatures during the Mesozoic age. His eyes followed the contours of the near hills, which were layered with black, porcelain-like rock. He spied Columbia River basalt on the horizon.

“I turned 21 out there,” he said. “Though I decided I would never go into geophysics or the extractive industries — the geology field sequence was the single, pivotal experience in my OSU years, the one thing I can point to and say ‘this changed my life …’ It was the finest educational experience I ever had and an unforgettable time of feeling a connection to the land.”

A short time later, Toedtemeier had a second epiphany. This time, he was driving his Mustang on Highway 99W, just north of Corvallis. Autumn’s fog obscured the horizon.

“I was so startled to see a scrubby little wreck of a tree in the middle of a plowed field,” he said. “So I took a photograph of it. And when I printed the photo, I realized this creative possibility with the camera.”

Given Toedtemeier’s two moments of great personal insight, it’s not surprising that he is, according to Art in America magazine, “Oregon’s premier landscape photographer … heir to Ansel Adams.” His images are in national galleries’ permanent collections, including: the Seattle Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. They have been exhibited in Lithuania, Estonia, Russia and Denmark.