Gregory McIntosh became smitten by photography at age 6, when he held a Brownie Box camera and snapped his first photos. Over the next 70-plus years he never missed a photo opportunity, creating exquisite narratives through his work, a truly remarkable feat for a self-taught photographer.

From the banks of Lake Erie in Ohio and Kachemak Bay in Alaska to the Florida Keys and the Treasure Coast, McIntosh has produced extraordinary images, many of which chronicle his lifelong love of the natural environment.

“My family started visiting Fort Lauderdale in the early 1940s. We moved there from Cleveland in 1952. I went away to school, then college, the Army, got married and lived abroad for two years before moving back to Fort Lauderdale.”

McIntosh says that his father had also enjoyed photography, so seeing cameras about the house was not unusual. As a boy, he sometimes helped his father to develop the film in the bathroom/darkroom.

A gentle, low-key man, McIntosh does not describe himself as a professional photographer, but he says photography is his passion.

“For the last seven and a half decades I’ve peered at the world through a variety of lenses, photographing people, places and things,” he says. “Photography has been a passion. From the early 1950s, when I began to explore the world through film, to the present wonder of digital cameras, I have tried to create images that capture the essence, beauty, and excitement of the world around me.

“My wife of 60 years, Suzanne, and I moved to Alaska in 1983,” says McIntosh, adding that Suzanne passed away in 2022.

The population of Halibut Cove, a paradise only accessible by plane or boat, was around 50 residents when they moved there. It was their home until 2016.

They were surrounded with the tranquility of forests, the Kenai Mountains and the shoreline of Kachemak Bay, and McIntosh captured it all, photographing Alaska’s wildlife, water vessels and the people within the community.

“It was a great life in Alaska. First, only as a summer home and then we started to live there full time,” he recalls with fondness. He now resides in Vero Beach full time.

McIntosh says his love of outdoor photography was influenced by Edward Weston, Eliot Porter and Peter Beard, photographers from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Weston photographed landscapes; Porter did nature color photography; and Beard’s black and white photographs featured Africa’s savanna and animals.

McIntosh’s learned to successfully combine the beauty of black and white photography and the majesty of natural surroundings, as well as the patience required to capture a subject at just the right moment.

Having understood the early challenges of print photography, he says he now appreciates the ease of the digital darkroom.

“With digital photography, I try to do as little post processing as possible. The trick is to get it right in the camera – to wait and to frame the light, the wave, the movement, the gesture and then to capture the scene precisely.”

McIntosh utilizes the power of photography to tell a story and elicit feelings. His use of composition, light, shadows, angles and lenses brings movement and life to his images. These narratives are most evident in his black and white photographs.

“Over the last several years, I find myself departing from color and shifting to the world of infrared and black and white. Infrared allows me to photograph and print things that we cannot see, images that are just outside the visible spectrum. I convert most of those photographs to black and white, although I do print a few in color,” he explains.

“Throughout my photographic life, I have had the privilege of seeing my work published in magazines and catalogs, in private collections, and displayed in galleries and museums across the country. When making photographs, my goal is to help the viewer see the things I saw, feel the things I felt and, if I’ve done it right, to be affected by the image in the same way I was when I took the photograph. It is an honor to share my work with others,” says McIntosh.

An advocate for the preservation and wonder of our natural environments, his marine photography includes shooting the process and progress of coral reef restoration in several coastal areas including the Florida Keys. Efforts to restore these ecosystems are expensive and are monitored closely by environmentalists and the government, making his expertise in capturing these moments invaluable.

His company, McIntosh Marine, Inc. was highly regarded and respected in its day among marine biologists and engineers. He was also a three-term,(nine years total) obligatory Florida member to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council; a lifetime member of the Florida/Alaska International Game Fish Association; and a past director of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, now known as Wild Oceans.

McIntosh and fellow photographer David Bence co-founded the Vero Beach Art Club Photographers’ Forum in 2022, which meets the second Tuesday of every month, at the Vero Beach Art Club Gallery & Market Place in the Downtown Arts District.

His photographs have been displayed in the A.E. Backus Museum & Gallery in Fort Pierce, the Vero Beach Art Museum, the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, the Photo Place Gallery in Middlebury, Vt., and the Black Box Gallery in Portland, Ore.