Healing arts

LITTLE ROCK — Imagine fall foliage in varying reddish-orange-burgundy hues, sloping down to misty waters.

Or white rivulets caressing craggy rocks as they cascade to a waiting creek. Majestic, moss- draped trees hugging a lone trail in a forest. Low clouds, gently combed by the tips of a sea of lush, green trees.

A dead tree limb immortalized in tall red and green blades of grass. A huge rock, woolly with moss.

“How lovely,” you might say as you conjure such images. Or, most likely say, as you view photographs of the scenes: more than 100 such images, beautifully matted and framed, adorning hallways, treatment rooms and patient suites at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center in Little Rock.

These are not just photographs. Certainly not the commercial prints you’d find in any given hobby shop that sells generic artwork. These are images that literally draw the viewer in, providing a vicarious source of solace and beauty.

The photographer who captured such images? Dr. Scott Brown, a familiar hospital figure whose internal medicine practice is just across University Avenue in the Doctors Building.

Brown dispenses healing to his own patients, via his primary profession, and to all visitors of St. Vincent, via his passion ... a passion that began about age 5, when he received his first instant Kodak camera. “I loved to document everything,” he says. “Every place I had been, that was an image.”

Nowadays, it’s a passion that takes everything from broad, majestic landscapes to the most obscure tidbits of nature ... and captures it all in whatif-Ansel-Adams-shot-in-color detail.

Brown doesn’t call these photographs; he calls them images.

“I want [my] images to do a couple of things for people,” he says. “I want to inspire, but I want the images to convey a sense of tranquility. And I want folks to know, too, that on this planet there are such beautiful places.” His mission has been a success. “I’ve gotten some of the most wonderful letters from not only patients but patients’ families,” adds Brown, who hosted a Nov. 5 show and sale of his images at his office.

The popularity of his work is no surprise to Jamie Jones, chief of guest relations for St. Vincent Health System.

“Patients have commented on how much they love these photographs, and they find peace and solitude in them - away from some of the stress that they might be dealing with while their loved ones are here in the hospital,” she confirms. “We’re very lucky to have these photographs to grace our hallways.”

It’s hard to pick a favorite, Jones adds. “You can pretty much close your eyes and pick a photograph and it would be excellent.”

For the past four to five years, Brow n has been planning his vacation trips around their photographic potential, staying in lodges and traversing hiking trails to get those just-right shots. He’s usually part of a group of five to six photography enthusiasts. “We pretty much plan all of our trips, for the most part, together,” he says, adding that he tries to leave the state at least semiannually and get in a couple of in-state photo shoots over an occasional weekend.

These days, rather than a Kodak, Brown captures images on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. He then sends them to be printed by John Blakney of Visual Database Systems in Little Rock.

LAND THAT HE LOVES

An unassuming man, Brown speaks with a gentle Southern drawl that becomes animated when he discusses what he calls “America the beautiful” ... an America likely to be overlooked by those in search of exotic, far-flung destinations.

“I am crazy about the West, I will tell you right now,” he says as he takes a couple of visitors on a tour of his work at St. Vincent. “Antelope Canyon [in Lake Powell Navajo Tribal Park in Page, Ariz.] - the images are stunning. And they vary, depending on the inclination of the sun. Vermilion Cliffs [near Page], I’m crazy about. If you haven’t been, you’ve got to go. You’ve got the Colorado River that runs underneath these fabulous cliffs.” He’s a fan of Horseshoe Bend, also near Page. “And the hike that one does to get there is fabulous.”

He rattles off other destinations: Bryce and Zion national parks. The Grand Canyon, at which he hopes to shoot some sunsets or sunrises. Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Grand Teton National Park, where he photographed the Snake River back in 2009. Glacier National Park in Montana, to which he plans to return this summer.

Brown’s first major trip to shoot images was to Juneau, Alaska. “The Mendenhall Glacier as you’re [flying in] is a knockout,” he says.

And there are Brown’s in-state destinations, which have enhanced the hospital’s 3E Urology/Women’s Surgery Department since it opened in October 2010. Chosen by department staff, these images showcase such breath-takers as waterfalls, boulders and cliffs of Petit Jean State Park, the sweeping vistas at Mount Nebo State Park, and the Old Mill in North Little Rock.

“It’s really interesting, watching the different patients ... go to looking and realize they’re actually Arkansas pictures’” says Joyce Diemer, nurse manager of the department. In many cases, patients don’t realize they’re looking at an Arkansas site until they see the name mounted below theimage. “You see some details you probably really wouldn’t notice going [to the park] and looking. Some are surprised that those are actual waterfalls in Arkansas, and [didn’t realize] there are as many as there are.”

Gazing at a Scott Brown image does her a world of good, too, Diemer adds.

“It helps you keep that inner peace.”

THAT SPECIAL PLACE

Of Brown’s photography destinations, “Yellowstone is one of my favorite spots on the planet,” he says, adding that he has been there about five times. “The Firehole River and Firehole Canyon are spectacular. And I want to go back.

“One thing about Yellowstone, the look is totally different in different aspects of the park. The look is totally different from the southern part to the northern part, the east, the west. It’s just amazing the different topography that you have. And that’s what I think makes Yellowstone so interesting.” One Yellowstone trip, taken in 2008, involved a 10-day visit during which Brown and his party spent about three days at each lodge, moving up from the southernmost part of the park to the northernmost, then heading east. “We had some spectacular vistas,” he recalls.

Although he says he’s afraid of heights, many of Brown’s photos look as though he took them from points that defy gravity. So has he found himself in positions more precarious than expected while trying to shoot? It happens occasionally. He recalls some rock climbing he and his party had to do to get an image of Red Rock Canyon overlooking Las Vegas. “We had some tense moments doing some rock climbing to get that one. I’m not a thrill-seeker, and that’s not my purview. But I’ll go to some trouble to get the image if it’s reasonable.”

During a 12-mile hike to Herbert Glacier in Alaska, the discomfort came from another source: mosquitoes so plentiful, and so relentless, that Brown calls the experience “the hike from hell.”

Temperatures were in the upper 40s, but “it didn’t matter to the mosquitoes,” he says. “You couldn’t stand still for an instant, because if you stood still for an instant, this cloud [of mosquitoes] would envelop you. It was horrible.”

Whatever the hassles, Brown comes away with images whose details are memorable. Such as an Oxbow, Teton Mountains, shot depicting fluffy clouds vividly reflected in a body of water (“To me, what happens in the sky is equally as important as what happens on the ground,” Brownsays). Images of Cope Park Stream and Mendenhall Valley in Juneau. A spectacular close-up of a Mount Nebo lamb’s ear plant, glistening with dew.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Considering Brown’s eyefor detail, you might wonder why there are no images of any Amazon jungles, African savannas or Swiss Alps. Simple. He wants to concentrate on points within the continental United States.

“There is so much beauty here,” he says. “It is ... under-appreciated, I suspect. There are so many people that have not been to so many of these places. And one thing I have found out is regardless of what area of the country I happen to be in, there is beauty everywhere, definitely.

“So I want to try to see as much of this country as I possibly can and bring as much of it back here to Arkansas as I can for other people to enjoy.”