Peter Essick is a photographer, author, speaker, instructor and drone pilot who specializes in nature and environmental themes. Named one of the 40 most influential nature photographers in the world by Outdoor Photography Magazine UK, Essick has been influenced by many noted American landscape photographers from Carleton Watkins to Robert Adams. His goal is to make photographs that move beyond mere documentation to reveal in careful compositions the human impact of development as well as the enduring power of the land. Essick is the author of three monographs, “The Ansel Adams Wilderness,” “Our Beautiful, Fragile World,” and “Fernbank Forest.” Essick has photographed stories for National Geographic on many environmental issues, including climate change, high-tech trash, nuclear waste and freshwater. Essick’s photographs are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Booth Western Art Museum. His most recent series, “Sleeping Trees,” documents Atlanta’s urban trees at night. Situated on the Piedmont plateau of the Eastern United States, Metro Atlanta is known as a “City in a Forest.” Atlanta was settled later than port cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC and its canopy reflects a more recent, and until a few decades ago, less dense development. Residents of Atlanta are living in the remnants of an old-growth forest.Scientific researchers have recently discovered that trees in a forest can communicate with other trees through their roots, sense their environment, and “sleep” at night by relaxing their branches. In the best-selling book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben describes a fascinating “social life” of trees in old-growth forests in Germany where he has conducted research. In contrast, he describes urban trees as the “street kids” of the forest. Older urban trees have usually been orphaned by surrounding development and subjected to pruning and pollution that has stunted their growth. Younger planted trees near sidewalks or buildings suffer from a life in poor soils and lack of space to grow their roots. The photographs in “Sleeping Trees” aspire to be both documents and metaphors of the fragile existence of nature in the urban environment. His series titled, “Construction Sites,” focuses on areas of rapid change in the environment. Forest, farms, old structures or empty lots are converted to new buildings with large capital investments of energy and materials. As such, construction sites are snapshots of how a society views development, progress and the treatment of the environment. The familiar jobs verse the environment argument has taken on a new meaning in the age of climate change, population growth, forever chemicals and sustainability. Construction sites can be either symbols of economic growth or as a tremendous drain on valuable environmental resources. He sees these temporary landscapes as metaphors for how we are choosing to construct the future.