Kelly J. Owen Fine Art Photography

Kelly J. Owen Fine Art Photography Preserving landscapes through conservation 📷 © kjo 🌿 Licensing available.

Nature, landcape, documentary, live music, and portrait photographer

The day after I made this photograph, my mother passed away. 🤍I found myself at eye level with the fog on Mt. Tamalpais,...
06/03/2026

The day after I made this photograph, my mother passed away. 🤍

I found myself at eye level with the fog on Mt. Tamalpais, watching the hillside appear and disappear.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about photographs. I wasn’t looking for meaning. I simply stood there for a while and watched.

Months later, I find myself returning to this image.

Grief has a way of narrowing the horizon. Of making it difficult to see what comes next. Looking at this photograph now, I’m reminded that not everything hidden is gone. Sometimes we just can’t see very far ahead.

Mt. Tamalpais, Marin County, California.

Fifteen days before my mother passed away, I was standing in the forests of Mt. Tamalpais watching these small mushrooms...
05/23/2026

Fifteen days before my mother passed away, I was standing in the forests of Mt. Tamalpais watching these small mushrooms glow from a fallen tree after the first November rains.

At the time, it was simply a quiet moment beneath the redwoods — soft light, damp earth, the forest slowly waking again.

I remember sending her a photograph of the back of my camera while I was still out in the field because I couldn’t believe the light coming through the mushrooms. Later that evening, I sent her more of the images from the day. She was amazed by them… completely filled with wonder at these tiny lives glowing from the forest floor.

Now the photograph feels different to me.

There’s something about mushrooms that mirrors grief in strange ways. They emerge quietly, hold their beauty for only a short while, and return again to the larger cycles that sustain the forest. Decay becoming life. Loss becoming memory. Light still finding its way through the canopy.

When I made this photograph, my mother was still alive. She was still here on Earth with me beneath the same sky, breathing the same air, existing in the same fleeting season of life. I didn’t know then that she was living through the final weeks of her life.

I think that’s part of why this image hurts and comforts me at the same time.

For a brief moment, before everything changed, I was in the forest making something beautiful… and she got to see it.

Mt. Tamalpais, California
Early November, 2025

05/18/2026

Today marks six months since my mother passed on.

I photographed this scene just fifteen days before losing her. At the time, I was simply drawn to the layered ridgelines and the way San Francisco quietly emerged in the distance beyond them.

Now the image feels different.

The city remains, but far away. Dimmed by shadow, softened by distance, suspended somewhere between presence and absence. Over time, this photograph has become tied to grief in a way I still struggle to explain.

Some landscapes eventually stop feeling like places and instead become memories you can stand inside.

“San Francisco Beyond The Marin Headlands”
(Link in bio)

Today marks six months since my mother passed on.I photographed this scene just fifteen days before losing her. At the t...
05/18/2026

Today marks six months since my mother passed on.

I photographed this scene just fifteen days before losing her. At the time, I was simply drawn to the layered ridgelines and the way San Francisco quietly emerged in the distance beyond them.

Now the image feels different.

The city remains, but far away. Dimmed by shadow, softened by distance, suspended somewhere between presence and absence. Over time, this photograph has become tied to grief in a way I still struggle to explain.

Some landscapes eventually stop feeling like places and instead become memories you can stand inside.

“San Francisco Beyond The Marin Headlands”

There are some moments when the beauty of the world feels almost unbearable.This was just after takeoff from the Bay Are...
05/09/2026

There are some moments when the beauty of the world feels almost unbearable.

This was just after takeoff from the Bay Area, on the first of several flights to honor my Mom, starting with holding her Celebration of Life. As the plane turned east, midafternoon light spilled across the fog moving through the San Francisco Bay, softening the edges of the city and the hills beyond it. Everything below felt quiet. Suspended.

I couldn’t stop looking out the window.

Not just because it was beautiful, but because of what the moment meant.

The woman who once carried me through this world, through childhood, through fear, through becoming who I am, was now the one I carried. In memory. In grief. In love. Soon, I would continue to North Carolina, with only my dog, to scatter her ashes. (Thank you 💕🫶🏽❤️‍🩹)

There was something about watching the fog drift across the Bay from above that made it all feel strangely connected. The movement of water and wind. The passing of time. The weight of love that doesn’t disappear just because someone is gone.

This coming Mother’s Day will be my first without her.

Now that I’m finally back home, I’m trying to find my footing again. I think part of that will be returning to photography. Returning to the landscapes and quiet moments that have always helped me process the world when words fail. Not as an escape, but as a way of grounding myself. Of recalibrating. Of learning how to move forward while still carrying her with me.

I believe grief changes the way you see the world and see its landscapes and certain landscapes know how to hold grief gently.

Love you always, Mom.
🤍🤍🤍

From My Window SeatI’ve always needed the window seat. I’ve always been an observer.On the flight to my mom’s home afte...
03/15/2026

From My Window Seat

I’ve always needed the window seat.
I’ve always been an observer.

On the flight to my mom’s home after she passed away, I spent most of the time looking down.

It was the hardest flight of my life.

Through tears and tissues I kept watching the landscape below, often blurred by the tears in my eyes, the earth slowly rolling past beneath us.

At times it barely looked like land at all.

From that distance it felt almost biological.
Lines like veins. Shapes like cells. Something living, moving quietly in patterns you can’t quite understand.

The longer you look, the more the patterns begin to reveal themselves.

I wasn’t really looking for anything specific.
Even in that moment, my instinct was still to look… and to photograph what I saw.

More than once I had to wipe the viewfinder on my camera.

Later in the flight I noticed on the map that we were flying directly over the small town where I was born.

Of all the places that flight could have taken us, we passed right over it.

I was deep in grief and mourning, and my mind didn’t have a place to put it.

My mom always preferred the window seat too.

Somewhere in the middle of that flight I found myself wondering what landscape she saw on her final flight from her window seat.

So I sat there through tears, watching the earth slowly moving past below…
and I kept photographing.

🤍🦋🌎♥️

02/26/2026

The forest does not resist the wind.
It bends.
It sways.
It lets the storm move through.

Today the trees speak in a language I understand…
low, trembling, unfinished.

The fog wraps everything in softness,
as if the world itself knows
that sharp edges are too much right now.

The wind comes in bursts,
like memory.
Sudden.
Uninvited.
Gone before I can hold it.

And in the hush between gusts,
I miss you,
Mom.

Somewhere between the rain
and the sound of leaves
giving in
and rising again,
I feel you.

Not in words.
Not in answers.
But in movement.

Nothing here is still.
Nothing here is gone.
Everything is becoming.

The forest grieves without collapsing.
It stands.
It listens.
It lets the storm pass through its body.

Mom,
I am still learning
how to do the same.

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