John Warden  – During his career days, John Warden often came to the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains for a break from his accounting business in Cameron Park, California. It is not surprising that he and his wife moved to Carson City after retirement in the early 2000s. His love of hiking in the mountains provides him with his spiritual place to be at peace with the sky of endless beauty and mystery. He says when he is in nature, he enjoys ‘never knowing what to expect’ but being able to capture that immediacy of surprise through his photography.

John learned to paint in high school but was drawn to photography during his Viet Nam deployment. Using a Brownie camera, John honed his craft during the down times, recording the natural landscapes and the Indo-China architecture. Then life, family and business took over and art fell to the side for a while.

John holds lifetime memberships in all veteran-related organizations. He discovered the NAA Gallery by chance one day when he was driving to the American Legion in the same neighborhood of Carson City. Soon after, he entered a photograph in an NAA show, which won a ribbon, and that was all it took for him to join. His work has earned many regional awards since then and was recently chosen to be in the 2024 Wild Nevada Calendar. As an NAA member for 16 years, the NAA board sales treasurer, and a leader on the show change crew for the last 5 years, John is continually active in the NAA.

A traveler at heart who enjoys photographing national parks across America, John now uses both Sony A6000 and Sony A7IV cameras in the field. He has covered the national parks in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and California…and back east, the Everglades and the Smokies. As a member of the Great Basin Rock and Mineral Club since 2008, he has had plenty of opportunity to capture Nevada’s natural wonders. Not only does he photograph nature, but he also brings some of it home with him to make his Nevada Rock Art Jewelry with the use of the lapidary equipment at the Senior Center. Recently he has expanded his rock art to adhering rocks to animal skulls that he finds in the desert to make 3D sculptures or reliefs. John would say he is an opportunist: one willing to make the best of a new idea.