A little about me...
I’ve been lucky. Early in life I found something I love to do and have spent most of my career photographing the lives of real people: farmers, ranchers and rural folks of all sorts. Of course, this has meant working in gorgeous landscapes and under ever-changing skies. What photographer could ask for more?
I now live in Plattsburg, Missouri, population around 2,200. We have one grocery store, one lumberyard and no traffic lights. We used to have a yellow caution light at the intersection of Main Street and 116 Highway, but the State took it away because we didn’t have enough traffic to justify the maintenance.
All around us in northwest Missouri is farmland, primarily used to grow corn and soybeans and to raise cattle.
I had the great good fortune to work for The Progressive Farmer magazine for 20 years. PF has been around for more than 130 years and is the largest circulation farm publication in the country. It gave me access to some wonderful places and great photo opportunities. Missouri is my home. But I’ve photographed the diverse agriculture in Oregon’s green valleys, corn harvests in the flats and hills of the Midwest and coffee plantations on Central American mountainsides. My career in agriculture has taken me to 49 of 50 states (Can’t seem to get to Alaska!), 20 countries and five continents (Can’t seem to get to Antarctica or Australia either. Is Fiji close enough? How about New Zealand?)
All these years later, I still consider myself lucky to have found a passion for using photos to tell rural stories.
If you have a project that requires a deep knowledge of rural life and agriculture, give me a shout. I speak the lingo.
Jim Patrico