At the age of two, native Southern Californian Corey Arnold fished with his father in the Pacific ocean. His father was also the first to give him a camera. Ever since, Arnold has found a way to combine his love of the ocean, wildlife and photography. Arnold attended photography school at the San Francisco Academy of Art, and spent his summers in Alaska working as a deck hand on an Alaskan king crab boat, documenting the ups and downs of life on a commercial fishing boat. A few years later, the Discovery Channel popularized crab fisherman with their reality show, Deadliest Catch, and Arnold’s photography career got a boost when the network asked him to shoot a few promotional images. After multiple winter seasons, Arnold quit crab fishing and published his first monograph, Fish-Work: The Bering Sea, published in 2011 by Nazraeli Press. That project landed him gallery representation, and various assignments shooting fisheries.

Arnold now spends three seasons each year working as an editorial, commercial and fine art photographer based in Portland, Oregon. But Arnold’s summer months are spent on a commercial fishing boat in Bristol Bay, Alaska, home of the world’s largest sockeye salmon population. His newest body of work (and 4th solo exhibition at the gallery), “Wildlife,” opens tonight with a reception with the artist at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in Portland. In a statement about the exhibition, the gallery says that “‘Wildlife’ depicts Arnold’s absorption and enchantment in images that are at once beautiful and compelling. Like his previous work, these new pictures combine technical mastery with a unique perspective. These gorgeous photographs transfix the viewer with their earnestness and charm.” “Wildlife” runs through November 29, 2014.

Related post: Corey Arnold’s “Fish-Work: The Bering Sea.”