Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Morning rambles become art
BELLA VISTA — When Dana Johnson leaves before sunrise most days, he usually knows where he wants to go but he doesn’t always get there. He likes to stick to the back roads and he really likes to get lost. Most of the time he gets home just as his neighbors are starting their day.
Johnson is a photographer. When he’s out on his early morning drives, he shoots for two or three hours and, when he gets home, he edits his photos and throws many of them out. He has to be selective — he already has 30,000 photos on his computer.
Johnson started in photography in 2012. He was working as a construction superintendent and his company often sent him on the road. He found himself with little to do after his workday was over, so he picked up a camera and started taking pictures. Sometimes he posted his pictures on his own Facebook page.
Johnson and his wife Sonya built a home in Bella Vista in 2008. They were already planning on retiring there. His wife knew the area because her parents had owned a Bella Vista lot in the ’70s.
“I fell in love with it right off the bat,” he said.
Johnson was raised in Minnesota — spending summers on his grandparents’ farm. He spent most of his adult
life, when he wasn’t traveling for work, in Texas. He raised five children there. Bella Vista was a drastic change from the Dallas area he had gotten used to. He loved the scenery and the small-town feel.
Sonya Johnson moved to Bella Vista first, while Dana Johnson was working and visiting on the weekends. He joined her in 2014 and worked for a local company, Nabholz, for a few years before retiring three years ago.
“Now, instead of getting up and going to work every morning, now I get up and take pictures every day,” he said.
A few years ago, Johnson noticed that there wasn’t a
book that showed the beauty of Bella Vista. There are history books, but they can’t show how beautiful the area is. So, he published one, “Bella Vista, Arkansas.” It is 106 pages of Bella Vista scenery, including the waterfalls and the wildlife.
His second book, “Country Roads,” was published in early 2020 and has 160 pages. Not all the photos are in Bella Vista. His early morning travels take him all over the region and he included a few photos from further away. Old farms, including both barns and some abandoned farm equipment, become art in his book.
He wrote several pages about his own memories of growing up in the country during a simpler time.
“The best remedies for the soul are love, music and laughter, and the memories that last are interwoven with these things. I am sure that there were times when my grandparents didn’t smile, laugh and embrace me with loving arms, but they kept those moments from my memory.”
He planned several book signings for “Country Roads” earlier this year but, because of covid-19, they were canceled. Right now, he has an extensive inventory of both books and prints that will be ready for another signing. He also sells some of his work via his Facebook page. The proceeds from the sales help him buy gas for his morning adventures and pay for more products that will be resold.
This winter he plans to find new ways to market his products and hopes to be able to schedule book signings too.
His third book, “Reflections” is almost ready, he said. Some of the reflections are literal reflections in glass or water, but some are more metaphoric — “some that cause me to pause and reflect on the past.”
Reach Johnson through his webpage, danajohnson.smugmug.com, or his Facebook Page, www.facebook.com/DanaJohnsonStudio/ .