Showcasing his artistic journey as a landscape and wildlife photographer, Andrew Tomey’s exhibit at Kachemak Bay Recovery Connection is also a showcase of his journey through addiction to recovery, community and creativity.

“Ten years ago, I was struggling with heroin addiction, and I made the decision to get sober and have been sober ever since,” Tomey said. “A large part of recovery is learning to combat boredom, to find out who you are as a person and what it is that you love. I’d messed around with photography growing up and when I moved to Homer in 2020, I made friends in both the photography community and the recovery community, and these genuine connections are a big part of my sobriety.”

Tomey and his wife, Morgan Dwyer, who had family in Homer, settled into the community and Tomey purchased a camera and set out to learn what he could from locals and YouTube. Working full time for Set Free Alaska, an addiction treatment center, Tomey’s creative goal at the time was to sell enough of his photography to fund his hobby. When this hobby shifted him toward numerous commercial photography opportunities, the couple decided he should pursue photography as a business and see where it might take him. In 2023, both Arctic Stills Photography and their daughter, Nora, were born.

Today, Tomey does full-time video production work for a company in the Lower 48 and manages his commercial photography business, while continuing to pursue his landscape and wildlife photography.

“The photography business is very feast-or-famine, so having a reliable income from another full-time job in a creative field where I get to do what I love is the perfect situation for me,” he said. “Real estate photography is similar to landscape photography in that I’m looking for the right composition and working with what is already in place, and I enjoy the challenges and successes that brings. With my landscape photography, getting to witness and capture simple moments of immense beauty is a true joy.”

Tomey often sets out in pursuit of a specific scene to shoot. Other times, he is in the right spot at the right time.

“I love when I’m out with my camera and know I’m in exactly the right place in exactly the right time and am witnessing something truly special,” he said. “Like last fall when I was doing a shoot for someone else, and I was watching the sun coming down. The sky exploded in orange, and I raced down to Beluga Slough because I just had a feeling that I needed to get down there. When I got there, there were two trumpeter swans next to each other with the brilliant sky behind them.

“Those kinds of experiences keep me deeply present and I’m so happy to get to capture them and then share them with others.”

Among the photographers that inspire him are Sergius Hannan, an Alaska-based wildlife photographer who grew up in Homer, as well as Tomey’s friend Colter Broadwell, an Alaska-based landscape photographer.

While Tomey has been showcasing his work on his Facebook page for the last couple of years and selling cards and prints at galleries and shops around town, community members can now view a body of his work in person. Currently on display at Kachemak Bay Recovery Connection is Tomey’s first public art exhibit, a body of work that includes wildlife and landscape photos.

“Harbor at Night” was shot in the winter of 2021. Captured at night, it shows boats moored in the harbor, the long lines of the boats and their surroundings reflected in the calm, dark water.

“At that point, it was still early on in my photography, and I hadn’t done a lot of night photography yet,” Tomey said. “I saw that the skies were clear and thought I’d go out and see what I might come across. Initially, I went to the end of the Spit and was taking some exposure shots of the pylons, lights and ships inside the bay. I’ve always been a fan of capturing reflections, clean shapes, geometries and symmetries, and keeping that in mind, I went to the harbor to look around and saw this viewpoint while I was walking the floats. I was stunned by the geometry of the pylons and the way they move in and out of themselves.”

Printing and framing all his own work, Tomey printed “Harbor at Night” on metallic paper to provide a contrast between the paper and the light of the photograph. Of the thousands of images he has shot, this is one of his favorites.

“Every time I look at this one it just feels really special to me and other people seem to like it too,” Tomey said. “Homer is a boat town, and a lot of people have a very strong connection to water through work or play, so they seem to really connect to this image.”

His photograph, “Out to Lunch,” shows a bear sitting in a creek, its head turned to the right, gaze cast behind it, and a salmon resting in its mouth. Tomey shot this image last fall when he had the opportunity to spend time in Katmai National Park during the peak of the fall salmon run.

“We flew in, landed and started walking and it seemed like there was a bear at every corner we turned,” he said. “I’d heard how close you can get to them out there but experiencing that in person was something I would never have been able to really imagine before.”

Set up beside Moraine Creek, the sockeye were in full spawn colors and Tomey’s guide was telling him about the bears.

“The guide was telling me about the state that the bear’s body enters during this time, that they never feel full and are able to continually pack away the pounds,” he said. “What they are doing is very serious and their survival depends on their ability to eat as much as they can.

“Watching them, I could see so much of their personality in the way they hunt. The bear in this photograph was very patient and waiting for the opportune moment to get that salmon. It’s hard not to feel a strong connection to them when you’re right there with them.”

That kind of connection is a large part of Tomey’s creativity and his recovery.

“The thing I kept coming back to during my recovery journey was connection,” he said. “Gaining genuine connections to other people and the world around me was my way through, and photography was a way to increase that connection. Addiction wants to keep us isolated and feeding the disease, but having healthy people around us — and for me that was community and connection through photography — that was the foundational component of my sobriety.”

With his first public exhibit currently on display, Tomey’s goals include exhibiting more of his work, continuing to get his images out into the community and pursuing opportunities to photograph Alaska’s more remote areas.

“This has been an amazing creative journey so far,” he said. “Ten years ago, I would have never imagined I’d be here.”

Community members can view Tomey’s landscape and wildlife photography at Kachemak Bay Recovery Connection, open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 111 W Pioneer Avenue through the first week of March.

Find Arctic Stills Photography on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

“Out to Lunch,” a photo taken by Andrew Tomey in Katmai National Park in the fall of 2024, is one of several images on display in his February solo exhibit at Kachemak Bay Recovery Connection in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Andrew Tomey