Mercedes Santana is a surgical technician at South Peninsula Hospital and a landscape, portrait and wedding photographer. “This is Home” is an exhibit that showcases her passion for adventuring in and capturing the beauty of Alaska. Leaning into her work life, the exhibit just happens to be on display in the hospital’s gallery.

As a surgical tech, her duties include scrubbing in for surgery, assisting the surgeon, handling instruments and ensuring the sterility of the operating space. Basically, staying steps ahead of the surgeon and making sure they have everything they need.

“While my surgery work is technical, with systems in place for everything, providing a rigidness I enjoy, with my photography I just let nature do what it’s doing and I get to witness it and capture it,” she said.

After receiving her technician’s certificate in Colorado in 2014, Mercedes worked on travel contracts in hospitals in California and Montana where she spent her days off in search of local hiking trails, taking photos and sharing them on Instagram. With positive feedback to her images, she purchased a DSLR Nikon camera and then a drone and taught herself how to use both.

“I love my camera and stock lenses, and the drone allows for a completely different perspective,” she said.

With a passion for hiking and photographing mountains, Santana was eager to see Alaska and enlisted the help of her job recruiter. In 2017, she came to Homer on a contract with the hospital and after a brief job outside just to make sure Alaska was the place she wanted to be, she moved to the community permanently.

“I fell in love with the views, especially the mountain ranges, and decided to make Alaska my home,” she said.

“This is Home” is her exhibit of mountainscapes, along with other landscapes as well as wildlife images, chosen for the cohesiveness of their colors, textures and familiar-to-Alaskans subject matter.

“The Quiet Life” depicts two men on a boardwalk filleting halibut and was photographed in Seldovia last summer.

“My friend and I were exploring Seldovia by bike when I saw this scene,” Santana said. “Everything was calm, and I wanted to show how quiet life is over there.”

“The Snow-Capped” shows a snow-covered mountain peak and was shot at Portage Lake while Santana walked across the frozen lake amongst other people who were skating.

“I wanted to go on an adventure, and it was just a perfect weather day for capturing the peaks,” she said. “And that peak in particular just struck me as quite spectacular.”

“The Contrast” is an aerial shot taken with her drone and shows Kenai Lake on one side, her truck parked on the side of the highway in the middle of the image, and the leaves of the trees changing color on the other side.

“I was driving to Seward and saw how blue the water was and how the lighting was so perfect,” she said. “I thought it would make a really cool photograph and so I put my drone up really high and captured this shot.”

Purposeful in her landscape photography, Santana often googles “hikes around Alaska” and sets out to photograph what she sees in others’ photographs.

“Sometimes I’ll see a mountain in the background of someone else’s image and then I set off to explore the area and photograph that particular mountain,” she said. “I try to choose nice weather days, but moody days can be nice for photography too.”

While her landscape photography is purposeful, her wildlife shots are accidental.

“I have an obsession with mountains,” she said. “I think it’s that when you’re on a mountain surrounded by other mountain ranges, you feel like a tiny speck in this big old world. So, most of my images are meant to be of mountains, but once in a while I’ll capture something else that comes into my viewpoint.”

That “something else” often includes otters, puffin, bald eagles and mountain goats, all included in her exhibit.

With her purposeful landscape and accidental wildlife photography in place, Santana set out three years ago, following her creativity and a friend’s encouragement, to delve into portrait and wedding photography. Well known in the community for her family photos, wedding photos and senior portraits, she is now working towards more destination weddings in order meld her love of travel and landscape photography with her love of capturing people in varying landscapes. At the same time, she is planning hikes further north and across Kachemak Bay, along with a special adventure in the fall of 2026 when she and her fiancée will elope to Italy and hike the Dolomite Mountains.

“This is Home” is on display in the hospital’s gallery until April 4. Find Santana’s landscape and wildlife photography on Facebook, Mercedes Santana and on Instagram, @msantana918. Find her portrait and wedding photography at mercedessantanaphotography.com and on Facebook and Instagram, Mercedes Santana Photography and Mercedes_in_Alaska on TikTok.

“The Contrast,” a photo of Kenai Lake by Mercedes Santana, shot by drone in the fall of 2020, is on display in her exhibit, “This is Home,” at the South Peninsula Hospital gallery in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Mercedes Santana

“The Quiet Life,” a photograph taken by Mercedes Santana in Seldovia in the summer of 2024, is on display in her solo exhibit at South Peninsula Hospital in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Mercedes Santana

“The Snow-Capped,” a photo of a mountain peak by Portage Lake taken by Mercedes Santana in March 2020, is on display through March 2025 in her exhibit at the South Peninsula Hospital gallery in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Mercedes Santana