Wisconsin landscape photographer’s passion is telling stories with his lens

Rennicke was about to go to bed at his home in Bayfield when something happened he can’t quite explain, a vision of sorts.

“I got a feeling that I had to go out on the lake that night, to go out to take a photo at a specific spot,’’ said Rennicke. “I don’t know why I went. But I trusted the vision.”

Rennicke called a friend with a boat who agreed to motor out to the north side of Basswood Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. In the dark.

“It could have ended up being nothing. It might even have ended tragically being out there at night. But it ended up being magical,’’ Rennicke said.

Rennicke said he knew he had to set up his camera tripod literally in the lake because there is no beach in that spot, but he also knew the water would be warm, he knew it would be calm, he knew the forecast was for clear skies. He thought he might be able to get a nice composition of Lake Superior, stars in the sky, smooth water and the tiny island known as Honeymoon Rock.

Not only did Rennicke get all that, but he also got a gorgeous display of aurora borealis that he had no idea was going to happen. The image he captured of the scene, taken past midnight with no one else around, was chosen to hang in the Smithsonian’s American Museum of Natural History in Washington as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the federal Wilderness Act in 2014.

“That’s when I realized that, to be good at this art, like any other, you have to trust your instinct. Your instinct comes from knowing your place. And then you have to go there to be there,’’ Rennicke said. “Like the old saying in photography, F8 and be there.”

You may remember Rennicke as an outdoor adventure travel writer. For more than 20 years he traveled the globe seeking stories in wild, far-flung places. His award-winning travel writing on Alaska, Antarctica, Russia and Africa appeared in 10 books and more than 300 magazine articles in publications like National Geographic Traveler, Reader’s Digest, Backpacker and many others.

But for the last 15 years or so, Rennicke, 62, has often set aside the pen and pad and picked up a camera. And thanks to having had some of the best outdoor photographers in the world as his teachers, and his own uncanny keen eye for nature’s art, Rennicke has become one of the premier natural landscape photographers in the Lake Superior region.

“I traveled with some of the best photographers in the world when I was writing, literally Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers, so I let them do their job while I did mine,’’ Rennicke said. “But I did pay attention to what they did and how they did it.”

In 2004 Rennicke surprised himself and accepted a job as a full-time teacher, and he found himself unable to accept freelance travel writing gigs. So instead of seeking awe on trips abroad, he found it around Lake Superior through the lens of his camera.

It was Rennicke’s Wizard of Oz discovery: There’s no place like home.

“We moved back to Wisconsin in 1989 … but for the first 15 years we lived here, I was always leaving to write about somewhere else,’’ Rennicke said. “When I stopped traveling… and started taking more pictures, I realized that I had all of this incredible beauty around me here in northern Wisconsin that I really hadn’t fully discovered before.”

Rennicke’s eye as a photographer clearly is drawn to water, especially his beloved Lake Superior. His images of the Apostle Islands, especially in winter, are iconic.

“I love the flow of light and water and ice,’’ he noted, adding that some of his Bayfield neighbors have dubbed him “the iceman.”

“I was bringing shards of ice from the lake back to my house to see what I could do” in a studio setting, Rennicke noted. “They thought that was strange.”

An inspirational teacher, and a poem, light the passion

Rennicke grew up in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, near Green Bay. He was always drawn to writing but had an inspirational English teacher in high school whom he credits for both his passion for storytelling and his career as an outdoor travel writer.

“He used to read poetry aloud in class … and it just hit me how amazing language is,’’ Rennicke said. “He was reading the poem by Carl Sandberg (River Moons) about it taking many years to write a river… and I knew right then that I was going to merge my love of the outdoors with my love of language.”

Rennicke said he knew even then that his life’s mission was to tell stories about special places. He graduated from high school in 1976, received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in English and literature and received a masters degree in fine arts from Bennington College in Vermont.

“I used to walk by the statue of Robert Frost every day,’’ Rennicke noted. And indeed he has spent much of his life taking Frost’s advice, taking the road less traveled.

Rennicke and his wife, Jill, also a Kaukauna native, moved west, to Colorado, in 1981 to pursue his storytelling dream.

“We had a couple thousand dollars to our names and an old pickup truck I borrowed from my dad,’’ Rennicke said. “But I knew I wanted to write about wide open places. About wilderness. About our big national parks.”

And he did, starting small, selling freelance pieces to newspapers and small magazines before getting noticed by the bigger, better-paying publications.

“I just worked hard. You write like crazy when you have to to survive,’’ he said of the freelancing life.

Rennicke’s “job” took him kayaking down Alaskan rivers of the Brooks Range, hang-gliding over North Carolina’s Outer Banks, river rafting in China, exploring the Antarctic Peninsula on a Russian research ship and running the Colorado River’s Grand Canyon in a dory. He twice won gold medals in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers.

Rennicke landed a position as regional field editor for Backpacker Magazine in 1989. It was the early days of the internet and it was still a novel idea to let editors work from long distances away from the magazine’s headquarters back east.

“They had someone in Montana, so they didn’t want me in Colorado. So we said ‘how about Bayfield?’’’ Rennicke said.

So they moved back to Wisconsin, where he and Jill raised two daughters and where he eventually learned to love being home. He held the Backpacker position until 2004 when he gave what he thought was a one-time Earth Day seminar to a class at the Conserve School, a private residential high school in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin. The headmaster liked it so much he asked Rennicke to come back and teach full-time. So for 16 years, Rennicke taught English, writing and photography — passing on his gift of storytelling and his passion for wild places to another generation.

“It was an amazing place with great people and a 1,200-acre campus of incredible beauty,’’ Rennicke said, noting he taught courses like “wilderness voices’’ and nature photography. He would often take his students outside with no pen, no paper and no camera and tell them to simply observe — to be aware of what was around them.

“My advice to any photographer, or writer, or anyone really, is to pay attention to the world around you and also your reaction to that world,’’ Rennicke said, urging others to capture first what they see and then what they feel.

The Conserve School closed last year due to issues with the foundation that oversaw it and Rennicke taught in Ashland for the past five months.

New career: Inspiring others to love the Apostle Islands

Last week was Rennicke’s last in a classroom, however, at least for a while. Starting Feb. 1 he and Jill will become co-directors of the Friends of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, a nonprofit group dedicated to the preservation and betterment of the national park founded 50 years ago.

It’s the first time the Friends group has had full-time, paid direction.

“We thought about the skill sets Jill has for organizing, and what I could bring hopefully inspiring people, and it seemed like a great fit to have both of us share this,’’ Rennicke said.

The Friends’ board of directors agreed, deciding the Rennickes’ passion for wild places, their knowledge of the region, Jill’s organizational skills and Jeff’s communication skills fit their bill.

“When you look for the qualities of an executive director you really don’t expect to get all of them with one candidate,’’ said Erica Peterson, chairwoman of the Friends’ board. “But when you put Jeff and Jill together, we really did hit on all of them.”

Rennicke says he will bring along his “three pillars” of work life to his new position — storytelling, activism and sense of place.

“I can tell stories with my photos that help people fall in love with a place and want to protect it,’’ Rennicke said. “To be a successful activist you have to be a good storyteller.”

Rennicke notes that his new job will play off his photography, through which he strives to create images that are not just pretty but also meaningful.

“Pretty ends up on a postcard,’’ he said. “Meaningful ends up in people’s hearts. It speaks to something deeper. That’s what I try to do.”