About Michael Underwood
I’m a nature photographer based in the small mountain town of Lake City, Colorado. Born in North Carolina in 1989, I was whisked away to Colorado at age seven, where I found my love for the mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a while though, we moved to Massachusetts, where I began my interest in photography while exploring abandoned asylums as a moody teenager. After a 2009 trip to Alaska, I became reconnected with the natural world. This is where the trajectory of my life began to change. In 2010, I moved to the small mountain town of Lake City in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, one of the most remote places in the lower 48 states. My dad had taken a job as a preacher in town despite us never having heard of it, even after living in Colorado for years. Happy to be back in Colorado, two weeks later I bought my first professional camera gear and my interest in photography began to truly flourish.
Surrounded by the beautiful landscapes and wildlife of my new home, I developed a deep appreciation and respect for nature spending countless hours, wandering or just watching the land, light, and wildlife. I was able to mix newfound loves of nature and photography, to begin a fledgling career as a photographer. Later that summer, I started to sell prints and calendars in the old Back Country Navigator, featuring what I was lucky enough to see.
I left Lake City in 2015. This was a very hard time, and the next year was spent wandering and recuperating in the forests of Massachusetts. In the end, I made a friend in the form of a deer tick that gifted me Lyme Disease. The next year was spent recuperating in Nebraska after being confined to a bed for months unable to walk. Lake City and my mountains were never far from my mind though. I had one maniacal goal: Get home.
Then one day in May, Bass Pro Shops called me asking to photograph a property of theirs in Lake City. I drove the eleven hours two days later, after forgetting to mention to them that I no longer lived there. While back I spotted a classified rental listing in the Silver World Newspaper. I signed a lease that day, and then other important issues like finding a place to live could be looked into, if time allowed. There were mountains to explore! After 2 weeks of sleeping in a friend’s guest room, the spirits that guard the mountains welcomed me in and I found an apartment to rent. I had no idea how to run a business or even how to be social being a hermit in recovery. In time things began to work themselves out though.
In large part, because I began seriously hiking that same month. I had gained a significant amount of weight with Lyme disease and depression. My first mountain hike took nearly nine hours and I only got four miles in. In 2018, I did the same trail, with a 40 pound backpack. This time in just an hour and a half. I had managed to drop my base weight by 150 or so pounds. Since then, I have hiked a couple thousand miles, and spent countless nights in the backcountry, including 200 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022, and have ever growing ambitions of longer trails.
A few years ago, I also built a bed in my 4Runner (now a Subaru Outback), and have become partly nomadic. I spend a month or two at a time living in it while traveling and photographing around the Southwest and Rocky Mountain states. Alongside my love of the Lake City mountains, I have a particular fondness for the canyon country of Utah and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. These are other places where my love of this world has truly flourished. I have also traveled to all 50 states and 8 countries, too few in my opinion. Must get planning.
Since I first opened, it's been nine years and five different locations. Despite threats of flood, wildfires, a pandemic, along with all the other uncertainties and challenges of opening a business and living in the middle of nowhere, the gallery has done well. In the last three years, through sales, my photographs went to all 50 states and 15 countries. Starting in May 2025, I’m living my dream after moving the gallery to the dream location on Silver Street in Lake City!
I hope you enjoy my photos and can experience or re-experience these places through my eyes and words.
Stop by and visit next time you’re in the mountains!
Artist Statement
I always follow the seven Nature First Principles in all my photography. While they are written with photography in mind, they can be and should be applied to every outdoor activity. Please read them below and my thoughts on each one.
-Prioritize the well-being of nature over photography.
This means I won’t be trampling one wildflower patch to photograph a slightly more photogenic one, or chase or stress an animal for a photo. Nature isn’t there for me to take beautiful photos or have fun adventures. It’s there to be there. It’s there to be a home to millions of animals and plants. It’s a refuge to those who need it. It just is, and should always be. Anything I do out in nature will be done with the respect the places deserve, and should never leave a scar or harm what I and we all love. Please do the same, with every outdoor activity.
-Educate yourself about the places you photograph.
There’s no excuse in this wonderful new age of information to not know about the places you visit, and how you can lessen your impact on those places. This is stuff like how fragile tundra or cryptobiotic soil is, that fed wildlife is dead wildlife, and about conditions of the lands you travel in. You can’t protect or love an environment you don’t know!
-Reflect on the possible impact of your actions.
I try to be as conscious as I can be about this as small actions have significant consequences. For example, it might not seem like a big deal to set up a tent next to an alpine lake, in a field of wildflowers or to drive off trail just a bit to avoid an obstacle or trailhead parking if full, but these activities have a cascade of harmful effects. Others will do the same, eventually damaging and scarring areas that were once pristine. Then come closures and permits. Don't be lazy. Don't be selfish.
Another one is I don’t chase or bait animals. No photo is worth causing stress to an animal, so if they are uncomfortable I leave them be. Baiting or feeding animals is illegal, leads to habituation, and a wildlife officer's bullet. Do not do it, and take precautions to avoid accidentally leaving trash or other attractants out. If you don't take these precautions, you are directly responsible for their deaths.
-Use discretion if sharing locations.
Unfortunately, in this wonderful new age of information a beautiful fragile place can be overrun with unknowing or uncaring crowds of people nearly overnight. I do apologize for being prickly about this, but I’ve seen too many of my favorite places irreparably changed and damaged to share locations beyond what I’ve already provided.
This is especially true for wildlife. Please do not ask me share locations of where I see anything. All wildlife deserves to be wild, free, unhabituated, and to live a life that’s not a trophy or attraction.
-Know and Follow Rules and Regulations
We live in a society, and yes, nature does have rules. No camping means you don’t camp there. Road closed signs are there for a reason. Speed limits apply, yes even on dirt roads. Feeding of any wildlife is illegal. Take or alter nothing from archaeological sites. While it seems easy to ignore, others will too. Then we have less places to camp, scarred landscapes, trodden vegetation, wildlife killed after they become habituated to people, and empty outdoor museums of stolen history. We can prevent this.
-Always follow Leave No Trace principles and strive to leave places better than you found them.
If you’re wanting to explore nature, these principles and ethics should be the first thing you learn! I cannot stress this enough. These places are fragile and need to be protected and cared for. This starts with us and our actions in nature.
For vehicle specific principles check out
-Actively promote and educate others about these principles.
Thanks for reading. Please follow and share these principles to take care of these places of unparalleled beauty, and leave them as they are for all time. These places are all of ours, and it's up to us alone to protect them.