David J. Stana, M. Photog., Cr. Photog., CPP
David J. Stana - Artist in Nature
Biophilic Design Artist
David is an artist, His work isn't a statement about nature — it's an invitation into it.
That invitation started in 1975, when he first set out to explore the country with a camera in hand. What began as a young man's road trip became a fifty-year devotion: eight years spent photographing every National Park in the continental United States, and decades since spent chasing the light in the coastlines, forests, deserts, and quiet corners that define this country's character.
A recent journey — 20 parks in 30 days — is the latest chapter in that same pursuit: not to document, but to reveal beauty so clearly that people feel something when they see it. If that feeling leads someone to want to protect what they're looking at, that's a welcome outcome — but it was never the point. The point is the beauty itself.
David brings four things to biophilic design that rarely come from one person.
A lifetime of looking at nature. Fifty years behind the camera, chasing what it feels like to stand somewhere wild.
An instinct for immersion, not illustration. Long before "biophilic design" had a name, David was building multi-image slide productions in the 1970s — synchronized, wide-format presentations designed to put an audience inside a place rather than simply show them a picture of it. That instinct — creating a feeling of presence, not just a view — is the same one now driving his interest in large-scale, peripheral-filling nature photography for real spaces.
A retired AVIXA-certified audiovisual systems designer's eye. David spent years professionally certified in how sound, acoustics, and light behave in built environments. He no longer works in that industry — photography is his full focus now — but that working knowledge of how people actually experience a space didn't disappear. It shows up in how he thinks about scale, sightlines, and what a room needs to feel calm rather than sterile.
A technical restlessness. His interest lies in pushing the boundaries of technology with the newest techniques and right camera equipment to create that high-resolution output. From a manageable wall display to wall-sized image that hold enough clarity and depth that a viewer's peripheral vision fills with it, and the room around them starts to disappear.
Together, these threads point toward one goal: creating imagery — and eventually, immersive environments — that help people reconnect with nature in the spaces where they live and work, especially the spaces that have none of it at all.