....It was in a rain-soaked little shanty on a mountainside in Hawaii that Ezekiel Woods first made his entrance into this world - unheralded by angels, unnoticed by God.
The year was 1970 and God was busy elsewhere.

....Life for young Ezekiel was much like that of most children. Herding wild pigs, hunting large bugs for the stewpot, and afternoons of frolic with the mongooses that swarm Hawaii's backcountry made up his days. Evenings would find him wandering home, torn and bleeding (and occasionally frothy with rabies), grinning the grin of carefree childhood.

....It was on an unseasonably cool day in 1976 that Ezekiel first became aware of a world beyond his own, of life outside the jungle. On this, a day like any other, he was chasing giant cockroaches through the woods, howling the bloodthirsty war cry of the fabled Hawaiian Hill Banshee when he came to an unfamiliar clearing in the jungle. There, in the middle of this clearing, stood a man dressed from head to toe in khaki, sporting lots of pockets which seemed to serve no real purpose. The strangest thing about this man however, were the unearthly devices he carried - black and chrome with huge, unblinking glass eyes. Dangling from straps or stuffed into sacks, these devices seemed to gather naturally about his person like moss in the trees. Ezekiel stood staring in disbelief at the strange man, and the strange man stood staring back.

....After a cautious approach, the man began to speak - quietly at first but becoming more and more animated as the full implications of the situation began to take hold in his mind. He explained that he worked for a large magazine that traveled the world unearthing Egyptian mummies, digging up lost cities in South America, and, it seemed, discovering jungle boys in the mountains of Hawaii. He was a photographer and the strange devices he carried were called cameras. With these cameras, the man could capture life and store it for later use.

....Ezekiel was fascinated. His mind reeled with the stories the man told him and the possibilities of the magical little box. The rest of the afternoon was spent with the wide-eyed Ezekiel sitting at the feet of the photographer, absorbing story after story - each becoming grand visions in his young, innocent mind.

....Later that night, by the quiet light of the fire, Ezekiel killed and ate the strange man and, carefully laying aside the camera boxes, crashed headlong into a night full of dreams, lit with wonder and amazement.

....The early morning sun found young Ezekiel, cameras strapped to his body, pacing hard toward the sea. Once on the beach, he fashioned a crude raft of driftwood and pushed off into the warm blue waters, bound for the outside world and the adventures that awaited him there.

....But the modern world was not exactly as Ezekiel had imagined it would be, and the remainder of his youth was spent wandering from town to town, dodging the police, hungry, tired and cold, relentlessly pursuing his craft.

....It was in the spring of 1999 that Ezekiel first wandered into the small village in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that would become his home. Here, in this small, Victorian-era city, Ezekiel found a peaceful foundation from which to explore the outer limits of his photographic vision.


....Ezekiel Woods has been shooting full-time since the fall of 1999. Making a living as a freelance photographer in the rural Shenandoah Valley requires a certain amount of versatility. His clients include small, local publications, colleges and universities who use his images in their cataloges and alumni magazines, fashion and advertising work, and location portraiture. He also does a fair amount of press kit work for dancers, actors, authors and musicians, CD and book covers, and most anything else that strikes his interest ...or pays the rent.

EzekielWoods@gmail.com

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