For Scott, the secret in how he captures that magical quality of light in his photos is neither secret nor wizardly, but a realistic combination of a photographer’s eye, field experience and patience.

A shot of a waterfall in a North Carolina forest may seem to freeze time, but it took Scott two hours to wait until a shaft of sunlight cast enough light on a dark patch of moss. And the sunbeam plummeting past the striated, sinuous rock walls of an Arizona slot canyon took six previous visits, each with a narrow window of several minutes of shooting time, before Scott found the light he wanted in the right place.

“You can’t control the light or the situation and it’s all about the light,” he explained. Given limited access to many of the views and vistas he photographed, necessitating long hikes, scrambles up and down rock walls, wading in cold creeks or braving weather casual tourists try to avoid, Scott tried to make sure he got things right whenever he pressed the shutter on his cameras. “I think it’s a hell of a responsibility. I try to be a good custodian,” he said.

Scott took most of the 24 photographs in “Alchemy of Light,” currently on display at downtown art space Cultivate 7twelve, over about four years. The oversized images, 32-by-48 inches and larger, printed on metal, represent travels the 71-year-old photographer and his wife Patricia made across the United States.

Photography and electronics have been lifelong passions for Scott, a 1975 Baylor University graduate, but electronics and engineering, primarily in the form of a high-tech security company he founded in 1989, paid the bills for Scott and his family for much of his career. He stepped away from much of the day-to-day of his company in 2020 and has shifted his time and interest back to photography, with the results channeled through his business, Steve Scott Photography.

“Alchemy of Light,” exhibited at the Mayborn Museum in 2020, reveals some of Scott’s favorite outdoor spots: waterfalls like Dry Falls and Estatoe in western North Carolina; other waterfalls feeding the Columbia River in Oregon; slot canyons on Navajo tribal lands near Page, Arizona and Lake Powell; Cathedral Rock, Arizona; The Narrows in Zion National Park; a snow-blanketed Yellowstone National Park; a moonrise over Monterey Bay; Cannon Beach in Oregon (seen in the movie “The Goonies”); and the comet Neowise, shot from his property near the North Bosque River.

The exhibit also features a few photos of wine glasses, part of his commercial work and also his explorations of light reflected and refracted by glass and liquid.

The natural colors in his photos aren’t amplified or exaggerated. Neither does he rely on high dynamic range, a technique that uses multiple exposures to increase the detail in a photograph. “A photography professor once told me, and I’ve never forgot it, to ‘get it in the camera — you won’t get it in the darkroom,'” Scott chuckled.

That said, he points to two photographs in the exhibit that, well, weren’t all in the camera. A shot of the Milky Way above a natural stone arch in Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas was added as was the oversized full moon above Monterey Bay, which created a more visually striking effect than the smaller full moon that had illuminated the water, he said.

A QR code with each photograph’s gallery label leads to the back story or explanation of the photo, while images that Patricia shot of her husband at work in the field show the other side of the camera in a “Behind the Images” display in the exhibit. More photos by Scott, including ones shot on tours of England and Scotland, are on his website at https://www.scott.gallery.

“Alchemy Of Light” will run through the end of February at Cultivate 7twelve.