For David Simpson, it may have all started at his grandmother’s house on Bear Creek.
     “I loved going there,” he recalled. “I guess I’ve always been drawn to the water.”
     He didn't know it then, but that fascination, combined with an artistic bent undiscovered until adulthood, would lead him to undertake a labor of love that eventually would become a book.
    Last fall, Simpson published a coffee-table collection of photographs showcasing the lake, bridges, trees, rock formations and animal life of Loch Raven Reservoir with the self-explanatory title Loch Raven.

 “Almost by accident”
     Growing up on Wise Avenue – until he was in the fifth grade, his father worked at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point plant – Simpson had no inkling that he would become a photographer.
    In fact, after graduating from Parkville High School, he considered military service to be his best option – “I was a terrible student, and I never thought I’d ever go to college” – so he joined the U.S. Army.
     “That was when I first picked up a camera in any serious way,” he remembered, “and after I got out, I applied to [Maryland Institute College of Art]. My brother had started at MICA, and I just sort of followed in his footsteps.”  
     That seemingly vague start led to a career as a commercial photographer and later to directing television ads. Most notably, he helmed a memorable Kaiser Permanente spot that highlighted the “local color” of Baltimore. That advertisement and others Simpson has directed can be viewed on his film production Web site,
filmheadproductions.com.
    While his advertising work led to near-constant nationwide travel, Simpson stayed true to his Baltimore County roots, eventually settling in Monkton. It is there, in 2006, that the story of Loch Raven’s birth begins.
    “I was doing all of this filmmaking for clients,” he said, “and even though I do enjoy it, it has a way of getting boring. I was driving over the Dulaney Valley Road bridge [over Loch Raven]. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. So I started taking photos. The first year, I was doing it passively, when the opportunity arose. The second year, I started bringing a camera all the time.”
    A quest to find other photos of the reservoir yielded a shocking result.
    “I Googled ‘Loch Raven’ and got exactly two photos, both by [A. Aubrey] Bodine for the Baltimore Sun back in the ’50s, and both in black and white. That's it. After over a century of [Loch Raven’s] existence, that’s all there was.
    “I just couldn’t believe it. The place has been around for so long, and no one had ever given it the artistic treatment it deserved.”
    Simpson resolved to remedy that, and his photographs, taken first for his own pleasure, would become the basis for his first book, which he calls a “love letter” to Loch Raven.

“A book that would last”
    For two years, Simpson took shots of the reservoir, but even after more than 8,000 snaps of the shutter, he still didn’t have everything he wanted.
    “I was still looking for snow,” he explained. “It hadn’t snowed through two winters, and the place is so different when there’s snow on the ground; I didn’t think my work was complete until I had some of that. Some of the snow things are just beautiful.”
    Last winter provided the snow Simpson sought, and he began to commit himself to producing a book of his photos.
    “What finally gave me the courage to do the book was when St. Joseph [Medical Center, in Towson,] bought several of the photographs,” he said. “Then I got with a designer named Carolyn Mc-George, who I had worked with in Richmond on commercial projects.”
    He credits McGeorge with finding patterns and interrelationships among his photos that set the tone for the layout of the finished product.
    Her contribution to the book often juxtaposes multiple views of the same subject, showing a man standing at a bridge rail under a bright blue sky above a shot of the same rail with birds perched against the orange-pink sunrise, or presenting adjacent views of a particular spot in spring, summer, fall and winter.
    “I wasn’t even thinking specifically about that,” he noted. “For me, it was just a little bit of going back to the same well.
    Stylistically, the 100-photo collection ranges from the straightforward representational beauty of a National Geographic image to impressionistic color studies of sun-dappled water and the turning of autumn leaves, even giving a few nearly abstract presentations of natural geometry.
    One of Simpson’s favorite shots – and, it seems, one of the most popular in poster form – shows a stately heron atop a piling, seemingly keeping watch over the lake and its denizens.
    That photo is one of several available in poster form on Simpson’s Web site for the book, lochravenphotography.com, as well as at Amazon.com.
    The $45 book has sold well enough that Simpson is planning a second printing to augment his initial supply of 2,000 copies.
    “I wanted to do a book that would last,” he said, “and a lot of people have told me that this book will be in their family forever. It just went off the shelves.
    “People have personal feelings about Loch Raven. Everybody has a story about the place, a memory,” he said. “I was very surprised by the way people reacted to the book. They really like the idea of someone showing a personal point of view about the place.”
“Please stay away”
    A sense of place is one attribute that seems to permeate Simpson’s work. As the television commercials viewable on the Filmhead Productions Web site attest, he has a knack for capturing the things that make a place unique.
    “That’s what I’m known for,” he said. “I can give a sense of place. I usually do that by using people, but I was able to do it here without people.”
    Almost without people, that is. Humans do occasionally appear in the photos, but they are more like elements of the landscape; they are small and shadowy, and their faces are never seen.
    “I wanted a soothing book, a Zen-type thing that would quiet you down,” he said. I don’t think enough has been said about the good feeling we get from that manmade body of water. With the beauty and the quiet, it’s like a therapy area.”
    He hopes it stays that way. “This place is a secret. It’s like, ‘Don’t tell anybody’ – not that I’m doing a very good job of it by publishing a book!”
    With tongue in cheek, he even closes the brief preface to the book with the words “please stay away.”
    “I really did this for locals,” he said. “I don’t expect it to reach much farther than that.”

“A sense of art”
    It seems likely, however, that Simpson’s foray into art photography will reach as far as another book.
    “I’m still doing commercial work, of course. I love doing film; it’s something I do well,” he said. “But I also don’t want to give up art.
    “In advertising, we need more of  an art concept. There’s so much clutter and so much technology in it. I hope there’s coming to be a sense of art, but at least I can find it in my photography. I know I’m a creative guy, and the question becomes not why I do this but why I don’t do it.”

•    David Simpson will sign copies of his book Loch Raven at the Shallow Creek Bookstore and Cafe, 7216 North Point Road, on Saturday, Jan. 9, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The book and posters of Simpson’s work are available at Amazon.com and lochravenphotography.com. See this month’s issue of What’s Happening for a review of the book.