17
VieW Finders
Steve Brimm’s
Beautiful Byways
When Wilmington native Steve Brimm
was 16 when his parents had a
sailboat.
“My dad declared that we were
going to go to the Bahamas. I had this little camera; it
was actually my mother’s … 110 underwater camera, or
it was waterproof anyway, and I just couldn’t get enough
of photographing everything I saw. Thinking back, that
probably is what planted a seed in my mind about art and
photography.”
Until Brimm moved to Colorado in his mid-20s his talent
lay dormant. He’d never seen anything like the Colorado
landscape and wanted to share the images with family and
friends. Later he migrated to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
on Lake Superior. When not running sled dogs or renting
kayaks and mountain bikes, his photography evolved during
a long, fertile period of freelancing for regional magazines
and calendars. He now exhibits his work in his own gallery in
Copper Harbor.
“I had no idea that I would ever end up a photographer,”
Brimm says.
In 2009, Brimm bought Pungo, a 1982 26-foot Island
Packet, for sailing the North Carolina coast. The shoal draft
boat draws about two feet, three inches with the centerboard
up. He also zips around in an inflatable dinghy.
“I wanted to be as close to where I wanted to be and have
everything with me … With my cameras and computer and
everything, instead of being in the dinghy an hour or two to
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
Self-portrait, Beaufort, NC