>> Imagine melding an appreciation for the outdoors
not just with your free time but with your full time career.
That's the goal and journey of arborist Jeff.
>> Jeff discovered success with a chain saw but he found
inspiration through his camera lens all right here in western
Iowa's loess hills.
>> The loess hills, it's just a word that doesn't have any
meaning, nothing attached to it.
It's a beautiful place that we should know about and that we
should make an effort to preserve and if you don't know
bit, it may as well not exist.
It does it to you.
And that's my effort, to wake people up to there's something
there to care about.
>> For Jeff, the western rim of Iowa has special meaning.
It's a natural landscape, he visits and finds himself and
reconnects with nature.
Setting these photographs under a full moon with the window in
light.
A back drop he may never have discovered if it was the for his
first outdoor passion up above.
On the opposite side of the missouri river you'll find Jeff
here in the tree tops.
Climbing his way up and slicing his way back down.
>> At this time this is a big enough piece.
I want it to go this way so i'm going to notch it, back cut it
so I can have control of the fall and go right where I want
it to go.
>> This is not the loess hills but rather a small receiver
valley enclave known as the hills in northern Nebraska.
It's where Jeff has his business, arbor aesthetics.
Tree trimming and removal operation with a careful
approach and natural landscape restoration.
On an unseasonably cool summer morning, Jeff's team is clearing
unwanted trees from a private acreage opening up a natural
landscape from the multigenerational growth of
excess vegetation.
>> Sugar maples, really tall trees I never seen anywhere
around here.
It's special property.
Sort of like this place and i were meant to come together,
it's pretty neat.
>> To get to grow up here and know he would one way trim
trees.
In high school he studied everything from computer science
to chemistry.
There was something about climbing high above the tree
line that caught his attention.
>> It was this challenge, it was an adventure.
Climbing trees is fun, I mean, so you're not bored when you're
climbing a tree or swinging around or figuring out how
you're going to rig this branch over how you're totally
involved.
It beats sitting at a desk.
>> Jeff's passion lured the omaha native to an ecological
destination across the receiver in awas across the ridge line of
less soil.
>> Two years ago you couldn't see anything other than just a
wall of cedars.
There wassable any grass blowing.
>> South of the bluff volunteers spent more of a decade removing
cedar trees from the land escape.
>> The more you come here the more you discover the diversity
that's here and the beauty that's here.
It's nothing like it used to be.
The more evident it becomes, this is something which needs to
be saved.
>> The restoration efforts may have been the draw for Jeff but
he brought something more than his chain saw.
>> My best photos are taken at night.
That ability and this place came together and made for a lot of
beautiful photographs.
>> Jeff's work exudes a dream-like scene where prairie
grasses blur slightly in the breeze and the moon burns as
bright as a sun amidst a starry sky.
>> Most of my photos have been taken at night and they are
usually 15-30 seconds, sometimes three minute long, long exposure
and at night diffused light produces sort of a magical world
that doesn't really exist except for through the camera.
>> And he's found a unique spot where light pollution ironically
illuminated the land escape.
>> It unfortunately has this bungee.
It's a half mile stretch of bright lights and at night, it's
just this gorgeous lighting.
>> Taking his long exposure efforts at the next level Jeff
used his dslr for time-lapsed imagery throughout the missouri
valley rising from a nearby coal plant and towards the western
Iowa hillsides.
For Jeff it's easy to say what came first tree climbing before
the photography.
One came first and then the passion.
A place to discover wild places in their own backyard.
>> Falling in love with trees woke something up inside me.
And I began realizing that there was so much more that you don't
know it's there.
There's a lot here to explore and to discover.