Going Where It's Wild and Different

These are adventurers, Dan Mead and Sally Eagle. The post-and-beam house they built in Great Barrington may be cozy and filled with memorable and pretty things, but they leave it regularly for tough treks to places like Myanmar, once called Burma, New Zealand, Nepal, Namibia, the Galapagos Islands. And, soon, Antarctica.

When they go they travel light, except for their digital cameras.

The two, trading cameras back and forth and so not always knowing who shot what, have photographed a lot of landscapes on these junkets, some wildlife, occasionally people, but mostly land and water. About 25 of their most recent images will be on exhibit at Salisbury School’s Tremaine Gallery, with a reception for the artists April 5 from 5 to 7 p.m.

Now neither Mead nor Eagle grew up in wild surroundings. Eagle lived with her parents and five siblings in a brownstone on East 64th Street in Manhattan where she considering being Joan of Arc when she grew up.

Instead, she earned an MBA, and in time she became Berkshire Taconic Foundation’s first executive director.

Mead grew up in Washington D.C. and majored in

broadcast communications and film at Stamford. Shortly after graduation they married and spent their honeymoon backpacking in icy places.

   Later, vacationing from work as a teacher and administrator at Salisbury School, Mead traveled far with Eagle, collecting thousands of photo images.

   “We threw out everything that was out of focus,â€� Mead says. Which left them with maybe 60,000 images.

   Now Mead and Eagle are planning a November trip to Antarctica when it’s summer there with temperatures in the  30s and 40s and  where the landscape features no polar bears at all but a lot of penguins.

“Images of Our World,�

photographs by Dan Mead and Sally Eagle, including Mead’s prizewinning shot of ostriches climbing a dune in the Sahara, runs at the Salisbury School’s Tremaine Gallery through April 29. Call 860-435-5700 for information.

           — Marsden Epworth