For Kenneth E. Mahar, an award-winning photographer and active member of several local arts associations, photography is as much a lifestyle as it is an artistic practice. The backyard of his home in El Dorado Hills is a kind of open-air photography studio: sculptures, topiary, and even a bench and handrail transplanted from Golden Gate Park form a series of photogenic scenes. The French doors opening to the backyard frame a vista of rolling hills; next to the framed prints hanging throughout his house, the picturesque view seems to hang on the wall like one more photograph. As we talk, he often interrupts himself to show me pictures, communicating through a thousand words’ worth of images. “When I look at something, I’m always composing an image,” he explains. “How would I capture this if I had my camera? That’s always in the back of my mind.” 

Although he sees the world as if through the lens of a camera, he didn’t pick up photography until later in life. Born in San Francisco, Ken made his living for 40 years as a painter—the commercial kind, although there was plenty of artistry in his restorations of architecturally beautiful buildings like churches, which he now loves to photograph. In 2008, while he was living in San Mateo, he joined a ski club in El Dorado County, where he met his wife, Jessica, in 2010. In 2014, they moved into their home in El Dorado Hills. Ken has fully embraced his new community: he has served as the President of the El Dorado Hills Arts Association (EDHAA), where he is now a Board Member, and is active in the Chamber of Commerce, the Folsom Arts Association, the Placerville Arts Association, and several other charitable organizations in the area. “Being involved in the community is really important to me,” Ken explains. 

Ken discovered both his love and his knack for photography during a trip to Kenya in 2009, where he received encouragement from an unlikely source: Barack Obama’s grandmother, “Mama” Sarah Onyango Obama. In the course of the day he spent in her village, Ken showed Mama Sarah some of the pictures he had taken. She told him he should show them to the world. Ken, returning home a dedicated photographer, had 26 of those pictures enlarged, framed, and exhibited. 

As a photographer, Ken’s favored subjects are nature, wildlife, architecture, and geology. 

“I just love formations,” he says. “All the different variables in nature, the structures and sequences—you always see something a little different.” His frequent trips to far-flung locales like Africa, Europe, New Zealand, and even Antarctica make for spectacular pictures, but he doesn’t need to travel the world to find and photograph whole worlds of complexity. “I do macrophotography right here in my backyard,” he says. 

Ken can find inspiration everywhere—even in unnerving encounters with the animals he loves to photograph. In Grand Teton National Park, a moose came so close to him that his telephoto lens could no longer focus on it. Backed up against a body of water, looking it square in its eyes, Ken could do nothing but wait for it to leave. “What was I to do? I can’t jump in the water—he’s better in the water than I am,” he laughs. “I love animals too much to fear them, although I probably should.” 

Photography enhances Ken’s experience of everything he loves, from travel and the outdoors to his daily life in El Dorado Hills. “Photography teaches you to be patient and observant,” Ken explains. “It slows me down and lets me appreciate things… Even driving with my wife, I’m always saying, ‘Stop! I need to take a picture of that.’” Through his work in the community, whether he’s hosting artists at his home for EDHAA studio tours or serving as a volunteer judge in a competition for aspiring photographers, Ken loves giving others the chance to have their own lives enhanced by art. “I think having art in the community is so important. It brings our community together.”