About Me
My name is Jason Clemmons and I live in the north Georgia mountains with my beautiful wife Jesica. We have 3 kids, who are not kids anymore! They all have flown the coop. Right now we have a lot of irons in the fire. We own Sunrise Grocery, Sunrise Wick and Wash, and Sunrise on Blue Ridge. I’m also a landscape photographer in the heart of one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Appalachian Mountains!
My interest in photography started at a pretty young age. Before I moved to north Georgia I lived in an area called Anna Maria Island. It's also very pretty, but I have mountains in my blood now! My parents and I visited a campground in Blairsville called Trackrock Campground. I have a vivid memory of taking a photo of our camping spot with the lake and mountains in the background. I showed my mother and I remember her making a big deal about it. It made an impact because I thought it was actually good, but my mom was probably just being sweet! Years went by and the seed was left dormant inside of me.
Around 2012 or so I started to grow the Sunrise Grocery social media account. I noticed if I posted a jar of Peach Preserves braggin' about how good it was it; it would get just a few likes with little growth. If I posted a sunrise or a Vogel photo it would get tons of shares and all kinds of people were joining our page. So the seed had started to sprout!
In 2014 I met this amazing girl who is now my bride! After our wedding we planned our dream trip! We went to the amazing Glacier National Park in Montana. I can't put into words just how pretty it was! Before the trip, I knew I had to own a camera to capture our experiences! That is where that seed exploded out the top of my head! I had no idea what I was doing with the camera. The one thing that came through in my images were fairly strong compositions. So, the next step was to understand how to manipulate the camera to produce high quality images.
I'm very lucky in one sense because I had a very supportive base with Sunrise Grocery! The people of Sunrise really made my photography career happen. I was having requests for my photos so I was selling a few small prints here and there.
My first break came when the kind folks at Mountain Top furniture set me up with a home decor company out of Texas. Brad from Mountain Top wanted some of my images, but he really liked the framing he was getting so he set us up. So I had images from Georgia to Virginia!
In 2018, I had an opportunity to have an image in the largest airport in the world! Atlanta Hartsfield Airport was restoring their chapels. Mr. Neely was the Chaplin at the time and his wife followed me on social media. She would show him my work and they both enjoyed it. They reached out to me and after some time I was able to have several images in the domestic Chapel and they installed a huge mural in the international concourse of "Mirror, Mirror". "Mirror, Mirror" is a photo of the iconic Vogel State in full autumn color. The mural is a massive 24ft x 8ft and it looks amazing!
Around 2019 or so I started up a friendship with another amazing photographer, Chris Greer! We started out just meeting up to explore and photograph together. We started Appalachian Apertures and did a few Youtube videos to show off just how beautiful the Appalachian mountains are!! After one of our outings Chris had an idea to approach Georgia's PBS affiliate to produce a TV show about 2 photographers that explore Georgia, meet experts about the area, and expose the audience to some amazing local music. That's where View Finders was born. After one season the show was nominated for Emmy! It was a short lived project for me, but a very rewarding one. I had a pretty major knee surgery and also opened up a new business, Sunrise on Blue Ridge so time was limited. Chris is a very talented photographer and will do good things with the project!
My most recent accomplishment is I'm the resident featured artist at the highly respected art gallery in Blue Ridge, GA. My work will displayed March 5th, 2024 through April 27th, 2024.
Currently I have galleries located at Sunrise Grocery and Sunrise on Blue Ridge showcasing my work. You can also see my work at the famous and always fun Buc-ee's!!
When you read this it obvious that this wouldn't be possible without all of you! I can't thank you enough for all the support over the years. Many of you have spent your hard earned money on my art to display in your homes! It's a huge honor and something I'm always conscious of!
