Randall Murphree
AFA Journal editor
July 2006 – For centuries, America’s beauty has been captured by photographers both professional and amateur, yielding images both grand and mundane. Now, world-renowned photographer Ken Duncan has sent the excellence meter shooting right off the scale. It is hard to imagine a collection more breathtaking than Duncan’s America Wide: In God We Trust, a collection of his stunning panographs of all 50 states.
Panograph is a term Duncan trademarked to denote his sweeping panoramic images, which mirror the majesty of nature and the minutiae of daily life. More than 100 panographs fill America Wide. If these incredible visuals are the main course, Duncan’s intriguing stories and spiritual insights are dessert.
He recounts setting up on one occasion among a host of others to photograph mountain wildflowers in Yankee Boy Basin, Colorado. One photographer constantly got in the way, selfishly pursuing his goal with no consideration for others. Duncan finally left the site angry but felt led to return late that afternoon.
“The weather had turned really cloudy and chased away all the other photographers,” he writes. “After I had set up, it began to rain. There I sat [for two hours] under a huge multi-colored umbrella looking very obviously like an idiot.” Eventually, however, soon after he prayed, the clouds parted, the sun broke through and a rainbow appeared.
“It was far more spectacular than I had dared to imagine,” Duncan said, “and I was there alone to capture the glorious spectacle on film.”
Furthermore, Duncan’s stories emphasize spiritual principles, e.g. obedience to God’s direction, patience and persistence, the value of prayer.
He says the people of Australia have a concept they call “walk-awhile.” If you want to know a place or a person, walk-awhile in that place or with that person. That’s what he did in America Wide; he walked awhile in America’s footsteps, traveling 80,000 miles over a three-year period to ferret out and photograph some of our nation’s most awe-inspiring sites.
In his introduction, he writes of the U.S., “No nation has been granted a more beautiful place to call home. I believe God has blessed this country so that it may be a beacon to others by upholding the belief that liberty, faith, hope and unity can conquer any adversity.” 
A journey to faith By Ken Duncan
Editor’s note: Randall Murphree interviewed Ken Duncan for AgapePress in conjunction with his recently released book, Where Jesus Walked. The following account is excerpted from that interview.
I was bought up by awesome Christian parents who lived by what they preached and never stopped praying for me. In the end I still had to find my own way and I rebelled. I felt Christianity was too easy and that life had to be more difficult than just letting Jesus into your life. So, I got involved in all sorts of things trying to find a meaning to life. I got into philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, the Aboriginal Dreamtime (worship of creation), immoral living and all sorts of weird things.
Then I met a Christian who really knew the Bible and lived the Christian life. He would counter all my attacks with the Word of God and didn’t judge me; he just loved me and fed me on the Word. Then I had a really bad experience in Dreamtime Mythology when I was confronted with demonic powers that showed me that I was not in control of them but that they where in control of me. I called out to God and He miraculously helped me deal with that issue.
I was a hard-liner who had to hit many brick walls before I gave in to Jesus. Another time, after being injured in a fall, I got gangrene in my foot. It looked bad and I was going to lose at least the top part of my foot. One night when the pain seemed too much, I yelled out to Jesus and said, “If you are real and help me out of this situation, then I will follow you for the rest of my life.” It was miraculous, as the gangrene retreated and all I lost was the top of my big toe. After this you would think I would give in but no, I broke my promises to Jesus and off I went again doing my own thing.
After that last experience, I went to Tasmania in the winter time and got hypothermia which really affected my nervous system. I got so cold physically and so irrational in my thinking that I just wanted to walk out into the wilderness. If I had done that, I would have died. God broke through my blurry mind and I called out to Him this simple prayer, “God, help me.” He did, and a light hit me in my core and radiated out into the extremities of my body warming me to the point where I was able to sleep and recover from the cold.
Some weeks after this event, I found myself crying, having developed severe anxiety in the form of agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. That’s not a good condition for a landscape photographer! At this point I knew I had had enough of trying to work out the meaning of life on my own. I went to a church and asked Jesus into my life. I finally found what I had always been looking for – peace.
