Bill Witt sees beauty in scenery that other people pass by every day. He travels to prairies across Iowa, snapping shots of colorful plants to find the perfect picture.

“Going out into nature has always been a source of refreshment for me and sometimes solace,” he said. “I just kind of observe, and pictures present themselves to me.”

On Saturday, the 59-year-old will present a photo slide show and read a reflective essay he wrote for his first original book, Enchanted by Prairie, at Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St.. The event will begin at 4 p.m., and Prairie Lights will donate half of the book’s sales profits to Iowa City’s Hickory Hill Park.

“Enchanted by Prairie is a beautiful book that inspires awe for our local native Iowa landscape,” said Sarah Walz, a member of Friends of Hickory Hill Park. “The natural world of Iowa is worth celebrating and saving just as much as the Amazon rain forest — though the Iowa prairie is far more depleted.”

Witt uses photos that he has taken of Iowa prairies over the course of 30 years to paint an image of how Iowa’s landscape has changed.

“I wanted to give people something to meditate on and appreciate and maybe even share some of my sense of enchantment about being on prairies,” he said.

His love of nature goes back to his time growing up in Clayton County, Iowa.

“My father loved the outdoors and the beauty of northeast Iowa,” he said. “Every so often, my father would just get a yen and say ‘Let’s take a ride,’ and we would go sometimes very deep into the countryside to places that he had known as a kid. Some of them we would find still as beautiful as he remembered them. Other times, they had been completely despoiled. I grew up with a sense of the beauty of nature and its integrity and also what happens when it has been trampled and ground up by the greed machine.”

In his late childhood, Witt said, he found an old rolling-film camera gathering dust in the attic and began teaching himself how to shoot photos. The discovery he made changed his life.

In 1973, Witt decided to join the Peace Corps, and he was sent to Kabul, Afghanistan, during a time of political uncertainty in the region. He spent most of his free time snapping shots of local people and landscapes on 24 rolls of slide film.

“I used my cameras [as a way of] discovering and learning about this completely new world, this totally new culture,” he said.

His photography eventually found its way into 1981’s The Struggle For Afghanistan, which documented the Russian invasion and the Afghan mujahideen’s resistance. His photos helped illustrate Afghanistan’s history and the character of its people.

When Witt returned to the United States, he decided to pursue a career in photojournalism, and he began working for a weekly paper where he “wrote all the stories and took all the photos” for around $100 a week. Eventually, he was able to get his work published in the New York Times, The New Republic, and The Nation.

In 1992, Witt ran for the Iowa House of Representatives and won. There, he focused on issues including “long-term health care and long-term care of the environment.” He retired from the House after serving five terms and now acts as UNI’s intellectual-property officer; he provides legal protection for inventors and helps to introduce new products.

Despite his varied career history, Witt still manages to find time for his one true joy in life.

“Photography is a language I love to speak just as much as I do English, so I’m always looking to take pictures and explore new things visually,” he said. “For me, the prairies are one of the chapels I like to worship at and are a great source for meditation.”