About the Photographer

 I have been a photographer  nearly my entire life.  I started with black and white photography, and from a young age, I spent many late nights into early mornings developing my own negatives, making contact sheets, and black & white enlargements.  

I learned to crop my photos and dodge and burn to create different effects.  Moving into color photography, Kodachrome and Fuji film were mainstays, and while I reluctantly left film to join the digital age, the sophistication of digital photography and Photoshop have just enhanced everything I've learned over the years. Film or digital, I have always loved capturing the world around me and sharing it with others.
 

Sure, those early darkroom techniques to develop b&w’s were crude compared to what can now so readily be created using the “desktop darkroom” at our fingertips, but capturing that special light or a unique image has always been my form of art.  Now, the excitement of watching the latent image magically appear before your eyes in the eerie red glow of the darkroom “safe light” has been replaced by watching images appear on my computer screen.

 

 My goal has always been to capture that "perfect image", that one moment with color (or the lack of it) dynamically impacting the scene, that special angle of view that depicts and translates my thoughts to the viewer.  Of course, knowing the tools of this art allow me to capture that moment:  what lens, what aperture, what shutter speed, and what the resulting effect and impact will be.
 

I am a geologist by profession, but I always carried a camera with me when I went to work in the field.  I didn't find memorable photographs every time, but without my camera, I would never have been able to capture the special extras I frequently found.  To this day, I take along my camera nearly everywhere I go….just in case.
 

And, of course, all those vacations.  Sure, I have probably seen half of my vacation through the lens of my camera, but nothing can quite replace the excitement I feel when I am finally able to see in print what I saw at some remote location.