Artist's Statement
My Passion
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I am a lifelong outdoors person who has led a blessed life hiking, biking, running, skiing, backpacking, cycling, golfing, fly fishing, traveling, etc. Like most kids, I loved outdoor sports. In winter I played pond hockey and learned to ski. In summer I played pickup baseball and football. I attended summer camps for several years and there participated in many outdoor activities. As a teenager I was a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club. With the club I did both summer and winter backpacking trips. I have continued spending time in the mountains and other wonderful outdoor spaces ever since. Examples include numerous Sierra Nevada backpack trips including the John Muir Trail and doing the long-distance hiking route GR-5 in the French Alps. As a fly fisherman I have spent many pleasurable hours on trout streams, including Hat Creek in California, Henry’s Fork of the Snake in Idaho, and the Au Sable in Michigan. In addition, my profession as a university professor has allowed me to travel extensively including to Europe, South America, Japan, China, Korea, and Australia. In some of these places I have hiked or cycled. In all I have visited the great cultural and natural sights. I feel the draw of the natural world strongly, and it is this that mainly inspires my photography.
Technique
Given my natural interests, I have mostly focused on landscape photography. I have always admired the great artists who came before me such as Ansel Adams, David Muench and Galen Rowel. Each used different techniques, and each gave expression to my own feelings about the western landscape. All three artists shot film, and often used large format cameras, although Galen Rowel made many great shots using hand-held 35mm cameras, sometimes in extreme conditions.
However, I don’t miss an opportunity to shoot other types of images such as portraits, street photography, flowers, birds and animals and outdoor display art such as sculpture and murals.
Today, digital cameras allow one great latitude in generating images. One can shoot both color and black and white, as well as other unusual uses of light like infrared or UV imaging. With the addition of post processing software like Photoshop, one can achieve quite creative outcomes. I had done some 35mm film photography when younger but got tired of carrying a big camera and wasting lots of film. As I approached retirement, I realized the great benefits of digital. Today I shoot a Sony Alpha 7iii full frame, Nikon D7100 C-sensor, and a Sony RX100 point and shoot. I have also found that my iPhone 12 Pro Max does a remarkable job, especially in situations such as street photography. I use Adobe Lightroom to organize my images and do preliminary processing, and Photoshop for more extensive processing. For personal use and for friends I do my own printing on a Canon Pro-300 using archival pigment-based ink.
About Me
I was born in Pasadena, California in 1943. We moved to Arlington Massachusetts when I was three and I lived there until after I graduated from high school. All my dad’s family and some of my mom’s, still lived in California, so every other year or so we drove west. Along the way we visited national parks, historical sites, and other points of interest. I still remember mom reading from AAA travel guides as we drove along. By the time we stopped family trips, I had been in all but four states. Years later I got to Alaska, Hawaii and North and South Carolina to complete the sweep.
I have often joked that I graduated from high school because my dad was chairman of the local school board. Not quite true, but close. After high school I took a somewhat uneven path to becoming educated. This included a short time in the military, two colleges, and several years working as a sports and racing car mechanic. Ultimately, to my parent’s great relief, I finally attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for my BS and MS degrees in engineering. After college I moved to California where I worked for an aerospace firm in Sacramento for a year, before completing a PhD at Stanford. I then was on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley from 1975 to 1988 when I moved to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I taught for another thirty-two years. And following that, I spent two plus years working for the National Science Foundation. I finally retired at the end of January of 2023. Today I spend summers in Boulder, Colorado close to the Rocky Mountains, and winters in Tucson, Arizona in the Sonoran Desert.
Training
I am self-taught as an artist. I have read extensively and viewed the visual work of many artists here and abroad in books, galleries, websites, and museums. In Tucson we have The Center for Creative Photography, a wonderful resource for exploring the work of many artists. To improve my own work, I belong to two photo clubs and have my work critiqued regularly.
Current Goals
My continuing goal is to improve my techniques, both in composition and post processing. As to subjects, I will continue to explore mountain and desert vistas, along with those small but meaningful scenes one finds everywhere. Recently I have been photographing Tucson’s and Nogales’ rich mural scene, as well as neighborhood scenes. And I never pass up an interesting door.