I am an artist who uses a camera and digital workflow to express my artistic vision about natural and urban landscapes.

I began photographing in my teens. I was fortunate enough to travel and experience a lot of different venues and natural scenes. I mark this as the beginning of my love for photography. I was enamored with being able to capture the beauty contained within a moment of a sunset or play of light across a landscape.

I photographed incessantly at this early time, whatever was before my lens. My work was all over the place and undisciplined. But I was learning to compose and subconsciously learning what elements I liked to see in a photograph. And I remember thinking, even at this young age, that photography was a fantastic medium for self-expression.

Life moved on. About this time I decided I wanted to write for a living. I then went onto get a degree in journalism and political science. I had won some awards in college for my photography. However any idea of photography as art form had languished by this time. I used my photography skills as an adjunct to my writing. It was Documentation and photojournalism, which helped me to sell my stories.

I remember being skeptical at the beginning of the digital photography age. I liked using film; I was resistive to using a digital camera format for a long time.

But all that changed when I attended my first workshop with Alain and Natalie Briot (https://www.alainbriot.com/Workshop-home.html) I really didn’t understand much of what was being said about digital photography and Photoshop at the workshop. But I was intrigued enough to continue with them.

It’s been over a decade since I have started that journey. I have always had a love of art and culture; attending museums and opening of exhibits whenever I could. What has come of tha love of art and photography is a second career as an artist and writer. And through Alain and Natalie’s tutelage I have been able to understand, broaden and express my love photography as an art form.

What I am trying to express when I do my art is to show my deep-seated passion about the joy of existence, an appreciation of the beauty before my lens, in whatever shape that takes.

When I look through a camera’s viewfinder the first thing which mentally registers with me are lines and shapes in the scene. I may choose to leave these elements well-defined or make them soft and blurry. It depends on a memory of how I was feeling in the moment or what resonated with me during post-processing.

The colors I use are the words of my artwork. Colors fill in the lines and shapes of my photo and impart a dimension of emotional context. Sometimes the colors which fill my photos are bright explosions of happiness, other times it’s a quieter palette of reflection and solitude. Texture is the wildcard in my art, an unexpected element which adds punch. It can define a photo overall and give greater emphasis to key parts I want to highlight.

This dance of capturing an image, processing it on a computer and printing has one goal, a fine art print. I want to share my take on the beauty of nature with those who look at my work.