About

I have always been a visual artist at heart.  Since as early as I can remember, I loved making pictures.  It didn’t matter if it was a pencil, crayons, acrylics or oils, I made pictures.  It wasn’t until much later that I discovered photography, graduate school in fact.  I took my first course in photography at the University of Florida and experienced a revelation.  When I had a camera in my hands, the world changed.  It was a whole new way of seeing.  The process of photographing was so engaging that I didn’t even mind discovering I didn’t have film in the camera.  Landscapes were the best.  First, you got to be in a great setting and second, you got to take pictures.  What could be better?

After graduate school I moved to Portland, Oregon.  That was practically home since I had grown up next door on the rugged north coast of Washington.  It turns out that Oregon is a great place for landscape photography; lots of mountains, an epic coastline, high deserts, lush valleys, and one of the nation’s largest rivers cutting through a mountain range.  As my academic career allowed, I honed my skills on the nearby landscapes.  Now that I have retired from the university, I devote my time to travel and photography  

What I like best are those fleeting moments in time when nature creates a special combination of sights, sounds and smells that delight the senses and brings joy to the heart.  Those are the moments that I try to capture in my photography using light and composition to express the mood of that moment.  Those moments don’t come often enough but when they do, it is a treat to simply be there.  To be able to take a decent photograph of it, that’s really special.

I own many cameras but I primarily use Canon digital cameras for my work.  I process the images in Photoshop, a computer program that acts as a digital darkroom.  As my mentor told me, taking the picture is only the beginning.  Darkroom work, whether in the darkroom or on the computer, is crucial in creating the finished image.  I print my works with an Epson 7600 inkjet printer using Epson archival inks and paper.