About

Artist Statement

My still photography work is primarily about going beyond the literal. Beautiful but literal images hold my attention for only so long. So I look for the intangible, the ethereal, and the unknowable in both my landscape and macro work.
“Less prose, more poetry” as the great color photographer, Ernst Haas put it so well. I am also fascinated by transition points, or brief moments in time where there is a metamorphosis between one state and another. A doorway or window is an obvious transition point, linking different rooms or connecting the inside world with the outside world.

Another transition point occurs when we wake from sleeping. Like a trapeze artist letting go of one bar and reaching for another, we exist briefly in that elusive place between the dream world and the conscious world. We pass through this space constantly but can’t linger there. I’m drawn to that place and seek beauty there.

Unlike my macro work in the studio with lights, I photograph most landscapes at dusk and dawn, which are my favorite transition points and are at the heart of my landscape work. So I tend to do most of that work at dusk and twilight, when the light has a certain balanced and beautiful, seductive quality. Of course low light requires a longer exposure time, so any moving objects in the frame become blurred and streaked. Real time events that would normally be “frozen” by a fast shutter are slowed down, spread out and smeared like oil paint – like in a dream. I’m sure my years as a motion picture cameraman has a something to do with my frequent use of long exposures in my landscape work, but mostly I use it as a tool to add more poetry.