Artist Statement
I’ve been active in some form of photography since the late 1970s. It begun with an interest in everything involving traditional black and white – shooting and developing film, making prints in the darkroom, learning about processes and techniques and equipment. The first cameras I used were medium format, and my favorite subjects included anything outdoors – water, rocks, trees, flowers, architecture. I admired the work of Ansel Adams and other masters of the black and white medium. A few years later, I was using 35mm film cameras for some photojournalism work and I also started using color for my favorite outdoor subjects. I have always loved the high quality images afforded by medium and large format cameras, and the convenience and endless adaptability of 35mm equipment, all of which have been helped me to create a diverse body of work.
I started using digital photography techniques in 2002 when I bought my first film scanner. Before then, photography had been infrequent and very casual endeavor for about 10 years, while I was busy with a career and family life with kids. Chemical processes and their expense, inconvenience, and inability to use in short bursts of time made photography too much of a hassle, although I always enjoyed taking pictures occasionally and saving the negatives and slides for printing later. Something about the film scanner and being able to create images for printing on the computer revived my interest in creating new images, along with making use of everything I had created so far. Over the next 18 years, I took an interest in adding to my vintage “manual everything” camera equipment – restoring it all to working condition and using it to capture new images. I traveled to places near and far, photographing the great outdoors from Minnesota to North Carolina and places in between. Many color images were created using scanned film of all formats, and I also continued to engage in traditional black and white photography, including making silver gelatin prints in a darkroom.
Now to digress briefly. I have restored a large collection of medium format and 35mm cameras, and roughly 200 lenses of all kinds, over the past 18 years of so. This includes the Mamiya and Rolleiflex TLR cameras, Mamiya Press and Century Graphic “press” cameras, folding cameras from 1930 to 1955, and major brands of 35mm gear from the 1970s and 1980s. All of this vintage equipment is still very capable of creating excellent photographs which become digital images. Furthermore, using it adds to the enjoyment of photography and creating images. Combining this with digital photo technology is what I call my vintage+digital technique. I consider preserving vintage equipment a vital part of my experience with photography and art, and something that strongly influences the outcomes.
My body of work through 2020 is comprised mainly of color photographs of landscapes and nature from the upper Midwest, Appalachia, the North Carolina coast, and various other locations in North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Black and white photographs, shot on black and white film, was also taken from the same locations. One of my objectives in creating my images has been the use of vintage camera equipment to enhance the enjoyment of taking pictures, and to preserve and enjoy some photographic history. My aim in putting my work out into the world is to share the magnificence of the natural environment with others and give some purpose to something that has given me great enjoyment since I was a kid.
Toward the end of 2020, I decided it was time to do a majority of my new work using digital cameras and limit the use of film. It became apparent to me that small format digital capture had become economical, efficient, and yet technically superior to medium and large format film photography. Since excellence in the quality of my images is important, I had to choose that path. However, I will continue to use vintage lenses primarily, along with both digital and film capture, to continue my vintage+digital approach. I always said I would “go digital” when it was feasible to use my large collection of vintage lenses, and mirrorless digital cameras make that both possible and affordable. I can’t wait to see what can be accomplished in the next few years!
Favorite Locations and Subjects
My favorite area in the entire world is the Lake Superior region in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Although this region includes some urban areas, most of it is a pristine and widely varied landscape around the world’s largest body of fresh water. I have spent much time there, especially Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and many of the images on the website are from there – including waterfalls, forests, rugged shoreline, dunes, sandy beaches. I travel there at least once per year.
I lived and worked in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for 17 years, and that’s where my photographic work really took off in the early 2000s. Milwaukee and Chicago both have an abundance of interesting historic and contemporary architecture. The small towns around Wisconsin also have an abundance of historic buildings and Americana. These are also favorite subjects, although I haven’t presented much work to reflect that. I need to mine my negatives and slides for more material to present.
I moved to North Carolina in 2010 for a change of weather, scenery, and out of concern for the future of the Midwest economy. Fortunately, there is an abundance of unique and scenic places there, including the Atlantic coast, the Appalachian Mountains, and many places in between. Although I live in the Raleigh-Durham area – a metro with over 2 million people – I don’t have to go far to get into the woods and find water, rocks, lakes, and rivers. I want to get to more places in the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia over the next few years. Some of my recent trips were Linville Gorge in North Carolina and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
One thing the upper Midwest and North Carolina have in common is spectacular fall colors in October and November every year. This is another of my favorite subjects, mainly because I don’t have to travel far to photograph the scenery, and because each fall season is different from previous ones. Even though I have photographed this season extensively, I just can’t help myself every year to get out and take more pictures.
Favorite Photography Tools
As mentioned earlier, my favorite cameras include a large collection of vintage large, medium, and 35mm small format equipment. Fortunately, most of the vintage 35mm camera lenses can be used on current mirrorless digital cameras – a recent addition to my photo tools. My all-time favorite tool is the 6×9 cm medium format camera. I have 3 different kinds, including Mamiya, Graflex, and a few folding cameras from the 1940s. Using these with color negative film yields a scanned digital image with about 36 good megapixels – not bad for 50 to 70 year-old vintage equipment.
In the coming years, I’ll be using compact digital cameras much more, including some “modern” wide angle lenses, to facilitate taking a large volume of new pictures. I believe this will help me improve the quality of my images in terms of being able to create larger prints. Also, I think the digital medium has improved so much in the past few years that it eliminates many technical limitations that previously inhibited my ability to faithfully capture landscapes and nature as I see them. In other words, I think my artistic expression will be enhanced. This all became obvious to me when I started using my iPhone X camera with 26mm equivalent lens and raw image capture in 2020. I was so impressed that I later acquired a few Sony cameras. Yay for compact mirrorless affordable and fun digital cameras!
Finally, there are many instances when photo outings involve too much equipment and complexity, and these actually inhibit the creative process. Thus, going out with only one camera and lens can actually yield some of the best work possible. The old folding cameras of the 1930-1955 period, or the all-time classic Rolleiflex TLR, had just one very good lens attached. These cameras create outstanding images to this day – including many on this website. For all of those reasons, I occasionally go out with only one camera and lens.
