Searching for light

Change is the only constant, and in change I have found some of the most significant aspects of life. This realization has profoundly shaped the nature of my work. Of all the physical things in this world, I find light the most transitory and amazing media of all.

My landscape work celebrates the constant state of change in nature, in life and in light. I seek out subject matter and moments of time that revel themselves as peak transition points, visual portals in time. At these brief moments, nature seems improbably balanced between what was and what will become, revealing and reminding us of the transitional nature of our world.

Light is the energy which illuminates our world and allows the visual component of our life experience. With careful observation, one sees that the quality of light around us is under constant transition, affecting our emotional connection to our world. I search for those moments which reveal a particular emotion in the landscape I’m photographing, providing contrast, texture and color to the image.

People ask if I alter my colors in the computer. There is an inherent loss of contrast, tonal range and color in the visual perception-to-film process, and even more loss in the film-to-print transition. I attempt to replace that loss by selectively enhancing the color, contrast and tonal values in the computer to approximate the visual and emotional experience of the original scene. The computer allows a fine and subtle control of the image unattainable in the wet-printing photographic process. Digital printing has achieved a level of excellence which, while subtly different from the traditional photographic print, allows photographers to add new and exciting dimensions to their prints.

Many photographers today have chosen to use the camera to speak out on disturbing social issues, and have become social activists in the process. The quest for visual beauty, sensual enjoyment and emotional release that had often been the goal of artists in previous generations now seems antiquated and irrelevant to many. I am not of that persuasion. I believe that the meditative moments I illustrate have the ability to help people to pause in their daily lives and reflect on the deeper connection we all have to the natural world around us. During this moment of reflection, an opportunity for emotional centering and healing takes place, and hopefully a ripple effect provides a positive, lasting effect.

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