#1 Please introduce yourself

My name is David Johndrow and I’m a fine art photographer living in Austin, Texas.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?

I was studying film at the University of Texas and I took a darkroom class. The first roll I ever shot, I developed and printed myself and I’ve been hooked ever since. I also worked for many years printing other people’s work. The sheer volume of work I did gave me a lot of experience honing my skills as a printer and also helped to train my eye to see what makes strong images. I’ve been a photographer now for almost 30 years.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?

I’ve always made art and I still love to paint. I used to do a lot of drawing, but photography seemed so immediate and efficient that the camera replaced my sketchpad.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?

I’m inspired by all forms of art but one of my greatest influences from early in my career is Irving Penn. I love how elegant and graphically strong his images are and I love his high-contrast printing style. Whether he is shooting fashion or found objects, color or black and white, he makes everything look transcendently graceful.

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph?

I don’t need much preparation as my equipment is very simple. I prefer simple cameras without a lot of bells and whistles. Too many controls can get in the way of visualization. Once I find a film/ developer combination I like,  I tend to stick to it. I usually shoot in natural light and although I sometimes use a tripod, most of my shots are hand-held. I like the immediacy of working out in nature capturing subjects in their element.

#6 What fascinates you in objects that you shoot?

I like to shoot ordinary things and make them look beautiful. Whatever I’m shooting, I try to simplify the visual information so that I can reveal something essential about the subject. When I shoot macro photographs I feel like I’m entering another world where I can explore subtle details that are normally missed by the naked eye. I become totally engrossed in what I’m seeing through the viewfinder.

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#1 Please introduce yourself

Hi, my name is Marc Schmidtmayer. I’m a 43 year old photographer living in scherpenheuvel-Zichem, Belgium. My family consists further of my wife, my daughter (of 10 years old) and our dog.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?

Well, it should be almost 20 years ago that I bought my first SLR. I even read a book about aperture and shutter speed. But nothing ‘happened’ and my photography was limited to the yearly holidays. The real ‘love’ started only a couple of years ago when I ‘discovered’ the world of black and white photography by means of the work of Michael Kenna. It was like a new world being revealed. This wasn’t simply about what the camera recorded but it was much more : about the possibility of being creative and translate what was recorded into one’s own vision. The world was never the same since then…

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?

About 10 years ago, I started a photography (evening) class but needed to quit (rather quickly) due to the lack of (free) time. Besides that little ‘introduction’, I do not have any artistic or photographic qualifications.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?

Well, it all started out for me when I saw Michael Kenna’s book ‘Japan’. It was my first experience with a very minimal yet hauntingly beautiful style of photography. I was really impressed … and I still am. Among my (other) favorite artists are Michael Levin, Stefano Orazzini, Buckner Sutter and René Magritte, to name a few. In fact, I find inspiration from many different sources : music, paintings, movies and of course, other photographs. It’s great to have influences but one should try and develop an own style. But this is something you can’t force and instead, one should just go with the flow, follow your heart and instincts. At least, that’s what I’m trying…

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?

It’s a combination. I really like the spontaneous way : I love the feeling of finding a ‘scene’ whenever you least expect it. I find this most rewarding. But I must admit that after this first excitement fades, I’m already checking Internet for info on when returning to this place in the best possible (photographic) conditions. Overall, there’s (quite) some planning done but I like to, whenever possible, leave some room for spontaneity.

#6 What fascinates you in places that you shoot?

I do not have a clear definition of this. Any location or object can become interesting. It’s more about the experience in a given place : a mix of emotion and imagination. A combination of how it feels being there at that very moment and seeing how my imagination takes over reality. And it is more than only the capture of the picture. It is also about being out there, being in the dark with only the sound of the sea, in wind and rain…  It’s then that the world seems to stand still, away from the rush of life : moments to come to peace with oneself. Photography for me is also about that experience.

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#1 Please introduce yourself:

I am an Award Winning Visionary Fine Art Nature & Landscape Photographer. My work has been published and displayed via a multitude of media (books, calendars, magazines, travel guides etc.) and by many prestigious companies such as National Geographic, and Kodak, just to name a few. It has also been displayed in several art galleries around the world.
I have set my goals to always improve my craft. My quest to become a better photographer will never cease. I personally think that the learning curve is endless, and I only have myself to criticize when I feel that I am not living up to my artistic endeavors. Constantly searching for those rare magical moments when the Perfect Light embraces nature in all its glory, you can rest assured – this is only the beginning of a long and dedicated quest to capture the breathtaking beauty of nature.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?

I used to be the Marketing Director of a sport supplement company. One day the CEO came to me and asked me to undertake the task of learning photography. He grew tired of paying professional photographers to take pictures of athletes and his whole product line.  At first, I thought this was an absurd request but decided to try it anyway. He purchased my first camera, which was the Minolta XTsi, and there I went, trying to learn how to use this great tool. I literally started reading everything I could find about photography and quickly this task became a hobby. I was taking pictures of pretty much everything from lampposts to cars, flowers, and insects – you name it.  My hobby really turned into a passion and eventually career. The day I did a road trip across the charming province Quebec, and ended up on top of Mt Ernest Laforce in the Gaspe Peninsula, I knew that this was my calling. That day it hit me like some sort of divine intervention… I wanted to experience, see and feel the beauty of our beautiful planet and photography was the perfect medium to do so. Since then I have set my life-long goal to always perfect my craft. I know that this will be an endless curve and I will only have myself to blame if I don’t live up to my full potential.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?

I never took any courses besides some small ones at the beginning teaching me what shutter speed and aperture really was. I then took it upon myself to read everything I could get my hands on and practice as much as I could.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?

I can’t really say that I had any particular influence when starting photography. There are hundreds of photographers inspiring me every day. Today, with the Internet, there is so much talent that I can easily get an amazing dose of inspiration.

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?

I do plan a lot when it comes to the gear I will need for a trip. As for locations to shoot, I will do a quick search on Google Maps and other websites, looking at images taken in that specific location to see if anything is definitely worth shooting, but I love to go somewhere with no itinerary or mental image of a location in mind. I often see many (and I am also guilty of this on some occasions) visiting locations simply to recreate what another photographer did. I have learned that by not spending too much time looking at other people’s work, you are less influenced by it, and your chance of producing original work is far greater. Often a plan itinerary makes you go from points A to B to C but meanwhile you forget to look and appreciate what’s in between. We often try to cover too much territory in a short time rendering our experience a very stressful one.

#6 What fascinates you in places that you shoot?

Everything fascinates me in nature, from the vegetation, to the climate, from the oceans to the highest mountains, from a simple waterfall to the green-coloured moss etc. But I must say that what most fascinates me is always the feeling I get when contemplating nature in all its glory. This is something that I find hard to explain to those that don’t travel much but the closest I can get would be that nature has its way to make you grow spiritually in ways I could never have imagined. On some occasions when witnessing incredible moments when the ‘Perfect Light’ showed up, to embrace the landscape in all its glory, it literally brought tears in my eyes. I truly felt like I was part of some sort of divine intervention.

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“It’s a little underexposed!”
I read this critique of an image recently and it re-awoke in me the vague plan that I’ve had to write about subjectivity and reality in photography.
What does it actually mean when someone criticizes an image as being underexposed? I know what they mean technically; that on a histogram the tonal range is stacked too far to the left (the blacks), but what is it about the image being dark that is actually wrong?
So it started me thinking, could the same thing be said about a painting? Could Goya’s Pintura’s Negras be faulted for being too dark, having too much black in them? For being “underexposed”?

Of course not, because the “rules” of photography are different to those of painting. But why? Although, there are some forms of photography, particularly editorial and fashion, which are considerably less constricted by the call for an image to be realistic, in general reality is the yardstick by which most photography, certainly landscape photography, tends to be judged.

Capturing the scene “exactly as it appeared to the eye” seems to have particular kudos among landscape photographers, and for a long time I’ve wondered why that is. I suspect that in part it might be a reaction against all those “did you photoshop this?” comments that all landscape photographers get at some point. Maybe it’s a defense against claims that an image has been Photoshopped (meaning, “it wasn’t really like that, you’ve changed the colours, removed something, pressed a magic button in Photoshop that makes everything look fantastic etc”)

It seems to me though that perhaps striving for absolute reality is futile. I’ve never really believed that photography is about replicating the world as our eyes see it, but more about taking our personal artistic interpretation of the world and using the way a camera sees the world to record it. A camera doesn’t see the world in the same way our eyes do. Our eyes don’t see the world wide angle with sharpness front to back in the same way that a 17mm lens at f16 will record it. Neither do they compress landscapes, bringing distant and near objects closer together in the same way that a telephoto lens does. Our eyes don’t freeze a moment in time, stopping water drops in mid air, as happens when you shoot with a fast shutter speed, nor do we see the world with movement blur as we do when we use a long exposure of 30 seconds or more. I’ve also often shot the night sky with the camera set to high ISO and the lens wide open at f2.8, recording stars and light that were completely invisible to the naked eye, so no, I don’t tell myself that the images I record are exactly as they appeared to my eyes at the time..and why would I want them to be?

If we were to follow this philosophy of recording the world as authentically as possible, then what would be the difference between the images of two photographers standing in the same place at the same time? If both photographers are of a similar level of technical skill and meter to capture the balance of tones evenly across the histogram, if we’re not going to use long exposures as a creative choice (as opposed to when light levels make them necessary) then the creative decisions of the photographer are significantly reduced to lens choice and composition. Granted, composition is an art form itself, but why should a photographer as an artist limit themselves so much? So if our two photographers choose similar lenses, lets say they both shoot wide angle, and both choose to shoot similar compositions, how can they imprint their artistic personalities onto the photo? What is there of “them” in the image?

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1. Please introduce yourself

I am a native of southwestern Poland and was born in Bielsko-Biala in 1956 during the communist era there. When I was 26, I immigrated to Madison, Wisconsin (1982) and moved from there to Modesto, California in 1984. Much of my earlier better-known photographic work was created in California’s Central Valley when I lived in Modesto. I moved to Northern California to the Mt. Shasta area in 2006 (?) where I now reside with my 3-year-old German Shepard, “Shasta. ”
I am a full-time traditional black and white photographer and practice the methods used by Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Morley Baer and others in the ƒ-64 school of photography. My subjects include the landscape, architecture and occasionally people or animals as they are in their environment.

2. How did you get interested in Photography?

When I was very young, 7 or 8-years-old, I was given a small 35mm Druch ( a Polish-made camera which broke in short order after I received it. I still have a few photos I made with it of a little stream near my home) camera as a First Communion gift from my God-parents. A camera was a very valuable gift at that time. I was immediately drawn to the magic of photography with that gift; the ability to slice a moment out of time and hold it as a print in my hands. But that was not all; I soon came to feel a consuming fascination with the chemical photographic process that, after exposure to light and immersion in developer, allowed grains of silver to form first on the negative and then again on a final print. It was pure alchemy to me and it was fun.
At that time in Poland many books were censored and there were not the vast amounts of easily accessed information available to the public that is taken for granted in the United States and has been so vital to the evolution of photography here. At first I learned by doing things on my own. I didn’t have the wonderful books by Ansel Adams, or the technical manuals by Kodak, but what I did have were photography history books that described chemical formulas for developers, stop baths and fixers and with that knowledge I began processing my film and printing my negatives.
A few years later, I developed a friendship with an older neighbor, who also was interested in photography and he taught me how to make glass plates and use a large format camera. That was my first introduction to traditional large format photography. At the time I did not realize the profound influence that time spent with my neighbor would have on my use of a view camera for my work.
When I was 19 I traveled to Russia on holiday where I fell in love with a TTL 35mm camera ( a Russian-made Nikon knock off with a normal lens) and traded a prized pair of Levi’s jeans for it. After that I went around wearing a pair of polyester pants that were much too short looking like an idiot, but it was a good trade because the camera came with a travel case containing an extra lens, enlarger, trays, safelight and chemicals; everything I needed to make prints.

3. Do You have an artistic/photographic background?

No, not at all! My mother worked at home and for the government in a factory and my father was a factory manager. In Poland one considered careers that were necessary and practical and which offered the promise of continued employment in the communist economy. Art and photography had their
place in society, but they were not generally acknowledged as safely reliable careers. Consequently my parents were not encouraging toward my photography as a means of making a living, instead I went to a technical university where I learned food processing and earned the equivalent of a Bachelor’s Degree.

4. Which Artist/Photographer inspired your art?

So many people ask me that question. Growing up in Poland I was surrounded by many centuries of artistic architecture and art in its’ many forms. The craftsmen of prior centuries put beauty into the functional articles they produced, so even useful things I was seeing daily had an artistic nature to them. I became accustomed to seeing things a certain way and that way of seeing things became what felt right to me artistically.
I am inspired by beautiful painting and my first inspiration as a visual artist came from the paintings of Chelmonski, Stanislawski, Paniewiz and Zaleski. I was drawn to the richness of the work, the sense of drama and the use of light and dark. The darker color palate sets a deeper, darker mood to their work and I find this appealing. A painter interprets his subject before it is painted, filtering it through his mind and exposing it with skillful use of brush and color palate. I felt I could do the same photographically.
Early on I was also inspired by the work of Jan Bulhak, who was himself also influenced by painting. Like Bulhak, I always felt that photography can be so much more than a way of documenting a visual moment. Photography, like painting, should strive for an ideal and each photographer should use whatever level of craft they have to attain those ideals in his or her work.
Perhaps it was that feeling of having photography strive for an ideal that lead me to also be drawn to the work of Roman Vishniac. Like many Northern Renaissance painters who interpreted the daily lives of the people around them, Vishniac’s photographs captured the essence of the Jewish Shtetl with its Talmudic heritage. In the Shtetl there was a tradition of scholarly conversations between intellectual peers being had in incomplete sentences, hints, and gestures that could replace a whole paragraph of speech; Vishniac captured that ideal with his photographs.
Before arriving in America I did not have access to the high-quality photographic books that you can find so readily here. So I was not aware of what Ansel Adams work, or, for that matter, Edward Weston’s, Brett Weston’s or Morley Baer’s work looked like. What I most remember about the work I had seen in Poland was that it had a general dullness to the prints, and so when I first saw original works by these photographers I was in awe of the richness of tone, the depth of the blacks and the glowing light that seemed to come from the prints. I immediately knew that this is what I wanted to produce technically with my own work.

5. How much Preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?

I plan where I will go to photograph ahead of time, sometimes months ahead. That includes what time of year I will visit a particular place in order to best capture the lighting and other environmental conditions I am looking for. But once I arrive at a place I must be spontaneous and capture what is before me. I have been blessed on many occasions with weather conditions that allow me to express the drama and strong sense of place many people see in my photographs.
It is not so easy to be a traditional film photographer and to travel on the airlines these days and it has caused me to plan not only when and where I will go, but also how I will develop my film once it is exposed. I now travel with my film in lead encased bags to keep the x-ray machines from fogging it and I have a portable darkroom setup that I use while photographing in Europe.

6. What fascinates you in the places that you shoot?

I look for the sacred essence in my photography subjects. I see the oneness in things that unites, the light carries the information, the message, and I feel the moment intensely with my camera. There is a special moment when I know that I have connected with something bigger than myself and that I have focused and pointed my camera at the essence of my subject. At that moment I feel a fullness that I cannot describe in words because it is a visual experience and I can only refer you to my finished print to explain the fascination of any certain place that I have photographed.

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#1 Please introduce yourself

I’m Don Kirby and I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my wife Joan Gentry, also a photographer. Landscape photography has been my interest for almost 40 years. Major projects include the Ancestral Pueblo culture, the National Grasslands, and the wheatcountry of Northwestern US. Nazraeli Press has published four books on my projects, the last jointly with Joan (The Anasazi Project).  Joan and I run a photography workshop program as well.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?

Serious photography got a late start, although I’ve carried a camera since the age of ten, initially photographing family and friends.  Did a bit of printing in college, then switched to color slides, still photographing travel  and activities with friends, like backpacking, mountain climbing, etc. Later, for reasons still unknown, switched to B/W film, built a darkroom, and started trying to make photographs with an expressive intent.  Still later, photography became full-time effort.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?

Viewing art, particularly photography, has been a long-time pleasure. My early  training in photography was through the original Ansel Adams texts and workshops with Bruce Barnbaum,  Ray McSavaney, and Jay Dusard, all fine teachers whose work I admire.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?

I’ve admired Ansel Adam’s work, Brett Weston for graphic form, Minor White’s “what else it is”.  Mario Giacomelli”s landscape work was a freeing experience.  Philosopher Susanne Langer’s writing helped with concepts of meaning, expressive form, and beauty issues.  Teaching with Bruce Barnbaum, Stu Levy and Huntington Witherill has been a learning experience.

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?

No preparation other than deciding where to go to start.  I try to go to the field with no pre-conceived ideas about what to photograph–just react to what I see. When something interesting appears, I start exploring the possibilities, what to include, exclude, how to develop the idea.  If it comes together, I visualize the look of the final print and figure out filtration, exposure, development and printing strategy to achieve the print.  Sometimes it works!

#6 What fascinates you in places that you shoot?

The places I photograph are places I’m interested in exploring, both physically and photographically.  I like new, less traveled landscapes and also returning to previously explored places. I love dynamic landscapes (canyons, mountains) as well as static landscapes (grasslands), sometimes for the photographic challenge.

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#1 Please introduce yourself

My name is Camille Seaman, I am a 42 yr. old woman living in Emeryville California, I am originally from NY.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?

I always was very comfortable with a camera in my hand from an early age, but I did not decide to use a camera seriously until I was 32 yrs. old. I became a professional at the age of 36.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?

I have a BFA from the SUNY at Purchase College, and before that I studied art at the FAME High School of Music and the Arts in Manhattan. I never had any technical photography courses.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?

Everyone and everything inspires me whether I like their work or not. In my thirties I decided to seek out Photographers whose work I admired and ask them questions and learn from them, My most important teacher has been Steve McCurry, he reminded me that photography has to be about that special sensitivity to a quality of light.

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?

I do not plan what i will photograph, nor do I put much research into where I am going or what to expect when I get there. I find I like to be guided and driven by my feeling, of what moves me, what feels special, what will be a powerful image.

#6 What fascinates you in places that you shoot?

I am guided by quality of light, if the light is not interesting to me I will wait, often many hours days or weeks. If the light isn’t there there is no point to press the shutter.

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#1 Please introduce yourself
My name is Brian Kosoff. I’m a photographer born and raised in NYC .

#2 How did you get interested in photography?
It was my uncle who sparked my interest. He was a hobbyist photographer. He shot mostly slide film with a Nikkormat and every time there was a family function at his home he would put on a slide show of all the family and vacation pics he had taken. He drove a convertible, travelled and was really cool, so I guess I used him as a role model to a large extent. He passed away last year, but years before he died he had a chance to see my work hanging next to Ansel Adams’ in a NYC gallery.  I think he then realized how much of an impact he had on my life.

I took photography classes in high school and made a home darkroom. In my last year of high school there was an internship program that allowed me to assist a couple of editorial and advertising photographers in Manhattan. That pretty much sealed the deal that I would become a photographer.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?
I was fortunate that my high school had a serious art department, which gave me the opportunity to study and produce other forms of art including sculpture. I made sculptures out of stone with hammer and chisel. My sculpture teacher, who is to this day a good friend, was young and patient. He was also very intent on his students doing good work. To his credit my school had one or two National Scholastics gold medal winners every year, which was a significant achievement for any school. I entered both a sculpture and a photograph in the contest. I won for sculpture but not photography.

After high school and thanks to that high school internship program, I was able to assist in the summer before I started college. I attended the School of Visual Arts in NY while continuing to freelance assist. At SVA I was a photo major but still studied sculpture. Because I felt I was learning so much more by assisting, I decided to leave SVA in my second year.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?
When I see a beautifully done photograph by another photographer I am inspired to work harder, but mostly just the sight of what our planet has to offer and how incredibly spectacular that can be is inspiration enough for me. I can’t say that any specific photographers inspired me, but I was influenced by photographers I respect.

Penn is the photographer who I have to say I have the most respect for over all. He was a great still life shooter, as well as great at fashion and portrait. I know of no one who can do all of those things equally as well. And as far as still life goes, he was the best. He was also a gentleman and very professional.

I admired Ansel Adams, but the more I shot landscape the less I was impressed with his photographs. Maybe this is because his work became so copied and was therefore less visually exciting to me. But his contributions to photography and the environment were enormous and no one will ever match that. I believe that photography is accepted as an art today because of Ansel Adams.

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?
Having come from a studio background, I was an advertising and editorial photographer in NYC, I was accustomed to a very controlled environment.  And with the professional background there is a heavy reliance on being well prepared because failure is not an option.  You have to produce work of the highest standards every time or you will soon find yourself out of business.  That requires doing one’s homework, being able to recognize problems before they occur and being able to handle anything that the project or situation throws at you. For those with little experience of professional assignments it’s a very different mindset than going out and taking pictures for your self. Instead you’re making pictures that will be brutally evaluated by people whose own livelihoods may depend on the quality of your performance.

Regarding landscape, I will often come across a scene that has all the right compositional elements but not the right light or atmosphere. In that case I take compass readings to determine ideally where I want the Sun to be, and then using astronomical software I will determine what date and time that year that it’s in the spot I want, and I’ll come back then. I will also take into consideration tides, moon position, foliage, weather, atmosphere, geography, agricultural cycles, etc.  I view the process of landscape photography in a more holistic perspective.

As an example for the image “Prescott Trees” I made three trips in a year from NY to Washington State just for that shot. The version I ended up using had fall foliage.

They say that chance favors the prepared mind, so I try to be prepared. But there’s always that wild card. And sometimes I’m just driving down the road and wham! There’s a shot right in front of me. Then again, I’m on that road because I had previously studied topo maps and the weather history of the area and I knew the likelihood of getting a good shot there was high. But for all the prep work I do, there’s still the uncertainty that nature plays. I recall a trip to Iceland, timed specifically so that the Moon would appear rising between two volcanic, Stone Henge-like rock formations that I had seen on a previous trip. Alas I had 3 straight overcast days and never got the shot. I’ll get that image someday.

#6 What fascinates you in places that you shoot?
Everything. A recent shoot had me doing long night time exposures and as I was at a high altitude and the skies were dark and clear I had an amazing view of the Milky Way. Just fantastic. And all the while, hearing Coyotes howl. You don’t get that growing up in Brooklyn.

Landscape is a lifestyle. I think most of us that pursue it just love being in some quiet remote place and during some especially dramatic or tranquil moment. It’s also a very solitary pursuit so I think that anyone who works at it has to be comfortable with spending time alone.

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#1 Please introduce yourself.
Hello, my name is David Fokos. I am a full-time photographic artist living in San Diego, California. I have been photographing with my 8×10 view camera for over 30 years, much of that time on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts.
My work, which is represented by 15 galleries on three continents, has been featured in over 40 solo exhibitions and can be found in the collections of many museums, corporations and private collectors.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?
My grandfather gave me my first camera — a Kodak Brownie — when I was 11 years old. Interestingly, rather than the usual sort of family holiday snapshots one might expect of an 11 year old, I was already showing an affinity for the landscape and a certain type of composition — taking pictures of the patterns found in the cobblestone streets, looming church spires, and zoomy perspectives along building facades.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?
In college I studied engineering and Japanese art history. Other than that it’s just been the self-education that comes from 30 years of making images.

#4 Which artist/photographer inspired your art?
As a high school student, the work of Ansel Adams inspired me to photograph the landscape with a view camera. I spent the next 15 years working in isolation on Martha’s Vineyard with the goal of creating images that would express to the viewer the essence of my emotional experiences — evoking within them the same emotions I felt when making the images. With my work, I’m not trying to show the viewer what these places look like, but rather what they feel like.
Drawing upon my technical background in engineering, my decades-long interest in Japanese aesthetics, and the work of artists Andy Goldsworthy, David Hockney, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, I began to develop a personal theory of how we perceive the world and a method for expressing that through my art.

#5 How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph? Are you planning every step or is it always spontaneous?
It varies depending upon the image. Sometimes, I know the shot I want and how the finished image will look, but it may take years for the right moment to present itself. My “Jetty” image took me 3 years of checking tide charts, sunrise times and weather reports to get just the conditions I wanted. Other times, I can be out with my camera and just be inspired by something I happen upon. “Balanced Stones” is a good example of this.

#6 What fascinates you in places that you shoot?
The places where I find myself making images are those to which I have a strong, positive, emotional reaction. More often than not, these are places that through their stillness, expansiveness, stark simplicity, or the juxtaposition of man-made objects with nature, evoke within me a sense of quiet contemplation.

#7 We can see your photographs only in black and white, why have you chosen to present them in this form?
Color is such a powerful element in an image. The emotions I try to evoke in my images are not rooted in color but rather in line, light and form so I think that color would only be a distraction in my work.

#8 Could you please tell us something about your technique and creating process? (post-processing, equipment (digital/traditional), printing, favourite paper, etc…)
When I take a picture, I already have a pre-visualized, final image in my head – making the exposure is just the process of gathering raw material for the final image. After developing the negative, I may spend a hundred hours or more working to accomplish the image I pre-visualized.

The difference between documentary work/photojournalism and fine art photography is that in the former, one wants to present photographs with the least amount of manipulation possible (other than the framing of the image, choice of lens, etc.), whereas a fine art photographer is an artist seeking to express an idea, evoke an emotion, or convey a message. For the photographic artist, the taking of the picture is just the first step.

My subject matter is the feeling I am trying to convey. The objects in my images are simply supporting characters. But the problem with photography is that the camera doesn’t record emotion.

How many times have you taken a snapshot of some amazing vista like the Grand Canyon, or an incredible sunset only to be disappointed when you got your prints back? You remembered the experience as having been so much more dramatic than the prints convey. One of the reasons for this discrepancy is that a large part of the experience you had while taking the picture was the emotion you felt while standing there. As I mentioned before, the camera does not record emotion. It cannot convey how you felt that morning when you woke up, what kind of mood you were in, the humidity, the smell of the air, the temperature, the feel of breeze, or the sun on your face. All of these things contribute to the emotional response you have to a place. The job of a photographic artist is to work with the camera’s image, to create the drama and add back the emotion.

When I make an image I know exactly on what I want the viewer to focus and what I want them to see and feel. By reducing my images to austere minimalist compositions I force the viewer to more closely examine what I have left in the frame.

In this regard, my study of Japanese aesthetic traditions has had a profound influence on my work. For example, the ability of Japanese haiku poetry to convey deeply felt sentiment through a minimal number of words has been greatly inspiring.

I wouldn’t say that I consciously set out to make “photographic haiku,” or try to illustrate traditional Japanese aesthetic concepts such as seijaku (tranquility), sabi (patina and an appreciation of the ephemeral nature of things), yūgen (an unobvious, subtle, profound grace), shizen (without pretense), and wabi (rustic simplicity, freshness, quietness, an appreciation of imperfection). Yet, I feel that the spirit expressed in these concepts resonates within my images.

I mostly shoot 8×10 Kodak Tri-X Professional film with my 82-year old Korona View camera. I use just one lens – a 210mm Rodenstock Sironar-S. This lens is a wide-angle lens on my camera (the equivalent of a 29mm lens on a 35mm camera.

After developing my negative, I wet-mount the film to my Epson V750 Pro scanner and scan it at a very high resolution (16-bits @ 2400 ppi). This results in an 800MB grayscale image file (which is equivalent to the resolution of a 2.4GB color file).

After I have the high-resolution image file in my computer, the real work begins. I often spend 100 hours or more, fine-tuning the image – dodging and burning (making certain areas lighter or darker), adjusting local contrast, etc. This is the part of the process that adds the emotion back into the image my camera recorded.

I am satisfied with an image, I make a print on my Epson 11880 printer.

Finally, there still remains one thing to do and that is to have the print framed for presentation. The frame plays a significant role in the finished work and its importance should not be taken lightly. The style and weight of the frame becomes a part of the composition. Over the years I have tried a number of different styles of framing until I found one that I think is ideal.

I send my prints to Los Angeles to be framed by one of only two framers in the country that I feel is capable of the quality of framing I require.

My prints are “face-mounted”. This is a special process that was developed in Germany whereby the print is bonded to a special, premium-quality brand of UV protected, anti-reflective plexiglas, (note: before mounting, the edges of the plexiglas are polished for a finer finish) The print is then bonded using an optically-clear sheet of adhesive.

The process requires passing the print and plexi through a special machine with heated rollers, multiple times, with rest periods. The result is an amazing immediacy as, unlike traditional framing, the print sits just 1/8″ from the front surface.

Next, a piece of 6mm thick black sintra (a type of rigid plastic) is bonded to the back of the print. At this point, the print is hermetically sealed between these two sheets of plastic. A wood frame is then bonded to the sintra.

Next, a decorative outer wooden frame is custom-milled by my framer from rock maple, to which he applies 3 coats of a proprietary color of lacquer. Though my frames may look black, they are not. I worked with my framer to develop a special “off-black” hue that would not contrast too starkly with the image. This is yet another way I work to minimize even the smallest of distractions.

Finally, with screws passing through the back side of the decorative frame and into the wooden frame bonded to the sintra, the print is made to “float” within the decorative frame with a small gap between the edge of the print and the frame.

A French Cleat system is used to hang the print on the wall so that the frame sits flush against the wall.

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Sometimes (but not very often) landscape photography can be easy. The light, location and weather come together to create dramatic pictures and it can be almost effortless. Other times however, well….it’s just not like that.

The first books I read on photography always preached the same mantra…it’s all about the light. And of course it is, great light can transform almost any scene into photographic nirvana and in an ideal world, we’d all only get our cameras out of our backpacks when in beautiful light.

Unfortunately though, the weather does as it pleases and good light can be transient and ephemeral. We can be in a wonderful location, set up and composed, and the light never comes to illuminate the scene. Heavy, overcast cloud cover which extends to the horizon can cut out all directional light making even a great location seem flat and unappealing photographically. This can be particularly annoying when you’re on a photography trip away from home and you only have a limited time in which to photograph the locations you were hoping to shoot. What can you do if the weather and light don’t cooperate? Not take the shot, just pack up and go home, cursing the weather Gods? Adaptability is a huge part of landscape photography (well, ALL forms of photography actually), and accepting that, OK, you might not be able to get the shot with the fantastic warm light painting the scene in a warm glow that you’d envisioned, but there’s still an interesting shot to be had, can reap substantial rewards.

On a trip to Scotland last year I tried to give myself as much chance as possible of getting good light by staying in each location for three days – that’s three dawns and three sunsets, which I hoped would give me at least one chance of shooting one of the locations in favourable conditions. As it turned out, for the three days I was in Glen Coe, there was constant rain and overcast skies all the time except for the middle of the afternoon on one of the days (the shot of Rannoch Moor below, was actually taken in bright midday sunshine). In Skye, there was one stunning sunrise (which I was fortunate enough to make the most of), and then the rest of the time was nothing but thick cloud. So what was to be done? I knew it would be a long time before I returned to Scotland, and I didn’t want to go home with just one morning’s worth of shots on my CF cards. There’s only one thing you can do really, and that’s take photos anyway.

There are certain approaches you can take when shooting in bad light to try to get more out of a scene, and one of my favourites and most effective is the use of long exposures. The shot at the top of this article is an example of this. The Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye is a classic UK dawn location. The rocks face east and catch the first rays of the sun, so a photographer can climb to a position alongside them, wait for the first rays of sun to illuminate the rocks and grass infront, and hopefully have an attractive sky overhead. That’s the ideal, but the weather on the west coast of Scotland is rarely predictable. It’s a stiff climb to the location, and not having been there before, I didn’t want to do it for the first time in the dark of pre-dawn, and then be racing against the sunrise looking for a composition, so I made the climb for the first time on the previous afternoon a little after lunch. It’s not a great time for photography, but I took all my gear with me anyway to get an idea of how demanding the climb would be with a full backpack. I certainly didn’t have any serious ideas about making a photo. After scouting around a little, I found the location I wanted to shoot from, and thought I’d do a test shot to see how it worked out. The light was flat, the whole scene overcast with thick heavy cloud cover, but at the same time, there was something about the scene which evoked a certain mood that really suited the location. At the same time, I was aware that I would only have one chance to shoot the location at dawn, as it was my final day, the two previous dawns having been spent shooting further north on the island.

So I decided to try to get a shot in the flat, overcast light of mid afternoon. The first thing was to use a 9 stop neutral density filter, slowing the exposure right down and creating a lot more drama in the sky, which before had looked flat and uninteresting. I took a couple of shots, which looked fine on the camera’s LCD screen, and walked back down. The following day, after climbing up again, the entire scene was shrouded in fog and cloud. The Storr wasn’t visible at all, and the sunrise never really happened, so the only shots I had from this iconic location were the ones I’d taken in the middle of the afternoon on the previous day. Working on them on my computer at home, the first thing I did was increase the contrast on the sky, and then convert the image into black and white with some dodging and burning on the landscape. The result might not be the one I had in mind before I went there, but it was certainly worth the effort of the walk up to the Storr to photograph it. Of course, I want to go back and photograph the location again with good light, but in the meantime, I’m happy with the shot I got in “bad light”.

So “bad light” can actually sometimes be good light if it fits the mood of a scene, and a similar thing is true of the scene above. This is the Piano Grande, in the Sibillini Mountains, Umbria, Italy. I’d given myself three nights to get decent conditions. The first day was just grey, the second day rained hard all day and we nearly didn’t bother making the long drive up to the plain. However, in the end we did, and just before the end of the day, it stopped raining enough to be able to contemplate taking a picture. Again, I’d hoped for golden light, and again I didn’t get it, but the location and mood were pretty strong, and with the clouds racing across the sky I thought I could get a long exposure to frame the clouds moving around the mountain, with the same scene reflected in the pool in front. Again, this scene didn’t work at all as a “normal” length exposure, it’s the long exposure which blurs the clouds into a smooth coloured layer around the white peaks of the mountain that makes the image work for me. As it turned out, on the following evening there (which was also my last) the light and sky finally cooperated giving me the conditions that but despite that, I’m still very pleased with the shot taken in poor light, and think it’s deserving of a place in my portfolio.

As is probably becoming clear, when I’m faced with bad light, my default solution is to try a long exposure which will lift the scene into something surreal and different. Another example is the shot I took at Elgol, on the Isle of Skye below.

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