Early in my career as a marketing professional, I was told that the way to get 10 years worth of experience in just five years is to work twice as hard. I have carried that advice with me in all that I do and it has stood the test of time. I have been a digital photographer for a relatively short five years but in that time I have gained at least 10 years worth of photographic experience by working hard to develop both my skill and my style.
From the outset, my focus has been on photographing the natural world that is available to almost every person almost every day. There is no need to go anywhere special. I look to capture the landscapes, trees, flowers, wildlife that the ordinary person can see almost anywhere regardless of where they live. They have only to open their eyes and look around them. In a sense, I view myself as a street photographer of the natural world.
But my difference is that I want to be able to capture these ordinary, every day features of the natural world in extraordinary ways.
I began my journey trying to make perfect portraits of the world around us – a wildflower here, a bird there, occasionally a landscape. I sought to capture the beauty in our natural world in the most simplistic yet accurate of ways. But I wasn’t personally satisfied with the images I was producing. I found I was creating images that allowed others to look at them and say “I can do that. I can take a picture like that.” That wasn’t the response that I was seeking. I want the viewer to look at my images and not think “I can do that.” but rather wonder “How did he do that?” and possibly ask the most important question behind the image “Why? Why did he make this image? What was his vision and do I share in it?”.
So my journey continues as I explore ways to make the ordinary extraordinary. Each step that brought me closer to my goal turned out to be a step in the direction of creating more abstract compositions of the natural world through the use of various tools and techniques. I feel the most important feature of my work is that my images maintain and even emphasize the compositional elements (line, form, color, texture) that are responsible for creating the beauty in the natural world while smoothing out and de-emphasizing the elements that make the ordinary ordinary.
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So I invite you to look at my images, read the story they tell and share my vision, if only for a moment.