My first serious work in landscape photography was with black and white photographs made in mountain areas using Ansel Adam's zone system. I mainly used 6x7 centimeter medium format and 4x5 view cameras. Originally I worked for about 25 years in the traditional darkroom using the usual darkroom techniques with a cold light 4x5 enlarger, densitometry measurements, etc. to produce black and white fine art prints. Since about the year 2000, I have been primarily doing color digital photography using higher end Canon and Nikon equipment such as the D2X and D300. To process my color prints, I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 and other digital imaging software. The digital editing and prints are done on a modified Dell Dimension 8400 computer with a color calibrated 30 inch display monitor. My prints are done on Hewlett-Packard and Canon photo inkjet printers using my own custom made color profiles. Making only minor adjustments to enhance rather than highly modify the raw files, I try to make fine art prints showing the beauty of nature from sweeping mountain views to golden aspen leaves floating in a pond. The images I produce may be very simple with one photographic theme or very complex with many themes in the same image.

Photographic Interests

I have a special interest in photographing mountain landscapes, one that was sparked by many mountain climbing and trekking adventures during my younger years in Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, and the Sierra. I also enjoy photographing desert landscapes, including those in Death Valley, Anza Borrego, Joshua Tree, and the Mojave Preserve. As a landscape photographer, I live in perhaps the best place in the country – the town of Mammoth Lakes located high on the eastern slope of the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains and close to the Mojave desert and Great Basin high desert areas.

Photographic Vision

I believe landscape work is one of the most challenging areas of artistic photography as it requires a combination of photographic skills, vision, and luck – being in the right place at the right time! The natural world for the most part is a very complex visual array which is extremely challenging to simplify by photographic vision and produce strong images. The easiest part of landscape photography for me is clicking the shutter. Processing the image and doing the print is a little more challenging. The most difficult aspect of landscape photography is deciding when and what to place in the viewfinder to produce the strongest and most interesting composition. All this may result in an outstanding fine art print.