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Along with those desires, some of my photographs serve as a springboard to think about some of the deeper things in life — like the impermanence of the world around us and what we consider to be beautiful or ugly. For example, the photograph of the leaf takes an object that nearly all of us would walk by without noticing or — if we noticed it at all — would never consider especially remarkable, and tries to look at it truly closely and to draw out the incredible loveliness of something that is, in fact, soon to no longer be with us.
The photograph of the wrapping paper in a box is similar — a found object looked at in a special way. What looking closely at everyday objects like this does for me is to enhance my appreciation, not only for the hidden beauty around us, but, even more importantly, to remind me of our wonderful ability to see beauty and to extract that out of the world around us.
The ancient tree in the river, the sleeping rock in that same river and the twisted ancient bristlecone pine branches, are more in the classical Ansel Adams, John Sexton tradition, and try to enhance and preserve emotionally striking natural scenes. In that respect, I certainly can't say that my approach is original and just hope that I've done justice to what I saw before me.
And sometimes I just see odd stuff, like the scene of the scarecrow shirts in a field up by Santa Margarita, and I just can't stop myself pulling over and preserving that sight! I photograph primarily in black and white, in part because I find that view of the world to be the most esthetically fascinating and because it reduces the photographic viewpoint to it's most basic and simple elements, just concentrating on light and dark. But if a scene is really about the colors, I'm glad to try to capture that too. I just hope that seeing these images gives you as much pleasure as I had in making them!
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