^{THE CAMERA AS A WITNESS}

    We live our life on the earth as a "practice life" for a life (hopefully) spent in eternity in Heaven. Someone once said that every atom in the created universe is simply an "I Love You!!!" from God. He wants us to notice the beauty everywhere, to acknowledge it, and to simply, and humbly, thank Him. That's all. It's there, all around you, do you see it? I do.

    Picking up a camera in Kodiak, Alaska, I've been shooting pictures of anything and everything for 45+ years. Trying new subjects, new techniques, new lenses. All self taught (OK, I read a book or 2 on the way!) I've always had an overwhelming sense that the world around me was more beautiful than anyone was stopping to notice. I guess my "job" was to make people notice.

    That's what I mean when I say I'm bragging for God. The work I'm showing you — the autumn hillside, the light on the water, the way a morning fog sits in a valley, even my light paintings which are done in pitch darkness in a studio — none of that came from me. I'm just the person who noticed it / created it and had a camera to capture it forever. I'm holding it up and saying: look at this. Do you see what I see?

^{WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HOW I WORK}

    Rarely, extremely rarely, do you happen upon a scene that you know is a "winner" and you take the photo right then and there. Ansel Adam's most famous shot, "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico"

happened to be one of those. Every serious landscape photographer knows that if you find a great shot, you're probably going to have to come back again when the lighting, or even season, is right. "Landscape Photographer" and "Patience" are interchangeable.

    It's why I spend hours waiting for light that may never come. If the beauty I'm after isn't something I manufacture, then I have to be ready for it when it arrives. You can't rush a sunset. You can't reschedule autumn. You can be there, prepared, patient — and you can be ready to recognize the moment when it happens. Or you can miss it.

    And it's why even my studio light painting work , such as "Ablaze" —

is the most technically complex thing I do, built from dozens of individual exposures composed in Photoshop — still feels to me like discovery rather than invention. I set up the arrangement. I introduce the light sources one at a time, in the dark, and wait to see what happens. The unexpected interaction between a cyan light and a glass sphere, the reflection that appears where I didn't plan one — those moments aren't engineered. They happen. I photograph them. The best work comes from paying attention to what the light does, not from forcing it to do what I planned.

WHAT I HOPE YOU SEE

    When you stand in front of one of my prints — whether it's New England in full October color,

or a still life illuminated in colors that look like they belong in a different century — I hope you feel something I can't fully describe.

    Not impressed by the technique. Not admiring the framing. Not calculating the investment value.

    I hope you feel, just for a moment, like you're looking at something that shouldn't be as beautiful as it is.  

Something ordinary — a vase, a road, a stand of birch trees in fog — that turns out to be extraordinary if you look at it the right way.

    That feeling isn't something I made. I just found it and brought it back for you.

    And if I'm bragging about anything, it's not my work. It's the world I get to point my camera at.

    As I always say, "Don't love the gifts of the Giver, but the Giver of the gifts!"

   ...........ah, I'd like to write more, but I have to get out and shoot. Too many ideas in my head that have to get on to a camera chip, then a computer screen, then on to your walls!