Background & Mission
I found that I have an outdoor adventuring spirit. The kind that needs to ‘see’ and experience other places - and to record them. Working through and being trained in the mediums of journaling, painting, drawing, watercolor, sculpture, printmaking….. I chose photography as my artistic experience.
When I was 13 and 14, I was fortunate to attend a camp in the Canadian Boundary Waters area. I learned how to use, portage and sleep under heavy wooden canoes for 2 weeks at a time, fishing for meals when the dehydrate ran out. My outdoor adventuring sprit was developed in this wilderness area.
I made a decision to join a group of likeminded ‘adventuring spirits’ when I was 15. We orchestrated a bicycle journey throughout England and Scotland, staying in Hostels and eating at Pubs in early June, July and August, of 1965. The Moors of Scotland, the coast, the incredible light, the rugged landscape and people made an indelible mark on my vision and memory. At 16, I became a registered ‘Guide’ for Algonquin Provincial Park , in the Boundary Waters and a camp called Northway Lodge, in Canada. My wanderlust was being satiated at the same time my beginning photography skills were developing. My images were interesting and crude, but I was defining what I saw and how to capture the light, with any type of camera (all cheap and mostly plastic), in mostly horrible weather conditions.
At 19, out of High School, I entered the United States Coast Guard.
Taking 35mm photographs with my simple and inexpensive camera, was my way of escaping into the world of silence, raw nature and the beauty that I saw and experienced - sometimes off the back of a 40 ft. Motor Life Boat, heading to a ‘search and rescue call’.
I started entering and exhibiting my photographs in the next decade, as I worked at 2 ranches in Colorado and went to college studying History, Horticulture and Environmental Science…..with a minor in photography. I taught at Teton Science School and NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) - I put myself in extraordinary situations taking students to remote and wild locations to study and record the interplay of ecology and our natural world. My teaching perspective was different than other ecologists and other teachers- I was always intersecting with nature and calling upon the inner artist of the student to see what the ‘data’ could not tell us.
I eventually pursued and fine-tuned the craft of Photography by taking courses from Oliver Schuchard and Joyce Tenneson Cohen, at University of Missouri and Stephens College, respectively. I took every course that UMC Art School, Journalism School and Stephen’s College offered, spending weekends in the darkroom, photographing the small towns of northern Missouri, meeting the assignments from my Professors and exploring the complexities of this ‘image recording tool’. My brother, a very talented artist in film and paint, talked to me of light interplay, shadow, capturing ‘the moment’ and the philosophy of the craft of ‘capturing the image’. I spent my time in research ecology, as a horse wrangler and a mountaineer in Colorado; taking students on rugged field trips. All of these experiences put me in places where other people didn’t go …. or couldn’t go.
My Father gave me his post WW2 Leica “Barnack” rangefinder camera (Leica iif, Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), which was incredibly difficult to use, but taught me how to fully manipulate a manual film camera. It taught me how to see the whole picture and then recognize that special ‘chunk’ to capture. Most of the time I carried it as Cartier Bresson did, next to my waist - seeing the whole picture play out before me, hopefully getting a ‘good shot’.
My father and I trying to understand the complexities of the Leica llf camera. He gave me his post WW2 camera that I used throughout my life- always thinking of him.
Eventually I purchased more cameras, more ‘tools’ …and traded them in to finally find cameras that gave me an image that I wanted. I continue to love film and the tone and feeling that it gives me, but I have stopped spending 8 hours in the darkroom, with fumes and claustrophobia. I now primarily work in the digital medium.
I capture images that I either see fleetingly …or I painstakingly study …or I see repeatedly on my travels and then stop to spend time with. I try to find and see just THAT scene or THAT color, or THAT set of shadows and light, or just THAT striking face and expression …. they speak to me and make me want to spend more time with it - to hold the image a little longer. I still utilize a philosophy that seeks to capture a ‘ the images and the color is what I see’ technique. I seek to capture what nature presents and shows me….not what I conjure up in ‘post processing’ color correction, additions or changes. Each image, shadow and light tell a unique story and what I see through my viewfinder or I capture in the moment. This is what I strive to record and present to the world. As if to say- ‘look what I found’.
It seems as though I have gone through several ‘molts’ or evolutions of my life with photography. They coincide with my 45+ year growth and experience as a biological researcher, a Professor, teacher and outdoor field teacher.
Along the way I became a certified Professional Wetland Scientist and Restoration Ecologist. I have spent countless hours ‘in the field’ with students - doing line transects, plot studies, soil and water studies, keying out animal tracks and plants. I have tried to bring to my students the love of and complexities of nature, as we worked and studied in the rain, heat, on the side of a mountain, pulling rushes out of a wetland, swatting flies. I have tried to put myself at the intersection of art and science- the natural world, the appreciation of it and the study of it.
Along with the knowledge gained by immersive education and experiential education – this ‘out of the four walls’ appreciation and education….. comes the evening light; dragonflies perching, the magic of herons rising, a predator hunting – that time during the ‘twilight hour’, where you were just happy to be right there …. and I am there, with a camera.