Growing up in California, I was under the spell of such luminaries of photography as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston. From an early age I was fascinated with photography starting with a Kodak Brownie camera graduating to a hand-me-down Rolicord to finally earning enough to buy my first SLR, a Nikkormat. In High School, I took a correspondence course in photography and after getting a “practical degree” from the University of California at Berkeley, I went on to study photography at Brooks Institute of Photography. Following Brooks, I began a career with the Federal Government first as a photographer, then in public relations and finally as National Deputy Director for BLM’s Office of Fire and Aviation. Throughout my federal career and in the years since, I have continued to study and evolve as a photographer and an artist.
I photograph the diminutive landscapes of wild and garden flowers, leaves, branches and grasses, and the birds, bugs, and butterflies that dwell within. My hypercollages merge elements of these photographs with clouds, streams, waterfalls, bubbles, and splashes of color. The final images are a compilation of extractions from original photographs that I weave together through the magic of Photoshop. I immerse myself in the digital process of intertwining multiple layers until a final composition arises. The result might be whimsical or moody, delicate or splashy, or pensive and muted depending on where the images take me. Final images may have up to 100 individual layers.