|
The galleries on this website will introduce you to two visual worlds: landscape photography and photomicrography, or photography through the microscope. Both worlds are influenced by a love of nature and an appreciation for its forms, patterns, and colors.
In the landscape photographs, I do not try to glorify nature, or idealize its beauty, but rather to express its mystery and even foreboding, shaped by the elements and time. I love the challenge of photographing the interplay of light, water, rock, sky and wind. Most of these photographs were taken either very early or late in the day. I often hiked to remote places, with the 40-pound equipment on my back. All pictures were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod. I tend to use long exposures of one to eight seconds, to maximize depth of field in dim or ambient light.
Usually absent from my photographs are people or signs of civilization. While an occasional human, boat, or hint of a roadway appear to provide a sense of scale, I like to imagine what the land was like hundreds or even thousands of years ago. I also try to capture the mystery of what lies beyond the eye.
The photomicrographs are truly worlds beyond the eye in which the subject, in a sense, is the media used to create these images. They are miniature paintings, which I create on microscope specimen slides using different water-based media and organic matter, such as acrylic paint, ink and egg white. Within these tiny paintings, I discover through the microscope images that are reminiscent of larger landscapes. Abstract and expressionist paintings are also sources of inspiration. I love experimenting with different brushstrokes, densities and layers of media, as well as the angle and intensity of the light source. These images are magnified 40 to 100 times their actual size.
I hope you enjoy viewing this photography "beyond the eye," and that you will find your own connections between the two worlds of landscape photography and photomicrography. As well as being a tribute to nature, the work as I see it is a metaphor for human perception: there is richness and complexity beyond what the eye can see.
|
