There are certain moments when elements of nature and light come together to paint a wonderful picture. Capturing these moments on film is a passion of mine. I have been pursuing photography for over twenty years, traveling from the northeast to the southwest of the United States, focusing mainly closer to home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.The most rewarding aspect of my experience is the unique encounters that I have with numerous people, the land, and nature. I feel blessed to live in a country with such a diverse landscape that traverses from the lush plant life of the Smoky Mountains to the arid Southwest with the beautiful colors of its sand, rocks and canyons. It is through landscape photography that I am forced to slow down and enjoy the marvelous gift our Creator has given to us.

I use three formats for image capture; large format (4x5 inch film size), medium format (2-1/4 x 2-1/4inch film size), and 35mm. My large format camera is an Arca Swiss 4x5. It has an abundant amount of movements which allows for greater control over the image perspective. I use six lenses with this format; a 60mm f4 Nikkor-sw supper wide angle, a 90mm f9 Nikkor-sw wide angle, 150mm f5.6 Calter-II N, 210mm f5.6 Schneider apo-symmar, 300mm f9 Nikkor-M, and 400mm f5.6 Schneider Apo-Tele-Xenar. The medium format system is comprised of a Hasselbad 500c camera and four lenses; 50mm f4 CF distagon, 80mm f2.8 Planar, 150mm f4 CF Sonnar, and 250mm CF f5.6 Sonnar. The 35mm system is a Nikon 8008 and 3 lenses; 24-70mm f3.5 sigma zoom, 70-210 f3.5 nikkor zoom, 400mm f5.6 sigma telephoto.

In the recent past I printed all my images on Ilfochrome paper.  This was a tedious process as it was necessary to make contrast reducing masks using b&w film to control the contrast of Ilfochrome paper.  As difficult as this sometimes seemed, I truly enjoyed the solitude of my darkroom.  It gave me time to slow down and ponder the places I’ve been.  However, one cannot stop progress.  It has become more and more difficult to obtain Ilfochrome paper and chemistry. Many suppliers of photographic materials have stopped carrying these supplies and others had sporatic inventories.  I saw the writing on the wall so I decided to make the change to digital output.  I still shoot film, and most importantly for me, mostly 4x5 film.  Now I scan it and print it on my Epson 9800 printer.  My darkroom is now a lightroom, if you will, consisting of a computer, two scanners and a printer.  My task now is to bring the scanned image back to life and match the original transperancy after it is scanned.  And, as bad as I feel about giving up my wet darkroom, I really don’t feel it was a waste because what I learned about printing could also be applied to digital printing. My goal is and has always been to make the final print as luminous and robust as the original scene.