My interest in photography goes back to before college, but I did not really start to work seriously in the darkroom until that time. Since then, the pursuit continued: primarily 35 mm, but with excursions into both medium and large format work. This was all a sideline, since my career path included, among other things, banking, real estate development and computer consulting. Through all of the "careers", however, I still worked at the photography, and attempted to improve both my images and printing skills - working in bathroom darkrooms as necessary.

      In recent years, as semi-retirement has allowed me more flexibility, I tried to re-vitalize the creative process by moving into digital photography. This was an attempt to force myself to take more (and hopefully better) pictures, and obsess or fixate less in the darkroom. The digital environment has, indeed, led to more images - and in most cases, more interesting images. The same techniques utilized in the darkroom are now done on the computer, but with less noxious (and poisonous) fumes, along with the ability to dodge, burn and tone with even more finesse and precision (hence satisfying the darkroom fixation with "getting it right").

      The pictures that I have taken digitally allow a certain amount of freedom that is not easily available with conventional photography - I don't have to worry about the format, the film type and speed, color response, etc. I can concentrate on the image itself, easily adjusting for most of these factors both before the picture is taken and after - just as when you choose film, develop the negative, make the print, etc.

      All of the prints in this portfolio are "totally digital", although they are straight photographs. They were taken with a digital camera, worked in Photoshop (dodging, burning, conversion to black & white, etc., but no "manipulation" or composite work) and the original images are printed on cotton rag matte paper with an Epson printer using Ultrachrome inks. I purposely chose not to revisit my older images and ignored all of the boxes of negatives and slides. All of these pictures were taken over the last few years - the majority of them this last year. As stated before, the digital process not only forced me to pursue a new method of producing prints, but it has made me go out and shoot new images, which has been really important to me.

      You will note that none of these pictures contain people, although much of the subject matter contains artifacts of former occupants. I think that all my years in customer/people intensive professions left me wishing for a lack of them in my photography. This may have started out accidentally, but has certainly been continued by design. My predominant use of black & white and toned images is also on purpose. Although the camera took these pictures in color, they were "seen" as black and white images – or with the thought of minimal amounts of color.