Incredible, weird, crazy, beautiful images are all around us – so much amazing art.  What I love is to get out into the woods and fields and lakes and mountains and get into a space where my eyes open to see all the great art that is there for the seeing.  And on a good day, to capture some small part of it and make it accessible in a way I can take home.  That can be done with photographs, and with no other art form.

 

I have always loved the idea of a camera and a photograph.  They're a huge challenge because we move in a world of three dimensions plus time.  A photograph squeezes them into two.  Losing two dimensions, you're creating an image of something that doesn't really exist.  At the same time, our own eyes are limited in interpreting that fourth dimension of time.  We can neither hold an image of things that are moving very fast, nor stretch that fourth dimension to capture the pattern and flow of things that are moving through time.  A camera can do both.  What a great tool for making art.

 

Many of my images are about shape and pattern and color and light.  Many are about events that are ephemeral, or that don't really exist at all, like the pattern of light on the surface of water, shadows on the snow, the curl of a wave.  I think I gravitate to these because they are nothing more than shape, pattern and color captured in a moment of time. It’s a challenge to capture them, and satisfying when I do, because once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

 

Finally, I am an environmentalist.  As a culture, we are losing contact with the natural world.  It is all around us, but most of us don’t see it.  It has faded into the background.  I don’t really care if my images are beautiful.  I do hope they are arresting, in the sense that they will get viewers to stop and say “Wow, that’s OUT there?”  And perhaps, when they walk away, to be a little more open to seeing and discovering themselves the mystery and wonder in the natural world that is all around us, every day, every second.