Photography has always been an emotional endeavor for me. Yes, one’s passion for photography has a technical side to it like pixel counts, ISO, f-stops, sensor types and much more. But the true power of the craft lies in its ability to grab you, to pull you into an experience, an image, a scene…. One that is so compelling you have to capture it and share with others.
While photojournalism and documentary photography often work mostly on a rational level, there is a righteousness about good photojournalism that grabs one’s emotions. Good photojournalism exposes the wrongs in the world and helps us feel like someone is watching out for us. Someone who is acting to try and protect us, to support us. Someone who creates hope that the world can change.
Against this backdrop, as the world swirls around us, the best fine art landscape photography helps us take a time out from all of today’s craziness, it provides a moment of escape that helps us feel human again. Feeling that we can appreciate the wonders and the beauty of nature even if we can’t be there. Feeling that there are still places like this that exist, that honor the sanctity of the natural world and its beautiful plant and animal inhabitants, untouched by man.
Humanity’s emotional connection to nature is universal, cross-cultural and powerful. My connection with nature knows no borders. My images span the coasts, the oceans, the mountains, lakesides, deserts, canyons, valleys and forests across this country, and lands on other continents. These include places like Brazil, St. Lucia, Egypt, Italy, Jamaica,Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Portugal, Canada and many other places.
After moving to the Los Angeles area from the East Coast, I became enthralled with the beautiful, pure, vibrant and saturated blue and green colors nearly everywhere I hiked and traveled in California. These colors ignited renewed feelings of happiness and gratitude in me as I traveled and photographed the land in places like Carizzo Plain, Sequoia National Park, Death Valley, Anza Borrego Desert, Santa Monica Mountains, the Malibu Coast and Conejo Valley.
My view is that photography is an endeavor to express one’s own feelings and emotions. The process of image creation is, at its best, not conscious or even rational, it’s one which flows from the image creator’s heart.
