To begin with a blank canvas and create anew is not an option for a photographer. The subject has it’s form, it’s hue. The creative opportunity lies in how the image is recorded. My challenge is to catch your eye and hold your attention. For a glance to become a gaze, to spark a thought.

– take a glance

As a child, cameras were an enigma: how could pressing the shutter release (that is what my grandmother called it) generate a picture? It had something to do with film and the drug store but it was all a mystery. Many answers came through a photography class in eight grade and a darkroom in the basement followed. Film, paper, chemicals. When college called, the camera sat on the shelf, the darkroom sat empty and my nose was in the books.

Why Kodak developed the sensor for digital cameras defies logic, in hind sight, but I’m glad they did. The sensor replaces film and somehow provides another path to an image. The initial image quality of digital cameras was something analogous to a dot matrix printer – not so good. But just as dot matrix printers were replaced by laser printers, ‘they’ developed sensors/digital cameras whose images rival film. The results are amazing and continue to improve. But what happens to the digitally compromised like me? Fortunately, “I get by with a little help from my friends”.

What is beautiful or interesting and merits having it’s image captured ‘is in the eye of the beholder’. Ones interests influence, guide or direct subject selection. My affinity for plants will be obvious. A gardener I am (flowers primarily) – nurture nature and one is rewarded. Due to the diversity of the Plant Kingdom, it is an endless source of material. Buildings and their frippery are another photographic interest, both on a large scale (shapes, patterns, angles and color used in the exterior design) and on the component level (doors, latches, windows, ‘gingerbread’). Other interests seem to manifest themselves in what my eye is drawn to. And I must admit to being an opportunist. I am not a landscape photographer but if I happen along one, I do my best. Wildlife is not a focus until it is there. Honestly, I ramble about looking for botanical or architectural subjects and see what I see. It seems my eye is drawn to oddities, anomalies or peculiarities.