Current Printed Portfolio
Excited to share my current printed portfolio, as of May, 2017. Enjoy!
The Making Of: Carolina Beach I
Sounds a bit critical, but to me, composition is the single-most important element of a photograph. This particular image was composed a few times, while I balanced atop these piers, making subtle movements with the tripod, even moving to different piers (trying not to get wet), until I achieved the composition I was looking for. Then, ONE exposure was made of it, on a single sheet of film.
Putting the camera in the right position is everything...well not everything, but it's critical. Take the composition of Carolina Beach I (below), for example... That little nubby guy there. The one that juuuuust creeps into the frame of the final image below. Too much of it would be a distraction at the bottom of the frame. Had it not been included, there would be a visual void in its spot, and the first piling on the left would feel too close to the edge of the frame.
Without getting into a light quality discussion, camera placement, combined with lens choice is...well...everything in black and white photography. We can't rely on the beautiful colors of a sunset like this one to salvage wonky, unbalanced compositions.
Ballantyne's Framing & Art - New Bern
Hot new news: I'm now a resident artist at Ballantyne Framing & Art in New Bern, NC!
Come check it out. There are also awesome new paintings on display by Donna Nyzio, Jessica Singerman, Ed Macomber, and Shannon Semple.
Chamonix View Camera Feature
I've gone on and on to people about how awesome my 4x5 camera body is, and I'll do it here on the internet.
I own tons of gear...one of the best digital medium format cameras money can buy, which I love. BUT...nothing compares to my Chamonix. Nothing.
Each of their cameras is hand-made microbrew style in a small wood shop in Asia, and the build quality is unreal. The way I work in the field, I need the most rigid camera available, and even though this body weighs far less than others, it is so much more sturdy than any other brands' offering.
You can view the Chamonix Camera gallery page of other fine photographers by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.
NC Aquariums Exhibit
We just hung our newest exhibit at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, which runs April 1-June 30, 2017. Please check it out, if you have a chance.
The collection of photographs entitled PULSE focuses on how water shapes our world, as the tides are like the Earth's heartbeat.
The Aquarium is open seven days a week from 9-5.
Fresh Off The Press
Here's the online version of a recent feature in the February, 2017 issue of artGuide.
artGuide Feature
Here's a new feature in the February 2017 issue of artGuide. You can click the image to go to the full article, or click HERE to see more.
Ilford Feature!
Oh, yeah!!! Over the moon to have a photograph of mine featured on Ilford's website. If you're unfamiliar with Ilford, they are an England-based manufacturer of black and white films, photographic papers, and black and white chemistry. They've been around basically forever, and lived in the shadow of Kodak through film's hay day. Since Kodak's recent drastic shrinking, Ilford has emerged as the backbone of black and white film photography, which for photographers like me, is awesome, because although digital is a hundred times easier to work with, nothing...literally nothing can replace the way I use large format film.
So...anyway...Ilford featured one of my photographs on their site recently. Couldn't be happier...
NC Aquariums Exhibit
Absolutely flattered at the opportunity to have an upcoming exhibit at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores from April 1st through June 30th. I will be showcasing a bunch of new work that I'm excited to roll out.
More information will be available about the exhibit as it gets closer.
Atlantic Beach Show
Got the call for a last-minute opening for a show the other day. Opens tonight. Tight timeline, but we were able to turn some pieces around, and fill the walls.
Here's a teaser of what is showing.
The show is hanging through the month of February at St. Francis Episcopal Church on Salter Path in Atlantic Beach, NC. If you're in town, check it out! Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 9-5.
Q&A Week Three
What kind of gear do you use? All of my fine art work is photographed on 4x5 inch black and white film. I never shoot digital, because I feel that digital makes most photographers less focused. Film shooting is broken down into individual exposures. If you’re shooting a roll of 35mm, you have 36 exposures. It is quantifiable. With digital, you can have a card in your camera that may hold a thousand images. There’s less pressure to concentrate on what exactly you’re trying to accomplish.
When I’m in the field, I generally have about a dozen sheets of film with me, as film holders are bulky and heavy. In a year, I will make about a hundred exposures. Many photographers working digitally will make a dozen quick snapshots of their surroundings, just to look at the screen on their camera to see if the camera picked up anything they should actually photograph. When you have limited chances, you’re more likely to become more in-tune with your subject.
Q&A Week Two
Part two of an ongoing series of excerpts from interviews with magazines and art students. This week, we get a bit deeper into it...mainly about how critical I am about my own work.
How would you describe your work? Starting off, I think I was probably like most landscape photographers. I used the widest-angle lens I could, and I crammed as much of a scene through that lens as would fit. I think it was probably from seeing those vast Ansel Adams compositions. I also liked doing long exposures with water. I felt the movement broke up a scene nicely, and added a nice effect to it. Like any technique, though, it can be overused. I would experiment, but always keep in mind that I wanted my work to abide by certain aesthetics.
I’m the harshest critic I can be with my work, especially while out working in the field. If I’m not achieving a composition that feels good to me, I won’t even load film to take a shot. Once you expose a sheet of film, you have a connection to it. You want it to work, and this clouds your judgement. Nothing is going to magically happen when you process your film. That photo that wasn’t working when you pushed the button still won’t work after you process the film. The same goes with working digitally. A bad composition is a bad composition, no matter how many filters you add to it in Photoshop.
In your opinion, what makes photography art? I’ve kidded around with friends who are painters, telling them that they have it SO easy, because if there’s a telephone pole in their way, they don’t HAVE TO paint it. Kidding, of course...
Speaking on behalf of my own photography, working with large format is very deliberate. When you view my work for example, every bit of information in each photograph is exactly where it is in the image for a specific reason. I look at it as designing inside of a rectangle. Things need to be balanced. Even chaotic scenes need to find a center. It is a huge challenge, as cameras record exactly what they see, and when you strip colors out of an image, all you’re left with, really, is design. You can’t rely on the viewer to be in awe of your colorful sunset, or a blue sky or emerald water. Black and white photography, to me, is as technical of a visual process as you can get.
Q&A Week One
From time to time, I get requests from publications, blogs and students to answer questions for projects they're working on. The questions range from how and when I got into photography, to what cameras I use, and what-not.
So...in a bit of an upcoming series, I'm going to post a few snippets from these "interviews", as I go through how I operate, what I look for while composing photographs, and general thoughts and feelings about photography.
Here's the first installment. Enjoy...
What photographers from the past or present have influenced you the most? My high school photo teacher introduced me to Ansel Adams’ photography, and what I remember the most from his work was his light. Since I had just jumped into photography, I was learning things, and had found something to look up to, and there was something about the quality of light in many of Ansel’s photographs. Compositionally, they were also so well balanced. I think that it was motivating to see what was possible, which at my new beginning, was also very humbling.
Other than his work early on, I’ve never really followed other photographers, or studied how they do what they do. I just do my own thing, and I think that at this stage in my career, especially with the world being flooded with photographers, the more I stick to my personal vision, the more genuine my work feels. The viewer can see that…and many appreciate it. My work isn’t exactly trendy, so it doesn’t go viral on social media, but I’ve always steered clear of things that are popular. So, the little corner of the art world that I live in has a very low population, and I like that. I’m not competing with the cliché photographers who are all trying to emulate each other. My view is straight forward.
4x5: Behind the Scenes
Here's a look of working with large format cameras in North Carolina's Outer Banks.
I choose to work in this manner, as the large size of the negatives yields incredible detail and richness for my mural-sized enlargements.
Death Valley Reflections
Exactly five years ago today, two close friends of mine from college and I met in the Las Vegas airport, rented a car, and pointed it to Death Valley. What followed was three days of loooooong, amazing days of photographing the barren landscape of Death Valley, which, after six trips to in the last five years, remains my favorite place in the world to photograph.
Here are a handful of photographs from that trip (my second time ever there) for you to enjoy...
Special thanks to Christina Holmes and Rob Larson for making the trip extra awesome.
Isle of Palms
I don't mind shooting in the rain, but putting a big box camera up in the wind is always a challenge. There's a delicate dance of making sure you have enough depth of field in your photograph, and getting a shot off between gusts of wind. Otherwise...guaranteed blurry photograph. Every time. To top it off, you have to wait until your film is processed to find out whether you dodged the dreaded wind shake bullet.
It is rare that I will make two exposures of the same scene. I will usually pick a lens and place the camera in a specific location, and stick to it, making the slight moves necessary, based on location. What drew me to this location in the first place was the gradation in the sand in the foreground. It is so pale and lifeless, and played off of the overcast sky so well, and the silver ribbon of a tide pool cutting across the frame...with its dark edges just added so much subtle depth to the scene.
However, just out of the frame of the first composition, where the pool drained to the ocean, there were these subtle fingers and rippled sand foreground. I wanted to capture this scene, as well, and chose a wide angle lens, and a location to balance the immediate foreground with the sand's tone and texture. The aim was to show the water's course, without losing the feeling of the entire scene, which was being overpowered with this ominous, heavy sky. Composing it so it felt balanced, and included enough of all of the elements took several minutes, and required a few slight moves with the tripod to get the camera in the exact position where I had the composition I was looking for.
Then, I made one exposure.
A Study: The America
The schooner that started the age of modern sail racing: The America. Her replica was docked in Beaufort, NC early this fall, and I had the chance to make a few photographs of her. Here are a few favorites from eleven exposures made of her rigging.
Charleston-Bound
Excited to be heading down to Charleston this week to drop off a few pieces for an installation, and visit with the lovely Rebekah Jacob.
Here's a photo of the Morris Island light from a trip through Charleston this past March. Stay tuned for some photographs from the journey...
And now...a moment of zen...
Shooting at dusk under the moon in an area that's quickly becoming one of my favorites to photograph. Nothing beats the furthest reaches of the Outer Banks.