Artist Statement

My interest in sharing the beauty of the natural world around us is the driving force behind the photographic images included in this gallery show. Macro photography shows us beauty beyond what the eye can perceive and reveals many tiny wonders that occur unnoticed in the world around us. Landscape photography, on the other hand, “immortalizes” beautiful scenes that we may, or may not, notice as we hurry through our day-to-day existence.

It fascinates me that a picture can capture a moment that may never have been seen in exactly the same way by anyone else. Rather than manipulate the images captured by my camera, I prefer to show them as taken, with nothing more than minor cropping and simple enhancement of color to more closely approximate what my eye saw when I took the image. Digital photography has freed me from worrying about the cost of printing images and has allowed me to experiment and take as many images as necessary to achieve the desired result.

My interest in photography goes back two generations in that both my paternal grandfather and one of his sons, who was also my godfather, were professional photographers. My grandfather had a studio in Houlton, Maine for many years and my uncle and his wife owned and operated Porter Studios and Photo Supplies in Falls Church, Virginia until they retired. Although I never met my grandfather, I own many family photographs taken by him and passed down through other family members.

As for my uncle and his wife, it is to them that I’m most grateful for starting me on the path to exploring the natural world through photography. During the time I lived with them while attending undergraduate school at The American University, my uncle gave me increasingly complex cameras with which to experiment. We frequently sat down with my photos and discussed the pros and cons of various images. He taught me a lot and would have loved to see my work displayed here.

From those early beginnings, and a love of art that goes back as far as I can remember, I continued through the years picking up and putting down various cameras as well as occasionally picking up brushes and oils to render a favorite photograph on canvas. Since retiring two years ago from the National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research at the National Institutes of Health, I’ve had plenty of time to rediscover my love of photography. I hope you enjoy my efforts in this show.