Me

I am a photographer and educator living in Southern California.  I teach photography and lead photo adventures for the Creative Photo Academy at Paul’s Photo in Torrance, California.  Like most photographers, I frequently work on specific projects with defined themes or story lines, but on any given day the subject matter will be whatever I find interesting in the moment.  Sometimes it’s a reflection of something meaningful, sometimes it’s just for giggles.  Suffice to say, I simply try to make interesting pictures of my world.  Hopefully, that will do.

This Site

Composing a statement of artistic intent is a time-honored tradition intended to inform the viewer and torture the artist.  Keep it simple for the sake of accessibility and risk undercutting the seriousness of the effort, or go deep trying to explain the hidden meanings of some obscure slice of life, and come across as pretentious (as if invoking Edward Weston on the Home page isn’t already pretentious, right)?

When contemplating how to organize this site, I thought of Weston’s quote about art.  Straight forward and elegant in its simplicity, to create interest he insisted we focus on two things: clearly identify a subject, then make it look good. 

In photography, we use composition to create interest.  We use graphic elements such as horizon, space, light, shadow, color, lines, shapes and patterns, and organize them around a subject and place them all within a frame.  Organizing the site by these compositional Elements allows me to share a cross section of my work.  The subject matter and the available elements will vary from one image to the next, but the goal is always the same: create some interest.