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I have been involved with art all my life. I have been drawing, painting or creating in some manner for as long as I can remember. I have been frustrated with almost every medium that I have been introduced to. That is until I was introduced to the 35mm SLR in a camera and lighting class at the Art Institute of Portland. Up until that point I felt that my creative vision was being subdued, I could not convey what my minds eye saw. Photography was the medium I had been missing. I fell in love with it right away. Over the last several years I have immersed myself in everything related to photography. In a sense I have become obsessed with the medium. I have taught myself everything from controlling the exposure to capture my vision, to color management in the digital darkroom.
I started out shooting color transparency film. My favorite was Fuji Velvia. I loved the saturated colors and the punchy contrast it produced. I moved on to digital with the purchase of a Nikon D70. I was hooked all over again. No longer did I have to wait for my film to be processed and hope that my exposure was correct. I now had instant feedback. An unfortunate side effect of this is that I became a habitual “chimper” always looking at the image in the LCD screen and making an ooh and ahh after each image. I finally got over the novelty of that. Although I still let out a few ooh’s and ahh’s now and then. My main use of the LCD now is to check the histogram for proper exposure and to check my composition. There is nothing like capturing a fleeting moment and knowing that you got it right, right there in the field.
My equipment of choice is the Nikon D2X, which is a 12.4 megapixel 35mm DSLR. I compliment it with the Nikon 12-24 AF-S DX f4, Nikon 17-55 AF-S DX f2.8 and Nikon 70-200 AF-S VR f2.8 lenses. I will on occasion use the Nikon 400mm AF-S f2.8 and Nikon 500mm AF-S f4 lenses for distant subjects as well as the Nikon 105mm AF-S VR f2.8 micro for close-up work. Once I have captured my images in the field I will take them home and process them in my digital darkroom. My digital darkroom is made up of an Apple Macintosh 2.0 GHZ dual core G5 with 4.5 GB’s of RAM. I use dual Lacie Electron Blue 22” CRT monitors for viewing my images, which I calibrate on a regular basis. My studio uses controlled lighting to ensure consistent results. Prints that are smaller than 13” wide are output using an Epson 2400 printer and any prints over 13” wide are output using an Epson 7800 printer. Both of these printers are the state of the art in output devices. They use the new Epson Ultrachrome K3 ink technology which ensures the highest standards in print permanence and expanded color gamut. The ink set uses 3 black inks to ensure a neutral B&W print. The permanence rating for these inks is over 100 years for color and 200 years for B&W prints. I use only the finest papers to create my prints. My paper of choice is the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308GSM, it is a heavy weight archival cotton rag fine art paper. I then apply a protective spray from Hahnemuhle which makes each print highly resistant to water and scratches and improves its UV resistance. I find that this combination of ink set and paper produce prints that are far superior to traditional silver halide prints.
I have come to fully embrace the digital revolution that is sweeping the photographic industry. The advent of digital has not made photography less of an art form, as some traditionalists would argue. It has evolved the art form to a new level. In fact Ansel Adams once said "I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them."
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