Looking back on it, I see so much that brought me to where I am now and led me to the work that you’re looking at.

Perhaps it began with my father printing my baby pictures in his first darkroom. When I was a teenager he gave me free rein with his camera, and we built another darkroom together in the basement. He was remarkably patient with me when I spent my time down there bulk loading Tri-X film and mixing chemicals and contact printing when I should have been studying. And he taught me the essential fundamentals of aperture, exposure, and ISO that have not changed in the digital world.

Much of my understanding of proportion, line, and negative space developed during the thirteen years that I spent making jewelry. After my teenage alienation and I graduated from high school with three Ds and an F and a National Merit Scholarship, we hit the road. I spent my twenties silversmithing and selling jewelry at art fairs, with some hitchhiking around the country and hopping freight trains. And photography went dormant in my life for a long time.

It was decades before I understood that it had not died out of my life, but was a mighty tree with its own life and growth underground. Looking back, I realize that I was watering and fertilizing something that was hidden from my sight at the time.

My formal education took place in my thirties, and involved a degree in molecular biology with a second major in chemistry and a minor in math. This has affected so much of how I see the world. Deep below the images that I show you there is an understanding of the molecular details of how a moment of choice in my mind moves the finger that pushes the button that captures that image.

Twenty-five years of working wood taught me about shape and form. I built furniture and I turned live edge vessels on the lathe, and for seventeen of those years I had a full scale commercial wood shop, and my work was featured in books and magazines.

Perhaps it was the wilderness that taught me about color saturation and contrast. Consider the difference between a highly saturated high contrast image of golden aspens against a deep blue mountain sky, and a flat contrast image of a landscape in a soft mist with low color saturation. I go to the wilderness for many reasons, and it has given me so much. I once spent seven months living alone in a tent in the desert. This brought tremendous serenity into my life, and it was a peak experience for me.

My personal interests include dance and athletic activities; a lot of climbing, biking, back country skiing, llama packing sorts of things. I once rode my bicycle across the United States as part of a large supported tour. Afterward the organizers asked what had kept each of us going in the rugged moments when we thought about quitting. The truth is that it never occurred to me to quit. I just kept on peddling. It seems like an important aphorism to me: Keep On Peddling.

And now, after decades of nurturing and developing something that I did not see at the time, the tree has burst forth into my sight. I do my work and I create my art, and I let my grandchildren take photos and videos with my iPhone. It lights up my world to watch them jumping up and down and giggling with excitement. And I make no effort to share my artistic or technical wisdom. Perhaps someday they’ll show an interest.