A Personal Philosophy
(or why I photograph and what I try to achieve)
Calling it a philosophy is definitely giving the concept delusions of grandeur when it comes to why I photograph. Like many before me I was a hobbyist, enamoured more of the process than the picture. But if you study the technical, you can't help but be exposed to the artistic, and somewhere along the line, that became more important to me than the camera.It was a long painful process with many blind alleys but for many years now I have appreciated the fine image. FIrst I learned to appreciate the fine points of composition, the relationship of the various parts of the image, to each other and to the edges of the image. In time, I used what I'd seen to compose my own images ever more carefully. I first saw, then attempted to replicate the subtle tonalities of a fine print. I tried to capture the grand landscape in dramatic lighting, but had neither the time nor the energy to do it as well as many others. I found I could do more with the more ordinary, the mundane, the overlooked. This often involved what I call the middle landscape, neither close up, nor miles away. My usual subjects are most often within a stone's throw of my camera.
