About The Work

Wheat Country, Eastern Washington; Silos

These images were captured in Eastern Washington over the last several years. I repeatedly traveled the same back roads during different times of the year to capture the landscape in all seasons. I was attracted to the quiet, desolate beauty of the wheat country landscape and I have tried to capture that feeling on film. In the darkroom, the images were printed using a lith developer and a warm toned paper (Foma, Fomatone MG) to produce photographs with a timeless and nostalgic quality. I never thought of myself as a classic landscape photographer, but the beauty of Eastern Washington’s wheat country keeps drawing me back and I see this series as an ongoing project.

Botanicals

The inspiration for the Botanical photo series was derived from my academic training in the biological sciences. Using a close-up lens on my Nikon 35 mm camera, I strived to capture the natural beauty found in the form and structure of the botanical specimans. In the darkroom I used a variety of printing methods to enhance the beauty of each subject. Some photographs were printed using a lith developer, while others were printed in a traditional way and then post-processed with selenium or gold toners to produce brown or cold blue tones. Many negatives were printed in several ways to find the best “look” for each subject.

Urban Portraits

The images in this portfolio were taken over a period of ten years as I wondered the streets of Portland and Seattle with my camera. The graphic portraits were found on murals and flyers attached to walls and telephone poles. Most images were captured with a Holga, but some of the earlier images were taken with a digital camera. I recently converted the digital images into digital negatives and printed them out as paper negatives for use in darkroom. Fitting for the subject matter, the paper negatives and the resulting prints produced a bold and graphic image.


The Writing On The Wall

These images were captured on a single building in Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood during the summer/fall of 2012. The building was slated for redevelopment and prior to construction it served as a canvas for expressing everything from a call for political action (Seattle Girl’s Army) to the absurd (Flesh Prisoner?). The images, posters and slogans changed daily, often covering each other.  As construction approached, a fence went up around the building to add another visual dimension to the urban landscape.  In the darkroom, I printed these images using a lith developer and a cold toned paper with a high silver content (Fotokemika, Varycon) to emphasize the bold and gritty nature of the venue and messages. 

Riding The Metro

The Riding The Metro series was captured in Seattle’s downtown bus/light rail Metro stations. The underground stations are a fascinating environment with harsh artificial lighting, dramatic open spaces, and the constant hum of people, buses, and trains in motion. My goal was to shoot the series using a slow camera shutter speed to capture the movement and kinetic energy of commuters in transit. The resulting images achieve a surreal and sometimes ghostly appearance.