Bear Creek Print

I guess you could say my relationship with photography began when I won a raffle prize of a Kodak Instamatic camera at a plumbing show (as my Dad and Uncle owned the local hardware store in a Chicago suburb). I remember taking that Instamatic to Mexico City and Acapulco on a high school Spanish club trip and shooting all the sights. As a graphic design student, my love of photography blossomed at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Studying photography under Esther Parada and Hans Schaal, I learned how composition, light, color and texture combine to bring about an image that speaks to the viewer. One of my major early self-assignments was to photograph the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada. I ended up carrying so much equipment that I made it to the press room without a press pass! I was fortunate to have some of those images accepted by a local Chicago gallery. In my later years, I began to focus on nature where I feel closer to everything. Among nature, I find a meditative state in which to capture nature’s vastness and the details that create visual awe or a wondrous abstract. As the master photographer Paul Strand once said, “I think of myself as an explorer who has spent his life on a long voyage of discovery.” As with Strand, I hope to keep exploring nature on a voyage of delightful discoveries.