My primary interest in photography is wild lands. My subjects are primarily the trees in their home forests. I search through the Northwestern Cascades’ soggy temperate rain forests or the dry eastern side of the Cascades seeking a compelling narrative unique to the challenges of place, time, and weather. They have a story and I want to tell it.  

 I have a history in these terrains. I am a child of wild lands and color. As my father was career US Forest Service, I was raised in the Appalachians, Rockies, Sierras and Cascades, our country’s finest remote lands. My mother grew up in Oklahoma on the edges of the dust bowl. She was an amateur painter who could find color in the oddest of places. My personal artistic journey began the day I saw the retrospective work “Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974”. I was stunned by the power of his images. 

 An accomplished artist once suggested to me that a worthy goal of art is to take something ordinary and make it interesting. Trees and forest are ordinary to be sure and I endeavor to make something of them beyond the simple documented scene on the camera view finder. So, I wander the landscape hunting for an emotive image that will speak to me, beyond just a tree, more than just a forest. 

 The subjects I seek show subtle ranges of color, sometimes emphasized when there but not easily apparent. I use contrasting colors to lift images brilliance. I want strong design but mindful of the surrounding “lay of the land”. My end goal is a luminous print that seems to emit light back to the viewer all the while telling a story. When the viewer sees my image, I want them to see ordinary trees and ordinary forests in a different but not so ordinary way.