Smarch Weather

Portland Headlight. Canon 5D Mark IV. F/8.0 1/125 ISO100 50mm

Spring has finally arrived here in New England!

You wouldn’t know it, though.

Temps are still hovering in the low to mid 50s for the most part. With a decidedly unpleasant chill from the humidity, periods of rain, and strong breezes.

I had some unexpected time off early this month. I booked a night in Portland in the middle of the week so I could visit Cape Elizabeth the following morning.

I’ve photographed iconic Portland Headlight multiple times over the last eight years. A composition from my first outing there back in 2017 graces my home page.

As I recall, that was a quite calm summer day, with mainly clear skies.

On this occasion, I was hoping that the expected gusts of up to 40 mph would create some dramatic waves crashing into the rocks below the light house.

I did see one or two decent sized waves of maybe 8 or 9 feet.

Sadly, my camera kept shutting down in the sub-freezing morning temps. Almost always right when the best action was unfolding against the shoreline.

I suspect that my camera battery drained a lot faster than normal in those conditions. I eventually put a fresh one in and had no issues after that.

I also think I should have visited at high tide later in the day instead of in the morning.

And I’ve since learned that there’s a website that provides surf forecasts for coastal Maine that I can monitor to get a bead on days where things might go off the rails.

On the plus side, I had the light house entirely to myself for the something-like 2.5 hours I spent photographing.

I played around an awful lot and took both long exposures and faster compositions.

Honestly, I get a bit bored standing around at the tripod. I think that I managed about an hour of that in this instance. Once I packed the tripod back up in its bag, I didn’t use it again.

I also captured scenes from the right, left, and nearly dead on. And I used three different lenses to change up how prominent the light house is in the scene.

I took photos with numb fingers and shaking hands on my phone, too. I firmly believe that the best camera is the one you have handy, and phone photography is extraordinarily good today.

There were still patches of snow on the ground, which I captured in some of the images I came away with.

Also lots of thick ice on the path on the left-hand side of the complex. After testing that for a minute or so—there were guard rails I could grab onto—I deemed it unsafe to continue down to one of the well-worn vantage points.

Regardless, I came away with a good number of captures that I very much like.

The photo I’ve selected—with help from a good friend to narrow things down—is one of the last I took before packing it in.

Upon reflection, I’m noticing a change in my aesthetic over the last couple of months.

The compositions that are speaking to me most are those that are close in. Kind of the opposite of what you’d expect in landscape photography!

I think photos like this work well because they drop you right into the scene. You could be there with me and immediately understand why I’m taking the photo in that spot.

Photo details are in the caption.

Door of Mysteries

It’s been quite the first winter in New England.

Temps dropping into the single digits at times. Lots of wind. A fair amount of snow.

Most of that has melted as of this week.

And we’re seeing mid 40s to low 50s during the day.

A stark contrast from just two weeks ago or thereabouts when we had our last significant accumulation.

I’ve been forcing myself to get out and photograph more lately.

February’s composition was a lovely find on one of these excursions.

I frequently take Church Street home on my walks. It’s a narrowish road that, you guessed it, runs past one of the many places of worship in my city.

Without doing more homework, I’m guessing this was one of the first church’s built here, as there are a ton more that are far grander.

I don’t give this particular scene much thought most days. I prefer the view on the other side.

But I was quickly captivated by the stark contrast between red door and frozen ground on this occasion in the early morning hours.

I also rather like the line of snow framing the stone archway.

I took photos right then and there on my phone, and I rather liked the results.

But I also wanted to get something on my dedicated camera and returned to the spot later in the day.

I thought that the light would be soft enough by then, but I was mistaken. Lots of bright sun causing the tree out of frame in the church yard to cast a strong shadows on the door.

There was a decent amount of cloud cover, however, so I managed to grab some frames that didn’t include the silhouette of tree limbs.

I feel like there could be quite a lot going on behind the weathered door. It screams keep out.

Or perhaps only a chosen few get to glimpse what lays on the other side.

Red is such a powerful color. It tends to dominate scenes. And it can evoke a lot of different feelings.

Passion, of course. Warmth.

Also aggression. Violence. And so on.

I wonder what this arresting scene conjures for different people.

Transition

My first share of 2025.

Full disclosure: I captured this on a rather misty morning at Block Island back in October of last year.

I simply couldn’t fit the composition in among the 12 spots I’ve allotted myself to share.

I’ve also not been able to get out and photograph since the year began, for a myriad of reasons.

So I’m glad I had this one (and others, in fact) in hand to put out into the world.

I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts how much I hate feeling the sand between my toes.

I hope you can feel the grittiness in the foreground of this scene as much as I do.

I think there’s a striking contrast between that and the swirling ocean. With the rocks nicely dividing the two areas of the photo.

The rocks also add a bit of mystery and drama. They’re not entirely visible. Rather, they jut out of the tide as it moves to shore and recedes again.

A Little Bit of Lagniappe

The title for this month’s post is possibly redundant.

Lagniappe, a word with roots in South American Spanish and French, is often translated to mean a little something extra.

So you could argue that I’m saying a little bit of a little gift or something along those lines.

No matter.

My first holiday season in Rhode Island came with snow.

Not a whole lot, mind. Just enough to cover the ground well and coat tree branches, the many wreaths hanging on doors of homes and businesses, and so on.

The icing on the cake to the five months I’ve spent here, indeed.

Naturally I had to go out and photograph while the winter storm was upon us. And I wasn’t the only one enjoying the atmospherics.

One young woman—possibly an art student on her way to or from class—brightly told me while I was moving from one scene to the next that it was a lovely day for photography.

I saw another person later that evening out with their camera. I briefly chatted with him as I was setting up for a shot.

I ended up taking more photos with my phone than I did with my camera.

That’s often the case for me these days.

On this occasion, I decided I’d go through the process of unpacking my gear, positioning my tripod, and all that only when I saw a scene that I thought required it.

Doing so kept my gear relatively dry.

And it gave me more time to take in the weather and scenery.

While the snow wasn’t particularly heavy, it was thick enough to allow me to play around with long exposure.

I’ve seen other photographers use falling snow to great effect in their winter compositions.

Here’s my take on that genre in an urban setting.

Please feel free to comment on the image.

I’ll briefly reflect on what the year has been like photography wise before closing this blog post out.

I think that choosing to share something once a month has mostly been the right choice for me. My free time has been extremely limited over the past two months in particular.

The downside is that I ended up with more photos that I thought were worth sharing than I could post.

There are ways around that, of course.

I can put some of them in my galleries at my website and have done that once or twice already.

I’ll end by saying that I’ve been around long enough to know and appreciate that this time of year means many different things to different people. And that it might not be a happy time for whatever reason.

Nevertheless, I hope that you’ve had moments of peace, joy, quiet contemplation, gentleness, or something more buoyant than burdensome.

I look forward to sharing more photography with you in 2025.

Into the dark

Autumn at Block Island

I’m going to keep this post quite brief.

If your heart and mind have been burdened the way mine have this turbulent season, I hope that this scene of autumn color overlooking the end edge of Block Island brightens them a little, even if only for a fleeting moment.

The Romance of Twilight

Y’all, the spooky season is just about upon us.

Houses and public buildings look quite festive, and I’m here for it.

Also chillier weather at times, which I’m decidedly not here for. But that’s what I get for moving to New England.

And truth be told, I feel like for the most part it’s been eerily warm. It hit 70 something this afternoon. A record…

October has had its highlights and low points. I’m going to skip over the latter in this post. In the grand scheme of things, they don’t matter too much.

I got to travel quite a bit around New England early on in the month, and that’s a privilege that brings me joy.

I’ll be sharing something from those adventures. Hopefully next blog post in November.

I’m also going to “skip ahead” past a couple of outings.

This brings me to today’s composition, which I made back in the third week of September.

We haven’t been getting much rain here since that weekend.

In fact, the region is having trouble with brush fires on account of it being so dry.

That day, though, delicious rain bathed the area up until about 4 PM before stopping.

This created intriguing atmospherics all over the city, with patches of water pooling on the pavement that I wanted to take advantage of.

I scanned everywhere for what I was after: the soft glow of faux gas lights shimmering on the ground.

Finding an ideal spot was exceedingly difficult, even in the historic district very close to where I reside. Cars, powerlines, garbage cans, mail boxes, and numerous other distractions were typically present everywhere.

I also still didn’t have a 50mm lens that evening (spoiler alert: I do now!). I’m not sure that mattered in the end given the previous statement. But I nonetheless found myself wishing I had that in my kit.

In any event, I used my 85mm once I settled on a place after walking for maybe 1.5 miles or so. This allowed me to cut out much of what I thought would take away from the scene I was envisioning.

I adore what I was able to produce, and I excitedly shared the photo privately with some friends after I had completed post-processing on the best ones.

Many thanks to Heather, a good friend who has been a fierce supporter of my work over the last eight or nine years (!). She described the feeling the image evokes so eloquently when she told me, “you captured the romance of twilight.”

Hence the title of this blog post AND of the composition.

Heather is a talented artist herself, so her compliment means all the more to me.

Not gonna lie: I’ve become a little obsessed with the kind of dreamy reflections and warm highlights you see all the way through this one. Since that magical September evening, I’ve yearned for similar conditions each time I go out.

And I’ve had capturing that whimsical shimmer in the back of my mind in places where before I might not have stopped to look for it.

I got at least one on a beach in coastal New Hampshire one misty morning whilst driving and traipsing around the region.

Not sure if that one will be my next share. But it’s a strong possibility.

The peace of the ancestors be upon us all tomorrow as the veil thins and we harvest the bounty of our labor. Until next time.

National Seashores

Great Beach Hill

September flew by, y’all.

I mentioned in my last post that I’m working on adding a newsletter section to my website.

I’ve made decent progress on that.

If you check my home page, you’ll see a subscription section at the very bottom where you can sign up.

I did basic tests (e.g., I signed up myself) and added bits like a customized confirmation email that goes to your inbox, which gives you complete control over whether you want to join up or not.

However, the newsletter itself isn’t quite ready to go live.

The short story is that there are a bunch of different things under the hood to make communicating with subscribers work that I don’t have sorted out just yet.

I managed to get out a few times to compose photos over the last 30 days.

As a result, I’m a few sessions “behind” on sharing my work.

I don’t consider that a bad thing.

For one, I feel really good about dialing back going through the selecting-and-editing-and-writing-a-blog process to once a month.

Also, having a couple of images in my pocket, so to speak, gives me breathing room for times when I won’t be able to get out for whatever reason (I’m slightly shivering at the thought of what winter in New England might be like).

One of the places I visited this month to photograph is Cape Cod National Seashore.

This is a sprawling park system covering a 40 mile area with no less than six beaches to take in.

After a quick stop at the main visitor’s center, I gassed up and headed to Great Island in Wellfleet.

From there, I walked something like two miles to Great Beach Hill.

The trail between these two points meanders through marsh and woodland.

I also had the option of visiting the remains of a tavern that mariners during colonial times used between whaling trips.

The trail is sporadically marked, and I questioned whether I was still going the right way more than once.

And I imagined what it might have been like for early settlers traveling through what felt like a pretty isolated area to me.

I joked with friends that the path, well away from civilization even today, would have been perfect for highwaymen to lay in wait, murder unsuspecting travelers, loot them for valuables, and dump their bodies in the salt marshes.

Great Beach Hill gave off very windswept vibes.

I used that to my advantage a few times as I was composing scenes, as I wanted to hint at the wind blowing through the long grasses on the hill.

I took the photo I’m sharing towards the end of the outing.

I didn’t see any highwaymen on the long jaunt back to my car.

But I did note that my 60L camera bag is just too much for me to deal with on these kinds of outings where I need to hike several miles each way to remote locations.

I have since downsized to a 35L bag.

My back is a lot happier, and the bag will still hold everything I need to bring with me while distributing the weight better.

I also saw one far younger guy who was making his way barefoot along the rough trail with his girlfriend to the beach.

Just the type of equal parts bravado and foolhardiness that highwaymen would likely notice.

New Shoreham

I’ve haven’t shared any photos on my website since mid June.

There’s a pretty big reason for that.

I moved to Rhode Island in July.

I’d been wanting to make a change for a long time. I initially had my sights on going much farther away, in fact.

That didn’t work out for a few different reasons.

I’m pleased this much smaller move has been good so far.

Even that took a ton of work, let me tell you.

While I’ve been getting out to photograph when I’m able, I’ve been putting off sharing my work, if I’m honest with myself.

I’m not going to get into that here, however.

One of the perks of the Ocean State being so tiny is that I have easy access to a ton of scenic places along the East Coast.

I’m one trip behind as far as sharing goes, even, as I was out and about yesterday photographing at National Seashores.

Today’s share is from a day trip I took to Block Island and New Shoreham a few weekends back.

It’s a small affair something like 14 miles out from the mainland. Ferries run year round, with fewer time slots in the autumn and winter months.

Or you can fly in.

I didn’t have a ton of time on this particular outing and hiked out to the bluffs on the Southeastern side of the rugged atoll.

I’ve been working out but am nowhere near in the kind of shape I need to be if I want to keep doing this and minimize sore shoulders, let alone the risk of injury.

Some pretty amazing views. Not exactly easy to get anything that doesn’t have people and / or buildings in it, however.

I initially envisioned posting something on my website once a week.

That isn’t viable at present, however.

So I’m going to aim for once a month.

I also plan to put together a newsletter / email section on the website, so that people who want to view my work can subscribe to that and not worry about manually visiting to see what I’m up to.

Hopefully that won’t be a big to do and I can get it running in September.

More photos to come soon-ish

Adventure Time

Barnegat Light

We’re nearly half way through 2024.

Not gonna lie: I’ve had little time for photography.

And bluntly, little motivation.

A lot of that is me trying to keep up with work, seeing what is going on in the US and around the world, and so on.

The usual stresses we all deal with each day.

It does seem like a lot more to cope with over the last several months as we approach an election in which the US will choose democracy or fascism.

And in which the fascist side will do all they can to take power even if we do collectively reject them.

Some getting older stuff making its way into my life, too. I’ve started wearing contacts, for instance.

Glasses when my very narrow eye sockets aren’t cooperating.

Case in point: the contact for my left eye popped out this morning after rubbing said eye.

So I’m a contact pirate today, since I don’t want to have an uneven number of left and right contacts to work with going forward.

I’m still not a pro at putting the contacts in. I probably still spend 10 to 15 minutes each morning on average.

Little time wasters like this leave me wanting to spend hours each day doing nothing to balance it all out.

By the time the weekend gets here, I’d rather rejuvenate and recover than go on a strenuous hike with lots of camera gear on back.

I did make myself do all that on Friday, since I took the day off from my day job.

I’m moving to New England in about 6 weeks. I’m definitely excited.

Also feeling a little nostalgic.

With that in mind, I drove down to Long Beach Island and spent the day between there and nearby Barnegat Light.

I last visited the area in May of 2018. I came away with a nice black and white composition of Barnegat Light on that occasion.

Of course I took photos with my phone while I was puttering around LBI. But I opted not to lug my camera pack around with me during that part of the day.

I reasoned, correctly, that I’d needlessly sweat for several hours and not see anything that moved me enough to want to stop, rummage through my bag, set my tripod up, and compose something.

So I just leisurely strolled on the beach and around town while occasionally stopping to take a quick photo on my phone or message friends.

I got to pet two beautiful dogs their human was walking. I stopped for salt water taffy and a sub for a picnic lunch before heading out.

I was more business like when I got to the light house around 1 PM or so and scouted the park for likely compositions.

This was not quite so straightforward given the time of day I arrived and the number of people who were there.

I grew impatient more than once waiting for slow movers to wander out of frame at the first place I set up.

I was able to get it down to just one person in frame but couldn’t do better.

I might try using AI to see if I can get rid of that lone figure.

I also think Photoshop might have a lot of difficulty with that, as the person is leaning against guard rail.

So I moved farther away to see if that would present me with a view that eliminated any tourists.

:: In my best Lumpy Space Princess voice:: And then the drama started.

I’ve been at this for about 15 years now and do most things by rote. Including checking that I have secured my camera to my tripod before turning away from it.

I did check it on this occasion.

So I thought my camera was secure.

It wasn’t.

Maybe a second after I went to put things back in my pack, I heard the sound of my camera smacking into rock.

It fell lens first, as you might expect.

The “bad” news: my nifty 50mm was destroyed in the fall.

That isn’t upsetting at all. My first thought was that I got more than my $50 dollars worth out of it, as I had bought it used 10 years prior.

The okay news: my far more expensive camera works and did not take any serious damage.

However, the battery door no longer stays shut on its own.

This particular mechanical problem is common enough that I was able to buy two replacement battery doors on Amazon when I got home for like $10 each.

I was surprisingly calm in the moment.

In saying that, I’m imagining that younger me would have been extremely upset before checking things over and still extremely upset after assessing the damage.

Younger me, though, doesn’t have the life experiences I’ve accumulated over the last 20-30 years.

I’m not going to pretend I would be happy about having to replace a camera I paid $3200 for if the damage had been more extensive than a flimsy piece of plastic that springs to latch the battery door.

But I’ve been through far, far worse.

I ended up taking photos handheld for about another 15 to 20 minutes. I was able to hold the battery door closed with the palm of my right hand and still steady the camera well enough to get sharp photos.

I also had to switch to my 85mm lens.

I considered using my 24mm, too, but that would have made the lighthouse much less prominent. And I would have ended up with people in frame.

I’ve also taken to using my camera phone as a back up in case for whatever reason photos on my dedicated rig don’t turn out.

I came away with several decent compositions that way. Though with people in frame…

I’m not going to get into what I like and don’t like about this photo. Overall, I’m pleased with what I was able to get after a rookie mishap.

Removing People Using AI

Before I get into today’s share in depth, I thought I’d point out that I’ve changed my signature in my photos. It’s the same one I’m using across my website.

I paid a modest fee for the one I was using before, which you’ll see in one of the three images I’m comparing in today’s blog entry. It was based on my own handwriting but done by someone else.

The one I’m now using is all me. I’ve updated it a bit to have a little more flare while also adopting a more minimalist capital G.

So, like it or not, AI is here—it’s been around in photography for around 8 or 9 months with adobe’s generative fill tool in Photoshop—and it’s not going away.

There’s already lots of debate and outrage at the implications regarding how AI might be used in other industries, film being the most obvious one.

And worries about AI being used to spread misinformation in a world already hyper saturated with misleading content aimed at influencing us in one way or another seem justified.

In photography, we’re at a point where we might want to question the authenticity of a photo. Some things we might want to consider on this front include:

How was the photo manipulated using AI? Or how much of it? Does this matter to us? Does it diminish the quality of the art?

Is the place we’re looking at in a landscape image real? What if after seeing the composition we decide to go there, only to discover after carefully planning part or all of our trip around that and getting to the place that we’ve been tricked?

Did the photographer even take a photo, or did they generate a dramatic landscape without ever getting up from their computer?

To at least address the manipulation of a photo question, I’m not too worried.

The truth is that photos have been altered, edited, or whatever for much of the existence of the art form.

Ansel Adams wasn’t the first to apply dodge and burn in order to darken and lighten specific areas of his compositions, but he made it into an art form in and of itself.

I do think the likelihood that some people will use AI in photography unethically is high. But I also think, as with anything else, that will be an extremely small minority of people.

Most photographers I follow and study, like me, are pretty particular about making compositions appealing in camera. Post processing is meant to bring out what is already there.

AI will help with workflow and can make turning a very good photo into an outstanding one less of onerous task.

Thanks for bearing with me on all that background before getting to the meat of today’s discussion.

The three images I’m sharing are all based on a single photo I took after hiking to iconic Delicate Arch in Utah back in 2021.

This first image is the original, unedited exemplar.

There are times when including people can lend drama to a landscape photo.

I suspect that can even be true if your intention is to make a subtle or not so subtle comment on what crowds of people waiting their turn to be photographed in front of something considered iconic says about humanity and modern life.

However, that was not my intention on this occasion, and there was a GIANT line of people that you cannot see out of frame at left.

I knew that would be the case just from parking my car when I visited, as I had to circle around for 30 minutes before I was able to get a spot.

Conditions weren’t ideal either, with long shadows creeping outwards from the sandstone towards where I was standing in the afternoon hours.

I played around with lightening those back when I first edited the image, with no success. I couldn’t improve upon that with AI either, though I’m still new to using it for this sort of thing.

Here’s my first effort at post-processing, without the aid of AI.

While images naturally vary a great deal depending on the kind of scene, the weather, time of day, and so on, I follow a standard workflow in general.

This consists of cropping if needed, applying a curve to the lighting, adding GND, Tonal Contrast, and Darken / Lighten Center layers to fine tune things, and cleaning up any distracting elements and/or stray artifacts.

I read years ago that if you’re spending more than 5 minutes editing, you’ve likely not taken a good photo.

That’s patently false, but I try to stick to it simply because I don’t want to agonize over my compositions.

All that to say I spent a LOT longer—probably around an hour--manually eliminating the people so that I could share something that looked close to “real” and wasn’t sellable in my opinion anyway.

I needed to google how to do all that using generative fill this AM.

Even while I’m a beginner when it comes to AI, I don’t think I spent more than 5 minutes removing tourists from the scene using Photoshop’s built in tools.

And there is much less “wrong” with the photo with AI taking the wheels, in my view. Though I still wouldn’t sell something like this.

In both the non-AI and AI versions, I know where things look off from using removal techniques. They’re in the same vicinity, in fact, since I was eliminating the same stuff in each instance.

I’m not going to go through that and instead invite you to see if you detect anything that looks weird.

I’ll end by saying I do think there are very appropriate uses for AI in photography.

For one, it does a very good job of getting rid of imperfections in an image caused by dust on the sensor showing up as spots in the photo, deleting distracting or unpleasing snow or rain drops, and the like.

There are also legitimate reasons why someone would want to erase people from their personal photos.

Think those occasions where you’re on vacation and capture a great memory that would be an otherwise perfect photo except for the person who was walking by and wandered into frame, and no other photo has you looking just right to your eye.

From a professional standpoint, you don’t have the consent of people occupying the background of your photo.

Everyone understands that privacy ends when you’re in public areas. Hence the paparazzi business being so lucrative and technically legal if rather distasteful.

But my goal typically isn’t to photograph anyone so that they are recognizable in my work.

With AI, I can now practice my craft more ethically when possible and appropriate while making a composition I might otherwise not have been able to at times when I’m also a tourist like everyone else.

Until next time!

Memories of Spring

Happy Mardi Gras, y’all!

Fat Tuesday in these parts was accompanied by snow that started in the wee hours and continued through late morning.

Not really digging it, though my area didn’t get the worst of the silent storm by any means.

While not the primary reason I decided to launch this website, I do plan to sell prints in order to support my work as a photographer.

With that in mind, I’m sharing a photo of a limited run of just five prints that I am offering on a first-come, first-serve basis. The first in the series is already spoken for.

I happened to make this composition on a late spring day.

The title Memories of Spring came to me of its own accord, and it fits rather well with the mood here as the mid Atlantic region shrugs off wintery weather and thinks hopeful thoughts about warm spring days to come.

My mood at any rate!

Prints for this run are on semi-gloss Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique II paper and are 13x16 in. They can be trimmed to 11x14 to fit standard frames. Printed area is approximately 9 x 12.

Each remaining print in the series is signed and marked as 2/5, 3/5 and so on.

All prints in this limited run are $100 + S&H. I will ship worldwide. Please allow up to 14 working days for prints to ship once I have received payment.

You can use the form section of the home page or on the contact page to get in touch with me. I accept PayPal and Venmo for purchases of this print.

I’m going to use similar text when I get the full blown online store up and running, but I think stating my philosophy on what you are doing when you are buying my work and how that factors into pricing is important to cover here.

Firstly, you aren’t paying for the paper and ink.

There’s a story about a woman seeing Picasso in a restaurant and asking him to sketch her.

It may or not be apocryphal or wrongly attributed to Picasso, and different variants of the story likely exist. I heard it told like this.

The anonymous woman says she’ll happily pay whatever Picasso asks. He proceeds to make a quick sketch of her on a napkin and then states that the price for his effort is $10,000.

I suspect the price also differs depending on the telling. A large sum in any case.

Shocked, the woman tells Picasso something along the lines of, “But that only took you 30 seconds!”

To which Picasso responds, “No. That took me my whole life.”

Whether you buy into this story as a real event or not, it illustrates my point.

Namely, when you buy one of my prints, you are paying for all of the technical know-how and aesthetic sensibility I have developed over the last decade and change.

And you are paying for how I have used that accumulated wisdom to produce the composition that arrives at your doorstep.

When you think of my service this way, the price point for one of these limited prints is low.

Here’s to spring when it arrives!

My First Blog Entry!

Welcome to those of you who are new here and to those of you who have followed me at my old wordpress site.

A brief introduction for folks who don’t know me is in order.

I’m Greg. I’m a professional writer during business hours and a landscape photographer when I’m not doing that.

I grew up in New Jersey and have lived up and down the Eastern seaboard. I also spent a decade in Louisiana before eventually returning to the garden state.

I’ve been snapping and sharing photos for the past 15 years or thereabouts. Places I’ve gone to photograph outside of my home base include the Smoky Mountains, upstate New York, Utah, and Maine.

On the international front, I spent about two weeks in Belize in 2022. I’ll be going abroad again in March of this year, so stay tuned for blog posts on that trip!

To get a better sense of who I am and why I do what I do, please check out the About Me page.

I’ve worked hard over the last month to get this website to a place where I felt like I could publish it.

While the site is “finished” in that sense, I will also be adding a great deal to it on an ongoing basis.

That will include a store where you can purchase my work!

Please feel free to inquire about prints before the store is up and running. I’ll be sharing a limited run I put together in an upcoming blog post with that in mind.

My custom when I write up a blog post has been to share a composition and discuss a relevant topic.

I don’t always reflect on the photographic process in my entries, though more often than not I do.

Sometimes I’ll get quite technical.

Others I’ll delve into a connecting subject, whether that’s a piece of literature the image reminds me of, a connection with a friend, the loss of a pet, what’s going on in the world, and so on.

Even when I’m talking about challenges I faced when putting together the final image that you get to see on your screen, I write in my natural voice.

Well, at least how I naturally sound on paper after spending a lifetime perfecting my unique voice.

On to the first photo itself!

As you can see, it’s not a single photo but a collage.

I initially intended to use it as the gallery banner image for this site.

A good deal of elbow grease went into making it, I can tell you.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get to the look I wanted in the current iteration of Photoshop and watched a ton of professional videos on how to put photos in shapes.

Those methods, while cool, weren’t really working for me.

What I ended up doing was make some frames and distort them into the resulting shapes. Then add images I had chosen and position them artfully within said frames.

I had some professional experience doing that sort of thing, though this was years ago, and it took me longer than I care to admit to remember how to do it!

After all that, I asked a good friend if they prefer the collage or a single image.

You can see for yourselves which one won out on my home page!

I’ll end this very first blog post with the expected but nonetheless very sincere kind of closing thought.

I am very excited to be launching this website and for you to be going on this photographic journey with me!