The photographs are intended to represent some of grand scale and majestic beauty of the western landscape. Although I have done photography in many places all over the world, my primary interest with the panoramic pictures is the western United States. I used a wide view panorama camera because my own experience (and probably yours) of seeing the landscape comes in a wide view format. Traditional images sizes capture only small parts of this experience. I work almost exclusively with my Fuji Panorama camera. It’s a relatively large camera that uses lenses designed to cover an 8” x 10” negative --- although the film I use is approximately 2” x 7” in size. I normally work very quickly and often without a light meter in natural settings (at least until I’ve taken the first photo or two) because the light changes so rapidly in nature. I use both color negative film and color positive film depending on the range of light and time of day.
People often say my work looks much like a watercolor rather than a photograph. This is not accidental. In the first place I am drawn to scenes that have a painterly quality, especially where the light is concerned. Secondly, as I work with a scene I am moving it in the direction of a painting with my management of the light and other elements. A beautiful landscape is a complex fugue of light and shadow, shape and color, that moves the eye in predictable ways. Finally, my panoramas are typcially printed on a watercolor or other similar paper, often with a textured surface, that further enhances the painterly quality.
My images are so different from traditional photographs that I am often asked about the process. I do relatively little manipulation of my images but do “paint with light” in the scene to create a sense of space and grandeur, to move the eye to certain shapes or colors or, as a general rule, to attempt to share my experience in nature with the viewer. You may notice in the larger prints that the image does not deteriorate into a fuzzy or blurred grain structure as is common in many traditional images. I’ve never liked the “grainy/blurred character” as you stand close to larger photo images and will actually “blur” the image at times to keep this from happening. The effect is similar to what I did for many years in the darkroom with a piece of crinkled cellophane in front of the enlarger! The textured paper also adds some smoothing or subtle abstraction to the images.