photography

I first began to photograph in 1972. My work was primarily black & white, using 35 mm and 6 x 6 cameras. Many thanks to Stuart Thomas and the late William Barksdale, two of the best teachers and role models anyone could have. I've studied at Mercer County College in New Jersey, The Center for Photographic Studies in Louisville and earned a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City.

I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about whether or not my approach to photography has changed since making the switch from b&w film to digital. I don't it has.The most obvious difference is that I'm now working in color. But when I'm looking through the viewfinder, I don't see in color, just as when composing with a film camera I did not see in black and white á là AA. What I see are one or two primary objects / people; the secondary elements that fill the rest of the frame quite often are just a blur. Those few times that I've tried to compose with color in mind, the results have uniformly been boring.

Unlike other photographers, switching to a digital camera did not involve a lot of anguished thought. I simply needed such a camera to better service my web clients. Once I realized the quality of the output, the decision to relegate my film cameras to the dustbin was made.

I am represented by the Exposed Gallery of Art Photography in Delmar, New York. I am also Photo Editor for Green Pages, the newspaper of the Green Party of the United States and a contributing photographer for Main Street, an alternative newspaper published in Cambridge, New York.

The photograph above is a portrait of Matthew Olszak, an extremely talented photographer who died at too young an age.