Why this site?


I’ve fallen in love with the Neutral Hills area. The typical reaction of most people driving through our neck of the woods is, “why the hell would anyone live out here?”

Because it’s beautiful.

It’s not an obvious beauty, but a subtle one that grows on you over time as the relationship deepens and you notice new things that you were oblivious to before. This site is about the Neutral Hills, but more than anything else, it’s about the relationship I’ve developed with this region, its subtlety, and its ever-changing character.

How would you describe your relationship with photography?


Did you ever try to hold your breath until you passed out when you were a little kid? Do you remember the red face, the ever-increasing sense of urgency, the giddiness, the panic? The frantic gasping and profound relief when you started breathing again?

Photography for me is like breathing for you. You’ll start to hear gasping sounds when I’m separated from my camera for too long. That’s my soul making the noise.

How do you find all the things/places you photograph?


I’m the only certified and experienced computer and network service technician within a fairly large area. This means that I drive around a lot on service calls. I generally travel with at least one camera on my person (usually a dSLR with a telephoto lens) so I can pick off a fair number of shots from the side of the road where I’ve pulled over. A large number of my images can be described as f8 and be there.

And when my soul starts to gasp I go for a drive. One of the original titles under consideration for this site was “Daily Drives” – sort of a riff on Diane Varner’s “Daily Walks”. I’ve bombed around the back roads of the Neutral Hills in one of my ratty old vehicles so often that Al Gore probably has my picture on a wanted poster for being a carbon emitter (not that I give a damn).

Do you do portraits?


No. I’m not accepting portrait clients at this time. While I enjoy creating portraits, I find dealing with paying portraiture clients aggravating (to say the least – a goodly number of them could use some fine-tuning with the business end of a tripod). I will continue to do portraiture in the future, but this will be strictly for personal, non-commercial projects.

I reserve the right to change my mind at some later date.

But aren’t you the co-author of a book on digital portrait photography?


The answer is still "no".

Why did you stop doing portraits?


You know how when you were growing up your parents were always pushing you to be a professional such as a doctor, lawyer, and the like? Yeah. Try taking a professional photography course sometime. The assumption is that you will take portraits and this is hammered home over and over and over.

So much so that I’ve got close to $7000.00 worth of professional lighting equipment, stands, light modifiers, and backdrops sitting in storage unused.

My dalliances with commercial portrait photography have not been helped out by the fact that I suffer considerable guilt over expensive camera and lens purchases. When you go five grand into the hole for a new rig there’s considerable pressure to earn that back, especially when your photography steals resources from your family.

At one point I even tried to write a book about portrait photography. I wanted to write a book about making the leap from film to digital instead, but my agent pushed me towards a book on portraiture as she felt it would be more marketable. So I tried and my lack of connection with the subject matter (along with some health issues) ultimately did me in. Thank God a capable writer and photographer named Catherine Jamieson jumped in to salvage the project. She does have a passion for portraiture and it really shows in her writing.

So I’m done with commercial photography of all types and honestly don't give a damn if the pictures I produce these days are marketable. The marketing jackasses can sit and spin for all I care. From now on I’m only producing the images that I feel compelled to as an artist.

While I’m no Ansel Adams, I do realize that I’ve attained a certain level of proficiency as a fine art photographer. It’s where my passion lies and what I intend to do from now on, even if doesn’t bring in an income. I’m done with trying to rationalize producing l'art pour l'art (art for art’s sake) to others.

Can you recommend a good portrait artist in the Neutral Hills area?


I'd love to! Her name is Kelly Crisp and you can e-mail her at or reach her by phone at 577-2780. Her Web site lives at www.kccreationsphoto.com

What about weddings? Will you do those?


No. No no no no no.

Hell NO!

Can I buy prints of your work?


Yes, absolutely. Every image on this site is available for purchase as a print. Please e-mail me at for more information.

What cameras/lenses did you use to create the photos on this site?


I really hate this question, which I am asked all too frequently, usually by people who are convinced that buying the same equipment I use will allow them to produce the same images.

Owning the most expensive photography equipment on the face of the planet won’t make you a better photographer. If you don’t have the eye and your composition is anything but, well, get used to hearing people snore whenever you show off your work. Giving a $10,000 whizz-bang camera with a $5,000 lens to an inexperienced photographer isn’t any more productive than handing a Stradivarius to someone who can’t play the violin.

Conversely, a skilled artist can produce breathtaking works of art using the simplest of cameras and the most dated of techniques. Artists like Wanda Scott with her collection of pinhole cameras and Mary Dixon who tends toward a 35 mm camera loaded with infrared film prove that it’s not the camera that makes the difference, but the hand holding it.

While expensive gear won’t make you a better photographer, it can make you a more productive one. An auto focus lens can be faster than a manual lens and will save you time. Using built-in TTL metering is often faster than pulling out a hand-held light meter and will save you time. Professional quality lenses will work better and faster under adverse conditions making for less missed shots. Hauling out a camera with an image stabilised telephoto lens and shooting hand-held is faster than setting up a camera with a non-stabilised lens on a tripod. Digital cameras allow one to shoot more pictures in an outing without the worries of missing shots while loading film bodies or the expense of wasted shots.

Time that is not spent fighting with equipment can be spent making more images. Time not spent in a darkroom laboriously perfecting a print is time that can be used behind a camera. Money saved on film and processing can be invested in seeking out new images, education, or upgrading gear.

Productivity is important to different people for different reasons. Some artists just want to spend as much time behind a camera making as many images as possible. Some are looking to keep their costs down so they can translate those savings into productivity in their non-photographic lives. Photographers who depend on their cameras for a living need pro-quality gear that will take a fair amount of abuse, is easily serviced, and that works under challenging conditions as their income is tied to their production (missed shots translate into missed income).

Whether or not you invest in higher-end gear depends on how important productivity is to you. There are those who forsake efficiency and newer technologies in order to fully pursue their own artistic vision, and I salute them for it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach.

In my own case, I have made a significant investment in my mostly professional grade equipment, which I refuse to list in order to satisfy the hardware fetishists. My time for photography is limited and I don’t want to spend what little free time I have fighting with my gear. The more productive my equipment allows me to be, the more opportunities I have to create images across a broader area, with as few missed shots as possible. This is the rationale that underlies my own equipment purchases, which are mostly focused on a purely digital workflow.

However, what works for me may not work for you depending on your own motivations. If you are a casual hobbyist looking to produce photographs with artistic merit, you can probably do so using equipment much less expensive than mine be it film or digital (I feel that both are valid mediums for artistic expression).

On any given day I can count on receiving at least one or two e-mails asking me which camera/film/lens I used for a specific photograph, as if owning the same piece of equipment will allow others to produce identical images. I find this to be almost as absurd as rushing out to purchase the same pots and pans that Wolfgang Puck uses in the expectation of achieving the same results he does in his kitchen.

What gear did I use to create a specific image? Even if I chose to answer the question, the answer wouldn’t be all that relevant to anyone who isn’t me. Those who are really interested in learning something are advised not to ask how I made a particular image, but to ask why instead. This is the more important question, and where learning about photography truly begins.