Debra Shirley passed into the next life on September 29th, 2018. She was the foundation of our family and my wife, partner, lover and friend for twenty-eight years. She was a person of unusual sensitivity and exceptional character; fiercely intelligent, an accomplished actor, poet and creative artist, and a very caring and giving soul with an…
Part documentary photographic essay and part studio construction, the photographic collage is an interesting hybrid artifact. Particularly with the use of film negatives and prints, the process took on a challenging, almost accidental quality. The result could be mundane, disastrous, or the definition of the synergy of the creative art studio. The scale of the assembled…
The Panoramic Collage is a simple and effective method of deconstructing an image, sharpening your point of view and enlarging the camera’s viewfinder. For many years, I shot these collages on film, giving the process a mysterious and quasi-magical air, since you’d long left the shooting site by the time you saw the processed images and…
This dialogue was recorded on a cross-country tour a few of years ago, on the final day of our journey as we cruised through Yellowstone National Park. We spent most of our two days in the park replacing a tire after a dramatic high-speed blowout on the highway. The park was insanely crowded with traffic and…
Artists and photographers have used the Tryptich format for centuries to reinforce themes and refine their formal presentations. Related images and motifs have a revealing dynamic within the context of the work overall, and can clarify or obscure an artist’s concept. It’s an excellent tool to expose previously unseen elements and encourage an improvisational approach to…
Although in recent years artists and designers have relied more on computer programs and digital renderings to conceptualize their work, and less on the humble handmade drawing, I still prefer the old-fashioned method. Beautifully evocative of the finished work and the idiosyncratic personality of it’s creator, while still possessing the technical precision that sophisticated modern production…
This animated short film was created using a hybrid animation approach, stitching together thousands of digitally processed stills to make up individual scenes in the GIF format and then compiling those in video editing software. A musical score, sound effects and dialogue can also be added in the final edit. This video was a demonstration short…
The element of texture in still life and landscape photography is constant, dynamic and always shifting. A well crafted image has an uncanny ability to capture and communicate the subtlest of textural nuance. Here’s a few examples from images over the years, scanned from the original negative or slide.
In 1993, a Norwegian named Trygve Bauge brought the frozen corpse of his grandfather, Bredo Morstoel, to the tiny mountain town of Nederland, Colorado. Trygve and his Mother, Aud, had planned to create a cryogenics institute with a special place to indefinitely suspend Bredo’s body for future restoration. Instead, Trygve was deported for overstaying his visa,…