Personal statement:

I believe Mother Nature and the built environment present us with some truly magnificent visual opportunities; it's up to the artistic photographer to find the beauty and interpret them to inspire others.

My photography history:

I have been taking photos since the late 1950's; but I never thought of posting them or showing them around until 2009.

I was inspired by my late father, an ingenious amateur photographer who did his own black and white developing and printing in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, working with a home-made contact printer and enlarger. As a teenager in the 1960's, I learned the ABC's of cameras and black and white printing from him. My late parents were dedicated travelers and my father documented their travels to many distant places with an extensive library of photo-albums. They were also arts lovers and collected as many paintings, drawings and sculptures as their finances could afford. As a youngster, I was surrounded by art and music.

Over the years, I have used the following equipment:

•Brownie Instamatic -1950’s and 60’s.

•Mamiya Sekor DTL528 35 mm SLR circa 1970

•Pentax Espio 35 mm 145M point and shoot, circa 1995

•Olympus D560Z - 2004

•Canon G9 - 2008 with filters and wide angle and tele adapters

•Olympus E-PL2 - 2011 with filters and kit lenses

•OMD-EM10 – 2015 with kit 14-42 and 40-150 telephoto lenses. Polarizing and ND filters and adapters for macro and wide-angle images.

•Sony DSC-W830 – 2019 as a P&S shirt pocket camera

•Epson V600 scanner – since 2014 to scan prints, negatives and slides from my film cameras.

Over the years, I have used the following software:

•MS Paint

•Photoshop 7

•Photoshop Elements 7, 8, 9, 13 and 2022

•Lightroom 5 and 6

•Topaz B&W2

•Topaz Denoise

I have to credit my daughter, now a mature adult, for rekindling my interest in the art of photography. She studied fine art and specialized in photography at university. To her credit, she consulted me often to critique her work and I thank her for inspiring me to improve my own technical skills and artistry.

Most of my pre-2009 images were JPEG’s processed without benefit of layers. I used cropping, curves, levels, simple colour balancing and I've tried my hand at dodging and burning as well. Since the summer of 2009, I have included layers in various Adobe products to adjust and tone my images. Kudos to my daughter and son-in-law for having the patience to teach me the basics of adjustment layers in Photoshop Elements; however, the final products are my responsibility.

I now shoot in RAW unless I’m using my smartphone or P&S. Adobe Lightroom is now my post-production processor of RAW files. Monochrome images are interpreted in Topaz B&W using TIFF files developed in Lightroom.

I enjoy looking at creative photo-streams on Flickr. If you Fave any of my images or follow me, I expect to see your extensive photostream as well. If you have no or few images to share, I will block you.

I have joined groups that allow me the freedom to post my relevant images, review other work and comment on those images that inspire me. Do not expect me to join groups that have formulated posting and comment requirements or required comment codes.

My images are all copyright protected. Please do not use or reproduce my images without my permission.