Hmmm...I had to ponder this 'about me' page quite a bit. I'm usually not one to talk too much about me, hopefully?!? Others may certainly disagree with my self assessment but since a portfolio site does leave space for a bit of self-promotion - here you go...
Photographer, Hobbyist, Advanced Amateur, Husband, Dad, Grandpa, Tech Geek, Craft Beer Snob, Cigar Aficionado, Coffee Addict, Music Fan and maybe a bit of an artist (but that's for you to decide I guess).
I graduated with a degree in graphic arts and printing a very long time ago. The world was very different back then - before the internet, cellphones, digital cameras, inkjet printers and Photoshop. Virtually any type of printing - photo prints, magazines, books, posters, catalogs, newspapers, etc. had to go through some type of darkroom process. I spent years mixing darkroom chemicals, developing negatives and color positives, cutting rubylith masks, producing paste-up pages for commercial production, running various size offset presses, making printing plates and providing customer service responsibility for some of the largest publishing companies in the world. I was involved in the production, quality control, color accuracy and distribution of many of the calendars, books and catalogs that you have most likely used everyday in your professional and personal lives.
I have since moved on from any direct involvement in the commercial printing industry (and darkroom work) but I have maintained a very strong interest in photography. I've also embraced the ability to manipulate raw camera files in the digital darkroom using techniques unavailable in the analog world. Just about any camera (digital or analog) or cell phone can produce a good representation of a scene. For me, I think it's in the digital darkroom that you can transform an image from showing how something looks to how a scene actually makes you feel.
Capturing images, processing in Lightroom, Photoshop, NIK Efex, Luminar NEO and other software is great fun for me - especially during the long Wisconsin winters. I enjoyed posting the final images to Facebook, Flickr, 500px and making the occasional print at Walgreens, Sam's Club, some online print houses and even the local quick print franchise. All was good. That changed somewhat when started to visit quite a few art galleries during my travels. I get asked sometimes who my influences are and obviously Ansel Adams comes to mind first but Clyde Butcher, Brett Weston, Albert Bierstadt, Sebastiao Salgado, Galen Rowell and many others also helped influence my photographic style. But seeing so many amazing gallery quality works by these and many other artists, mostly silver gelatin/platinum darkroom prints sent me down a rabbit hole the just keeps getting deeper. With my printing and graphic arts background, I wanted to be able to make similar large prints with the clarity, depth and tone of those I saw in the galleries that I visited. Having moved on from film and the wet darkroom, this wasn't as easy as I anticipated...
I bought some photo paper and figured I'd be all set to print on my basic office all-in-one color printer. Hmmm...not good. Terrible in fact! The prints didn't look anything like I imagined, and I jumped in the deep end to try to figure out why. That lead to researching fine art digital printing - reading books, watching videos, asking pros, etc. hoping to get a bit closer to those gallery prints. I upgraded my basic office printer to 6 color dye ink printer and eventually an 8 color Canon dye ink printer. Each upgrade got me a bit closer. Deep rabbit hole though - monitor calibration, ICC profiles, special large format print software and extensive paper print tests but I honestly enjoyed all of it. I've settled on a 44" 12 color Canon large format printer. I can now make big museum quality prints with the detail, depth and tone that I was never able to get out of the wet darkroom - at least until the next big advancement comes along. Now I just need more wall space to hang my stuff.
I shoot with Sony mirrorless cameras including one I had converted to infrared capture (720nm) by LifePixel. I use Sony, TT Artisan and vintage Minolta lenses.
Fun "hobby" - maybe gone a little off the rails. Thanks for following my journey and allowing some (hopefully not too much) self-promotion!