The most surefire way to make money as a photographer is to sell your expensive photo gear. That's what I did in 2015. After lugging view cameras and Hasselblads all over the West for the previous 48 years, I sold all my film cameras. My mantra going forward has been "goodbye Darkroom - hello Lightroom."
My transition from film to digital has been both challenging and rewarding. I was trained in straight photography at the University of Oregon in the 1960s under Bernie Freemesser. Following college, I spent two and a half years in Monterey, California where my work was influenced by Brett Weston, Wynn Bullock, Henry Gilpin, and Ansel Adams. Highlights include a stint at the Friends of Photography in Carmel and working as an assistant to Ansel Adams.
After returning to Oregon in 1972, I was employed as a photographer/copywriter for an ad agency while teaching photography at Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene. That's when I learned the true meaning of "starving artist." Married, with our first son in tow, I soon made a career change into the risk management industry, retiring in 2007 after a 32-year span.
I've always considered myself a landscape photographer. However, since the building of our beach house in 2010, a more apt moniker is "maritime" photographer. As a lifelong fisherman, I spend countless hours on the ocean, bays, rivers, and beaches - never without a camera. A passion for razor clamming has led to my decade-long photo project documenting the harvesting of razor clams on Oregon's Clatsop Spit.
My "aha moment" occurred in 2012 when I captured images of waves breaking over the windshield of my SUV while parked on the tip of the North Tillamook Jetty during a ferocious winter storm. Since then, I've created a body of Raindance work taken through my wet windshield (with wipers off) during very stormy conditions. The resulting images have not been "photoshopped," yet have a striking resemblance to impressionist paintings.
My work has been published and exhibited in multiple regional venues and is held in both public and private collections. When I'm not at our beach house in Rockaway Beach, I reside in Portland with my wife Kay, a visual artist.
