"The Road More Traveled" and "Nature Photographs from the Beaten Path" are two parts of the same long-term project, designed to provide an alternative to the overwhelming majority of landscape photography seen in books and magazines today. To the virtual exclusion of images from urban, suburban, and rural areas readily accessible to the public, these publications concentrate on the pristene wilderness areas of Alaska and the great national parks of the American West. In this regard "The Road More Traveled" takes a different path, by showing the extraordinary beauty of "average" places easily accessible to all. Not only are the locations accessible, none of them required a walk of more than a hundred yards and incredibly, most of the images were captured at roadside or even while standing in the road itself!
Looking back I remember as a young man, viewing those extraordinary landscape images of the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and the other great parks of the southwest with awe. What an unbelievable wealth of material to work with...and no candy wrappers, empty soda cans, or condoms to worry about. Unfortunately in those days, I never had the money to travel and couldn't leave my family in order to pursue a photographic hobby. Today I'm a little older and hopefully, a little wiser, and it seems to me that many of those landscapes seen in publications are just a little formulaic. Place a natural structure in the foreground, a few mountains in the back, tie it all together with a spectacular sunset and photograph it with a wide angle lens. I think the word for it is cliche. In many cases a very beautiful, very saleable cliche...but cliche nonetheless. Another trend today is the obsession with slot canyons, which are like lenses...every landscape photographer has at least three or four. They all look pretty good, and they all look pretty much the same.
In contrast, the beaten path offers very little that is really obvious. It is up to the photographer to evaluate subtle changes in texture, light, shape, form, and line to build a landscape that is not easily seen until it has been made visible in a photographic print. Nuances involving unexpected color, ambiguity of planes, and the close relationship between reality and reflection all become landscape fodder. Image making on the road more traveled is a thoughtful process which requires greater personal visualization of the landscape...and that makes all the difference!
The images in these two portfolios were captured in four general areas: Plumb Beach, a unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area is located just off the Belt Parkway between Knapp Street and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The Belt is an urban thoroughfare utilized by perhaps 50,000-100,000 cars a day. Despite heavy use and abuse Plumb Beach can be, at the right time or tide a place of extraordinary beauty...though that beauty may not be easily recognized. Harriman State Park is a beautiful piece of land located in the heart of New York's Ramapo Mountains, about forty miles north of NYC. During the summer months the park is heavily utilized by picnickers, overnight campers, and hikers. In winter, the roads transecting the park are often closed to vehicular traffic and the facility is little used. Generally I prefer to photograph during the early Spring when vehicular traffic is still light and during the peak color changes of late October. Schroon Lake and its surrounding area is located in New York's Adirondack Mountains about 30 miles north of bustling Lake George. It is where I have spent my last thirty summers. Finally, Lake Placid, the home of the USA Winter Olympics Training Center is located in the high peaks region of New York's central Adirondacks. Route 86 between Wilmington and Lake Placid, where many of the images were taken, follows the famed Ausable River and is heavily used by fisherman, hunters, skiers, backpackers, mountain climbers and campers. Back to top
Photo GraphicsAlthough fully half of my work consists of nature and landscape images I do not consider myself a nature photographer. My primary concern is always graphic design and composition and to that end I am a complete opportunist. I'll frequently wander an area, be it salt marsh, city street, or rural farm looking for anything that interests me visually. I may be attracted to color, either strong or subtle, unusual patterns of light, strongly detailed texture, odd looking objects either singly or in combination, or any other melange of graphic elements. Sometimes I know I've captured the essence of my subject with only one exposure, and other times I will move, change angle, shoot low and high, and perhaps even change lenses until I'm satisfied that there are no other ways to capture the image.
While some photographers will only shoot early and late in the day so as to take advantage of warm light and long shadows, I never really worry about the light...and the reason is simple. If the light on a subject is inappropriate, the subject simply does not hold any interest for me at that time. If I'm out photographing at 1:00 PM on a summer's day with the light directly overhead and I'm attracted to a subject, it is because the light is appropriate. The subject's story can be told, even enhanced, because of the fully detailed highlights and black shadows created by the harsh light. Still, I do have a favorite light...cloudy bright skies allow me to photograph throughout the day while everything remains colorful, detailed, and photogenic. In short my attitude has always been, the best time to photograph is any time you can. Back to top
Bethpage Restoration
The images in this portfolio all date from the mid to late 1970's. The idea for the project resulted from an outing to the Restoration in which I took some casual pictures to keep as a family record. Upon returning home I was pleasantly surprised to find some strongly graphic images whose substance went beyond the literal representation of what in effect was a museum. In order to continue the project I needed two things I didn't have: a tripod, and a means of entry into the rooms whose entrance was barred to the public. Obtaining a tripod was easy. I borrowed my dad's. After making several prints from the initial outing I returned with them to discuss the possibility of unrestrained access. Again good fortune smiled, and I was given the opportunity to return on a day when the facility was closed to the public. A curator then accompanied me as I worked my way through all the buildings and structures which incidentally, dated from about 1850-1885.
Graphically, the key to this project was keeping the images from looking as though they were captured in a museum. To this end I used mostly wide angled lenses pointed either up or down to exaggerate converging vertical lines. In general the images are far more angular and consequently more dynamic than a literal interpretation would provide. Many of the windows were either covered with translucent curtains or were completely uncovered, and light often streamed into the rooms casting unique and individual light patterns on furnishings, walls, and floors. Consequently, I made extensive use of those light patterns to give each room an individuality that would reduce the controlled feeling often associated with a museum. Available light was used throughout, with no supplementation from flash or reflectors. And finally, in order to enhance the feeling of a bygone era I was able on occasion, to use controlled lens flare to prevent extremely dark shadow areas from going black. Many of these images appeared in a one-person show at the Soho Gallery during the late 1970's. Back to top
Flora Tropical
This portfolio dating from January - March 2006 represents my most recent work. The project came about as the result of a photo shoot to the Mounts Botanical Garden led by nature photographer Gary Braasch as part of The Palm Beach Photographic Center's Foto Fusion week. To be honest I am rarely excited by flower pictures, and I've never given serious consideration to the idea of garden photography. For me the graphic keys to shooting in this situation were not unlike those of the Bethpage Restoration, namely I did not want the images to appear as if they were photographed in a highly controlled environment. To that end I utilized long lenses, primarily a 105mm micro and a 300mm telephoto on a Nikon D2x digital camera to flatten perspective and extract the abstract essence of each plant. As soon as I realized that The Mounts was not primarily a garden of flowers but rather of some very exotic tropical plants, the idea of photographic abstracts really took shape.
Fortunately from my perspective, though certainly not that of The Mounts maintenance staff, the garden was still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Wilma. The fact that the plants were not in the best of condition and many exhibited what I call "scarring" gave the images a more spontaneous and less than perfect look. Unfortunately many of the name tags used to identify the plants were missing or destroyed by the hurricane, and I was not able to properly caption each image. I am presently working to identify the plants and will recaption the images when I am able. As a final note, the image of the Southern Slash Pine was photographed not at The Mounts, but at the nearby Hypoluxo Scrub. The image is a combination of two exposures, one for the tree and the other for the sky, taken seconds apart and combined in Photoshop. Back to top
