· Fine art photography & stock photographySome people argue that photographs can never be art because they are taken, not made; but I believe that a great photograph is every bit as much a work of art as a great drawing, painting, or sculpture. In Italian, the mother tongue of the Renaissance, si fa una fotografia—one makes a photograph, not takes it. English diction would have us believe that the snapshot is the be-all end-all of photography, but if the calculus of an Ansel Adams or the patience of a Joel Meyerowitz does not constitute making something, then what does? And if that something is not art, then what is?
My one, ambitious goal in making every picture is to create a work of art. As I contemplate the image on the ground glass; as I think about light, filtration, and development; as I print each picture again and again until I get it just right-my goal is to create a work of art, an image that is both beautiful and compelling, something that you will want to hang on your wall, which will command your attention and provoke you to thought. Whether and when I succeed, now or ever, I invite you to judge; but this is the end to which I invest all my energies.
I came to photography in high school in the late 1980s, taking, developing, and printing 35mm black-and-white pictures in art class—a habit I continued in college. I received my bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1993, and went on to serve as an editor of Archaeology Magazine and later a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.
For years I pursued photography as an avocation alongside my other careers, but when you love something enough, it has a way of catching up with you. Though I did not know it at the time, it was all over from the moment in 2001 when I purchased a used Graflex Super Graphic 4" x 5" press camera. From then on, the world was the ground glass, and it was only a matter of time until I left my desk job to pursue photography full time.
My photographs have appeared in books, calendars, magazines, ads, and web sites in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe—including Archaeology, Archaeology.org, Icon (the magazine of the World Monuments Fund), and Dig. I have shown work at the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath, Maine, and sold prints to collectors in the United States and Europe. Online, I am represented by Alamy Images.
I live in Columbus, Ohio, but I travel to Maine as often as I can to take pictures of the state's glorious coast, countryside, and wilderness.