I took up photography as an accessible way to express myself visually. The truth is, I wanted to go to art school but didn't know how I would make a living afterwards. So I majored in mass media, took a photojournalism class and an independent study with an art professor, and began to discover great pleasure in making photographs.

Fine art photography became my focus in graduate school. I studied with Arnold Kramer, an accomplished photographer and protege of Minor White. I learned much about creating personal images. Every image was made consciously, and revealed as much about the photographer as it did about the subject. I also learned how to make first-rate black and white prints using the zone system, created by Minor White as a method to control grayscale print tones.

Ironically, after I received my M.A., I signed up for a drawing class and dropped out--I found it too confining. Photography was, and is, my chosen medium.

Photographs

Landscapes were my first interest. Then I began to photograph "housescapes", images of the place I lived in--cupboards, sinks, windows, surfaces, and the play of light on wall and tabletop. Closeups, mostly of flowers, came next.

I've always lived with dogs, but cats were new, and the camera became a means to capture the cats' personalities. The two I adopted from the pound are gregarious, affectionate and comical beings.

Digital Imagery

In 1996 I began scanning color prints into the computer and exploring how I could manipulate them in Photoshop. Flowers were my passion then. I began to push the experimentation to the point where the image became incoherent, and then step backwards. It has proved to be a medium in which I can turn my photographs into graphics and create something entirely new.

My photographs are now entirely digital. Some are manipulated heavily in Photoshop, others are straight from the camera, with a few minor exposure-related adjustments. I prefer my colors a bit more saturated than the original exposure.

Fractals

I discovered fractals recently, when my dear friend Sally invited me to look at fractal images she created. They were stunning. I looked at fractals created by a variety of artists and was knocked out by the beauty and expressive possibilities of this new medium.

Fractals are patterns that occur in nature. Trees and ferns. Hills. Nautilus shells. The length of a coastline can be calculated using fractal algorithms that take the irregularities into account, And fractal algorithms are the foundation of the images here.

Instead of titling the images, I'm numbering them sequentially. That leaves you free to make of them what you will. They're like Rorschach tests--you can project your own associations onto them.

From Darkroom to Desktop

I began with a darkroom where I processed film and printed black and white images on a Durst enlarger. Color film went to Kodak for processing and enlargements. The arrival of affordable scanners, digital cameras, powerful software and fast computers changed everything. My desktop is now my darkroom. I use the Epson 2000P to make archival prints.

The photographs of flowers, animals, and housescapes were taken with a 35mm film camera and scanned, or with a digital camera. However, the fractal images originate in the computer, generated by mathematical algorithms that create patterns on the screen.

I will be offering images for sale as greeting cards and as matted prints. Please email me for more information.