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ABOUT THE ARTIST
My brother-in-law got me into orchids back in the late 1990s; and, as is often the case, it
became a passion. When my inlaws gave me a nice digital camera, the orchids became an
immediate subject. What started as a way to simply show people the orchids I had became a
quest to get a perfect likeness. That grew into a desire to capture the essence or soul of
the flower.
Then one day I stumbled across a butterfly show. They had a feel of flying orchids to me,
so I came back with my camera. Having spent a couple years photographing orchids, where I
had complete control of everything, made butterflies a real challenge; now I had control
of nothing. I expected extreme frustration. Well, that first day I took over 100
photographs, and came away with 3 that I was willing to show anyone. That doesn't mean 3
great photographs, but they were in focus, framed decently, showed the butterfly well, and
didn't have backgrounds that were too distracting. Surprisingly, the 100+ photographs that
were junk basically went unnoticed by me; I was just thrilled by the 3 decent shots. Rather
than finding the excercise frustrating, I found it a wonderful challenge. Three years later,
butterflies are still one of my favorite subjects. Granted, my success rate has gotten a
lot better, but the challenges have also increased.
Photographing orchid flowers has grown into doing extreme close-ups, where I hope the
viewer sees beyond the flower into their imaginations. The skills I've developed there have
carried over to the butterflies, satisfying a fascination I have with their tiny faces.
I continue to look for new subjects and photographic techniques to work on and learn.
Portrait photography is one of my greatest challenges, and (so far) landscape photography
just isn't capturing my imagination. Night photography fascinates me, but I'm still working
on perfecting my skills. The bottom-line is that I'll try to photograph anything that
catches my eye, will let me point a camera at it, and won't get me arrested.
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