About Me

I retired from a long career in corporate tax a few years back.  And to be honest, I felt a little lost.  Tax had filled the vast majority of my 45 plus working years.  Usually more than forty hours per week.  So, a void welled up inside.  After months of watching me reading and web surfing my loving wife said: “You are going to have to get off your *** and do something.”  She was right, but what?

President George W. Bush took up painting you know and is pretty good.  Maybe that?  Have dabbled in prose off and on for decades, so possibly the world had been deprived of another Steinbeck, Hemmingway or Fitzgerald?  Well, based on my dabblings, that is certainly unlikely.  Then the obvious, once buried, bubbled up: go back to photography.

I bought a Nikon camera in 1970.  We were just married--snagged my beautiful wife before she was old enough to know better—and had little money.  Even though I was inspired by the likes of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White, I never set up a darkroom, became disenchanted, and abandoned my chosen creative outlet over 30 years ago.  But now, with digital, all things processing are possible.  A new sense of possibility and creativeness washed over me as old stirrings awakened.  I am more excited now about my craft than I was those almost 52 years ago when I walked into Rich’s department store in Atlanta and bought my new, shiny prize on store credit.  Still have that old film SLR as a reminder, but the current tool of the craft is a digital, mirrorless wonder.  I now have a camera, a phone and grandkids that are all smarter than I.   I am scratching a creative itch that has tormented me for most of my adult life.

Artistic Statement

The base of what you will see here is photography.  The desired end is to present images that invoke a feeling or an emotion.  So, do all images exactly replicate what lay before me at “shutter time?”  No.  Do all images convey what I felt or what I would have loved to see and feel?  Yes.  Can a subject be so emotive and powerful that a mere rendering of it is all that is needed?  Absolutely.   Is a processed image a cop out?  No, not if it is true to a feeling.   Simply put, I want to present images that people enjoy seeing, and maybe even feeling on some level. Some images are processed in such a way, however, that they become more digital art than mere photography.  You will find those under such a category.  The end result is still the same:  an image that invokes feeling an emotion in me.  The route there is just more elaborate.

And the Dabbler in Prose will stir and crank out blogs when inspired and feels that he has something to share. Passions will weave themselves throughout what you see here--food and drink, the grandeur and beauty of nature--a non-limiting approach.