The personal landscape is rarely the grand vista point. It’s the country you travel through along your way, noticing things that have no placard attached. It could be somewhere down a side road near the county line; in a corner booth with the cafe window light hitting the edge of your cup; where weeds grow wild in an otherwise empty city lot.

It’s seeing every spot as the center of the universe, as an opportunity to center yourself. Maybe you’ll have time to stop and create a sketch, a poem, a photo, a journal entry. Perhaps you’ll never pass that way again. Or you might find a reason to return.

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I photograph in response to curiosity and appreciation. Framing a view is a search for balance and beauty within the moment: a pause midstream in the mysterious and surrounding flow.

I use film and digital cameras, often with secondary lenses or homemade filters. My favorite images tend to be less descriptive and more evocative, calling on imagination rather than examination. My criteria for a photo is, “Do I like it?”

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I received my first camera for Christmas at age six or seven. I promptly went next door to take pictures of a friend’s family, boldly charging them money enough to develop and print that precious first roll of film.

By high school I wanted to be a nature photographer, but dropped out of Beginning Photography class, impatient with the darkroom’s chemical/technical aspects – I just wanted to roam outdoors.

Eventually my photographic interest resurfaced stronger than ever, inclusive of the darkroom and a then-new thing called digital. I went back to school, earning a Career Certificate in Art/Photography from Santa Rosa Junior College, California.

But what I still like best is to roam outdoors… and pause.

Yours truly, with my first camera, about 9 years old