NaturalVisions Blog

My “day job” is working as a Park Ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park and am what could best be described as a semi-professional photographer (which means I make a little money here and there from photography). Birds are my main interest, but I love making images of the best and most beautiful that the natural world has to offer. My work has appeared in books, magazines, calendars, newspapers, other publications, as well as interpretive displays and have twice been honored as a winnner in the prestigious National Wildife photography contest (2004 and 2005).

Though I have been working with Photoshop for 15 years and teaching it for nearly a decade, unlike many of my contemporaries, I feel that the true art of nature photography should still be achieved through the camera’s viewfinder – not via the so-called “digital darkroom” and the ever increasing practice of “compositing” and “cloning” by many of today’s professionals. Other than adjustments to exposure, cropping, color corrections, and use of tools in the software that emulate dodging and burning, what you see in my photographs is real. The seemingly increasing use of digital manipulation in photography is a pet peeve of mine, as well as the use of the word “capture” when someone is describing a photo they have seen as in “nice capture.” it’s a stupid way to describe a photograph, something that I think was stolen from Hollywood advertising (as in “captured on film for the very first time!”) and the idiot who first used it to describe a digital photograph should be smacked up side the head (sorry about that rant, but “capture” just makes my skin crawl, kind of like fingernails on a chalkboard ).