The Artist's Account of Himself

Welcome! This is my first blog post, which includes a very short biography and my explanation of the impetus to get this site up and running.

I've mucked about in photography and art since the 1960s, not as a professional, but as an autodidact and lover of the creative process. Taking photographs of people, architecture, landscapes and other subjects that everyday life presents to my semi-discerning eye was just a part of me. I've also been an inveterate traveler and enthusiastic explorer. So I was lucky that my career involved travel and allowed me wander around the country and photograph the local color, customs and culture of the good ol' USA.

I have to admit, however, falling away from photography when the digital boom began. I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by the new technology. I mean, I knew all about film speed, shutter speeds, aperture, light - all the basics - but was baffled by JPEGs, TIFFs, megapixels, megabytes, gigabytes and mecahackles. So although I'd get out the old Nikon FG film camera I'd used since the 1980's every now and then, I really wasn't putting any time or effort into my photography.

Then about 5 years ago my dear wife, Lori, encouraged me to quit fartin' around and jump back in. So I bought my first (real) digital camera, a used Nikon D200. It was essentially outdated (12 megapixels, crummy in low light), but great for daylight or flash photography. It taught me what I needed to know about using a digital single reflex camera, and I still use it as a travel camera today. I now have a collection of Nikon cameras, lenses, meters, flash equipment and tons of gigabytes of images gathering digital dust on my hard drives. All thanks to that good wife of mine. Thanks, babe!

And although I've shot thousands of images over many years, I never really aspired to display my work until recently. And while I have files full of physical and digital photos, a good many of them - as you can imagine - are not really all that interesting. This started me on a quest to evaluate and publish some of the better ones on my own website. But then the evaluation process began. Which shots were good enough to display, on a website, for the whole world to see? With no good answer, I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time rooting through my archives, and in the process reached a sort of stasis. I was choosing lots of images, but becoming progressively more indecisive as to which to publish online.

This is where having good friends came in. Sometimes, when you yourself can't see it, you need someone to tell you that time is slipping away. Sometimes you need to see yourself as others see you. Not long ago I was speaking to my friend Greg Hand. I was telling him that I'd been working on my website when he chuckled and said, “This is getting to be like the last line of the Jewish Seder ceremony at Passover, “Next Year in Jerusalem”. The meaning of this saying is somewhat obscure and open to multiple interpretations, but to many it implies that even though the celebrants know they may never actually be in Jerusalem for Passover, the sentiment is expressed anyway, with a touch of irony. Apparently, my continued references to my soon-to-be-published site were beginning to echo this statement, since although I kept saying it would be happening one day, that day was continually slipping into the future.

It was Greg's comment that got my gaze out of my navel. It made me think - if not this moment, when?; if not these images, which? So, no more waiting! Here is my website and - by way of introduction and explanation - my first blog.

Thanks are in order to Lori, who lit the fire (to her eternal regret, I'm sure) that got me to dive back in and pursue the photographic art form. And Greg can be thanked (or blamed) for my finally getting this site online. There are others, and I'll thank them in upcoming blogs. But please, take a few minutes to look through my galleries. It was hard work to decide on these images, and even harder to turn them loose on an unsuspecting world. Whew.

MP