As a kid who had the run of 26 acres in the Ohio countryside, I developed an early fascination with nature. By the third grade, when I learned I was near-sighted and was fitted with glasses, I had become most intrigued with those creatures that I could hold in my hands and examine closely. I have been interested in the details of the natural world since that time. My tactile orientation is probably also related to this desire to pick up and study the world around me. Many of the images presented here, then, are of creatures and objects that I can study close at hand.

Photography became a creative outlet in 1968, when I got my first Pentax Spotmatic. There was a 16-year photographic hiatus between 1977 and 1993. At that point I couldn't stand the strain anymore and I invested in a Canon A2 camera and some great lenses, equipment that I felt would help me realize my dream of sharing with others the miniature dramas my myopic eyes enabled me to see and appreciate.

My primary close-up lens was at first a 100mm macro; after a sleeper wave claimed that one, I upgraded to my current 180mm macro. In 2006 I added digital to my repertoire with the purchase of a Canon 5D body to go with my lenses. Virtually all of my photography since May 2006 has been digital. For those interested in more details about my photographic equipment, check out the Technical Information portion of this website.

For several years I stockpiled slides from my photographic forays (local jaunts as well as annual summer pilgrimages to southern Arizona), and these were seen only by friends and family. I accumulated literally thousands of slides that were first stacked in boxes and later hung in filing cabinets. I finally went public in 1997 with a photographic show in Santa Rosa, California (where I now live). A year later the local newspaper highlighted my work with a feature article that included several full-color shots.

Over the past several years, my photographs have appeared in Bay Nature and California Coast and Ocean magazines. Contacts through this website after its inception in 2001 have resulted in photographic projects ranging from inclusion in a video of still images that was included in New York City's American Museum of Natural History exhibit, Frogs: A Chorus of Colors, to an article illustrated with 15 of my photos on finding and photographing the rattlesnakes of the "sky islands" of southeastern Arizona I wrote for a Czech magazine, Akva Tera Forum, that was published in the fall of 2006. Most recently, one of my frog images is being used as part of a water conservation campaign in San Jose, California.