Lately, and quite rapidly, I have become acquainted with many of you for the first time.  Some of you, I obtained your addresses from show that I’ve displayed at or attended. Others of you I've know as long as I can remember. In either case and as a primarily (not forgetting you Mrs. Stowe!) self-directed student of art, I can’t thank those of you who offer your guidance and words of encouragement enough.  With so many great people to keep in contact with and so many new adventures to tell you about, I’ve decided to start a monthly newsletter.  Hopefully, I can keep those of you who are more distant observes “in the know” and allow you to message back when something you see strikes you.  Those of you whom I correspond with regularly can see samples of the things I’ve been telling you about before I have the large chunks of time to update my website.

   First, I’ve been working the southwest Ohio area capturing old barns and covered bridges.  Many of the new techniques I’ve been implementing arecan be seen below.  They include: infrared (film and digital), panoramic (360x180), high-speed(high-grain) black and white film, and Fujichrome Velvia iso 50 slide film.

   This photo of a train was taken in Glendale, Ohio.  While this particular photo is infrared taken digitally, I have also begun shooting infrared film.

  I’m intrigued by the interesting representation of the color spectrum that infrared photography offers.  It also tends to be very grainy.  Typically, I’ve been shooting for fineness, but lately I’ve embraced the throw-back, old-school look of grain.

  This photo of the train track has significant glare.  I’m a little undecided about this degree of chromatic distortion.  I’d love to hear from you pro’s out there on this one.   

   Also, as a strategy to lure eyes into the photo, I’ve been attempting to make it difficult to just glance at the photo and know what you’re looking at.  My goal is to give the images more depth of meaning, but not lose the subject itself.  What do you think? Too far?  Sometimes I feel like my works are too up front, and while nice to look at, they are passed by too quickly.

   Another example of this “difficult to read” characteristic that I’ve tried to embody is this photo taken at Cowan Lake.  This was about a 2 second exposure and I purposely tilted the camera as it fired off to achieve this fog-ish appeal.

Here are a few more photo’s from my shoot at Cowan lake:

Finally, here are some new photo’s from the barn tours that I’ve been taking the past few weekends:

(Note: I haven’t developed any film or processed a lot of the digital files yet… so these are just a few that I have)