A photographer for almost thirty years, I am a nationally accredited member of the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC) and the Professional Photographers Association of British Columbia (PPABC).  I have been fortunate to receive several awards for my work, most recently first in class (pictorial) at the 2007 PPOC Image competition, with a second image selected to hang in the PPOC National Loan Collection.  Shooting principally for stock, much of my work is focused on editorial travel and landscape, and has been published in a variety of media.  I conduct workshops locally in visual design and composition, as well as digital colour management and workflow. I have also provided instruction at workshops in France and Singapore.

It’s hard to be passionately involved in photography for as long as I have without forming a few opinions.   Many of the entries here are written to dove-tail with topics raised in my workshops, and as such are aimed at a very specific audience.  Other entries may simply reflect something that happens to be on my mind at the moment. In either case, the opinions expressed here are my own, and reflect what I find works for me:  "your mileage my vary" as they say. This is decidedly not a forum to review or discuss equipment… I am neither qualified nor interested in debating the merits of brand C over brand N.  In the end, as has often been quoted, it’s what’s "six inches behind the camera that really matters".

My real interest lies in the power of photography to communicate, to educate, to inform… to evoke an emotional response in the viewer.  Even after 30 years, I am still amazed at power of the still image.  Susan Sontag, in her book "On Photography" wrote, "Photographs may be more powerful than moving images… because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow". And in this is the true power of still images: to capture brief instants in time, freezing them for the future, and in so doing allow us to see elements of the world that are often too fleeting to register in our minds.

While some of these articles may run to more technical subjects, the reader should keep in mind that my only interest is in how these topics serve the goal of creating images with impact.