What we are called to do, be it a salaried job, the roles you play in your daily life, or your passion.

The single lens reflex camera is a masterpiece of mechanical engineering. It is a symphony of gears, springs, plungers, and levers working in concert to produce the latent image that will ultimately become a photograph. The photographer feels the exposure occur when the shutter is released.

I work with 35mm single lens reflex cameras, such as the Nikon F and Nikkormat series, and rangefinder cameras like the Yashica 35 Electro GTN and Konica Hexar. The Mamiya M645 and C330 cameras produce larger negatives for landscape and portrait work and I also experiment with pinhole cameras.

The digital Fuji Finepix S2 Pro digital camera is useful for its remarkable ability to capture images in the near-infrared spectrum when used with an R72 filter. These images have a false color palette with a patina resembling that of renaissance paintings.

I shoot with 35 millimeter and medium format film, and my favorite type is monochrome. I use Fortepan, Kodak, and Ilford film for monochrome work and Fujichrome Velvia for color. The warm and deeply saturated colors of Velvia scan true to the original image and its grain is nearly indistinguishable.

Just as watercolor and oils have unique qualities that are difficult or impossible to reproduce photographically, film-based photographs have qualities that are difficult to produce digitally without looking like a digital image.

Digital imaging formats will change over time, but archive quality film is technology-proof. As long as there is light and we have eyes that can see it, film will always produce a printable image.

I process film in the usual way and then digitize the slides and negatives with film scanners. Final image processing is done on an Apple MacBook Pro with Aperture 3 image management software.