Artist Statement

The word photograph comes from the Greek word for light - photo, and the Greek word for write or paint - graph. Thus to photograph means literally to write or paint with light. Since I acquired an SLR camera in 1996 and began to seriously enjoy photography, I have become more and more fascinated with the effects of light on ordinary scenes and objects. In the years since, I have tried to move beyond merely documenting where I have been and what I have seen, to capturing the special beauty that exists when the light is “just right”.

Over the past winter, 2002-2003, I decided to simplify my work. Instead of running from pillar to post to find special images, I have concentrated exclusively on what I could see in my own back yard. The winter was long and harsh, but it produced some wonderful light and some beautiful sights – brilliant sunrises over Kingston Bay, incredible ice flows in the usually fluid water, dark moody skies as the frequent snow storms approached, a lone fallen leaf trapped by the snow on a skylight, delicately etched shapes on frosted window panes in the early morning sun, shadows from the marsh grasses casting intricate patterns on the newly fallen snow, beach grasses bending before the relentless winter wind, hardy shore birds finding a place to roost in spite of the frigid conditions, a lone row boat held captive by the frozen bay, a determined clam digger raking the mud flats at low tide during a brief thaw.

I discovered that by staying close to home with my camera I was able to truly “see” many of the nuances of my own environment in a way that I had never actually noticed before.