A Walk in the Woods
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A Walk in the Woods

What is it in the bones of everyday photographs, that give them the power to tell a forgotten story from another time and place with such clarity and imagination? And why, in the imagined visual telling of the story, do those photographs elevate the people and their tales of ordinary life, to an almost mythic status?…

Art for Public Art Projects
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Art for Public Art Projects

For several years as a guest artist for Jefferson County Schools, I worked with young kids in summer workshops and after school art clubs at Foster Elementary School. Together we created public art projects for the school and community gardens, learned a little about the muralist’s creative process and had a lot of fun making these…

Old-Fashioned Photo Booth
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Old-Fashioned Photo Booth

Beyond the incredible innovations and creative possibilities of Polaroid cameras and their wonderful instant film, my most nostalgic photographic memory is of the Old-Fashioned Photo Booth. Selfies before Selfies were cool. A Memoir in a Can. Four for a Dollar. Extra Charge for Color. Here’s a few sets of old friends in faraway times, stashed in…

Family Pictures
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Family Pictures

Looking through our family’s photographic archive and trying to select images for my wife’s memorial service, I was struck by the power photography has over the way our brains process old memories fading with the passage of time. Small moments from years earlier shine with an intensity that brings forth a flood of contradictory emotional connections…

Debra Lynn Shirley
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Debra Lynn Shirley

Debra Shirley passed into the next life on September 29th, 2018. She was the foundation of our family and my wife, partner, lover and friend for twenty-eight years. She was a person of unusual sensitivity and exceptional character; fiercely intelligent, an accomplished actor, poet and creative artist, and a very caring and giving soul with an…

The Photographic Collage
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The Photographic Collage

Part documentary photographic essay and part studio construction, the photographic collage is an interesting hybrid artifact. Particularly with the use of film negatives and prints, the process took on a challenging, almost accidental quality. The result could be mundane, disastrous, or the definition of the synergy of the creative art studio. The scale of the assembled…

The Panoramic Collage

The Panoramic Collage

The Panoramic Collage is a simple and effective method of deconstructing an image, sharpening your point of view and enlarging the camera’s viewfinder. For many years, I shot these collages on film, giving the process a mysterious and quasi-magical air, since you’d long left the shooting site by the time you saw the processed images and…

Touring Yellowstone
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Touring Yellowstone

This dialogue was recorded on a cross-country tour a few of years ago, on the final day of our journey as we cruised through Yellowstone National Park. We spent most of our two days in the park replacing a tire after a dramatic high-speed blowout on the highway. The park was insanely crowded with traffic and…

Photographic Triplets
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Photographic Triplets

Artists and photographers have used the Tryptich format for centuries to reinforce themes and refine their formal presentations. Related images and motifs have a revealing dynamic within the context of the work overall, and can clarify or obscure an artist’s concept. It’s an excellent tool to expose previously unseen elements and encourage an improvisational approach to…