ABOUT ME:

I picked up a camera seriously for the first time when I was close to forty years old. I always had the idea that I would learn photography. It wasn’t until I started a Regional Occupational Class in 1989 that I knew that photography would be my passion. I immediately started attending classes at one of the best JC’s in the U.S., Palomar College in Southern California. I received an AA degree from there, and I have made many lifelong friends amongst my mentors and fellow artists as a result of having studied there.

Over the years, I’ve been primarily a black and white photographer. I still previsualize all of my images in black and white. I’m a formal photographer, interested in making images with strong composition and sharp focus. I’ve printed with a traditional color head in a wet darkroom, but I now prefer the flexibility of shooting color with a digital camera. With Photoshop, I enjoy control over color that I never had before. Output from a digital color file can be excellent. Much of the output from a digital black & white file can also be quite beautiful. Nonetheless, I still maintain a traditional black & white darkroom.

I have won prizes, gotten published, worked jobs, taught workshops, taught high school, and sold my fine art work over these years that I have built my knowledge of photography. In the future I intend to conduct more workshops and classes, and I will list information regarding opportunities to study with me.

In the last incarnation of this site, I fell into the trap of spouting a lot of technical detail. Within about six months of having the site up, everything that I said about my work flow looked completely antiquated; everything had changed so much within that short time. I won’t make that mistake again. After all, it comes down to whether the image is ultimately compelling, no matter what process the photographer used to achieve it.

My Best, Peter