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“I was asked in an interview recently about what was in my artistic future. My reply was that I really didn’t know, but that what ever the case, I was going to “create and express myself in my artwork.””

This was taken from one of my last posts on the old Trout Lily Studios blog site: a response to a question Bob White posed to me during an interview for Fly Rod & Reel magazine. I was still creating wood block prints, had an active show schedule, and really wasn’t thinking too much about what comes next.

What came next was a slow but steady turning of the wheel.

My friend and mentor Tom Helgeson had left us two years prior. Arthritis in my hands, which had been for many years prior manifesting itself only occasionally, became a steady, dull reminder that when the things that use to give you joy, now give you pain instead, it’s best to move on.

I have always been in love with photography. My parents, children of the Great Depression, kept a large collection of family photographs, dating back to immigrant relatives in a non-existent country before the turn of the century (my families were from Pomerania, a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany). It was always with great fascination to go through the old pictures and scrap-books, my eyeless great-greats gazing at me, dressed in their Edwardian best…

I bought my first 35mm SLR with a USMC Privates first paycheck in 1982. What followed is a love affair with film and light. Sorely tested by the digital age, I’ve hesitantly, tentatively, doubtfully and dubiously come to accept photographic images for their own sake. I made a comfortable professional living centered on film and photography in the ’80s and ’90’s, so it was jarring and not a little bit traumatic watching the digital revolution. But the resolution of the latest sensors is nothing less than astounding, and the availability and abilities of the latest digital darkroom software is fantastic.

So I’ve put down the Futatsu Wari, the Kibori Nomi and the Kizuki Hosho woodblock tools. Gripping and manipulating the knives, chisels and paper to produce a woodblock is just too painful. Instead, I’ve picked up a Nikon again, and producing the images I only dreamed of producing back when it all started.

So I guess this is what come’s next…

“They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away”