Durango Colorado Photographer and the Chesapeake Bay Retriever wonder dog.

Here's another image of Cooper the wonder dog for Zuke's. More soon on the website.

Durango Colorado Photographer Shoots Dogs.

Starting late last summer, I've been shooting some stuff for Zuke's pet treat company. Zuke's is a homegrown company here in Durango that is doing very well on the national level... you can find their all natural treats all over the country. They are looking for images to start forming a library, and I've been trying to get images that highlight dogs and their owners, but with more emphasis on the dogs. Most of the images show both owners and dog(s), but some, like today's photo, only show the dog. This is Cooper, a Chesapeake Bay retriever... great model... just kept going, and going, and going, and going... I heard he couldn't walk to his dinner bowl that night, but he was a trooper.

I'll have some more of this stuff up on the website soon.

Durango Colorado Fine Art Photographer Shoots Fire Aftermath: Missionary Ridge Fire - Almost 10 Years Later

I drive by a lot of fire aftermath several times a week, going to and from Vallecito to nordic ski. It's actually quite beautiful in a stark kind of way. In the summer, it tends to be pretty green, but in the winter, you get this great contrast of darks and lights so that even a color photo tends to look like a black and white. I've only shot it a little... I keep thinking about how to shoot it, and looking for some good angles, but as of yet, I've not done it justice. Stay tuned... I'll keep working at it. Here's a taste of what I did the other day.

Also, here's an image that I shot in Yellowstone, 20 years after the big fires up there, and a link to a portfolio that it's in on my web site.

Durango Colorado Commercial Photographer, who is also a Durango Colorado Fine Art Photographer, shoots ice.

Just some shots of the ice at Vallecito Lake. Hopefully soon, I'll have up a recording of the incredible sounds the ice makes when it's warming up in the mornings, to go along with some images. So here's a couple of new images and my all time favorite Vallecito Ice Shot that I took a couple of years ago.

Durango Colorado Automotive Photographer becomes Durango Colorado Portrait Photographer With Show At The Lost Dog

Here's a few more of the photos that are at the Lost Dog until Thursday.

For more: visit my website.

Durango Colorado Industrial Photographer Transforms into Durango Colorado Portrait Photographer with Radical Departure show.

A Radical Departure

So there's still a couple more days to catch my show at The Lost Dog if you're interested. The show is titled Radical Departure... radical departure form anything I've ever done before.

Sometime around 1972, on Galaxy Drive in Newport Beach California, on just some random, ordinary day, a young mom told her four kids to make paper bag masks, then lined the youngsters up against a wall and shot them… with a camera. That young mom was Mary Lieb. Mary was a former UCLA art student, and I imagine that day she was just feeling the need to create - a drive common to all artists – and one, which combined with Mary’s irrepressible sense of humor, resulted in an incredible image. Years later, Mary’s daughter, my good friend Lisa Lieb, had that image enlarged, as you see here, and hung it on her wall.

The moment I saw this photo I was struck by it. I’m still not sure I can fully articulate what makes this image so incredible to me, but I’ll try: I think the kids, the setting, their clothes, and the faded nature of the print can all combine to remind many of us of our own childhoods, and of simpler and more innocent times. But the fact that one mask has a big frown on it and that child is kind of off by herself is a reminder of some of the darker parts of life. The smallest child is, sort of, “not playing by the rules”, in that, she’s not looking at the camera like the other three and is instead trying to look at her brothers. I think that probably appeals to the rebel in all of us and I think not being able to see the kids faces kind of lets us look at it and see “every child”, including ourselves.

Mary was also a friend of mine, but I never knew that she had been an art student before she got married and started a family. Clearly, she had a great eye. I can’t help but wonder what she might have been up to today, artistically, if she were still alive… sadly she died seven years ago and we can only imagine.

So to make a long story short, this photo inspired me to step outside my comfort zone – thus, A Radical Departure - and shoot something I’d never shot before… studio portraits. I chose ten people and ask them to make paper bag masks that in some way represented them. I then shot a portrait of them with and without the bags.

The images are hung totally randomly and it’s up to you, the viewer, to match the bags with the person… if you care.

Many thanks to the brave people who modeled for me:

Lisa Lieb, Liz Potter

McCarson Jones, Michael Rendon

Rachel Stacy, Rachel Black

Russell Zimmermann, Skip Favreau

Vanessa Bohaty, Zane Angulo

Thanks also to Annie and the Lost Dog for hosting. And thanks to my assistant Matt Gerhardt for the beautiful printing job.

Enjoy if you go... and have a beer or two while you're there!

Here's a couple samples... I'll put some more up in the next day or so.

If you would like to see more of these portraits, go to my website.

Ruthie Into The Hall of Fame

My good friend Ruthie Matthes is being inducted into the U.S.Bicycling Hall of Fame this year. So over the weekend we went out and shot some promo photos for her to sign at public appearances. Here are several treatments of the one Ruthie chose.