Jeff Zaruba
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It's not just about taking pictures. It's about wearing many hats. Its also about showing respect to everyone involved. Clients and subjects of course, but also assistants, desk clerks, skycaps, bellmen, housekeepers, and maintenance engineers.
“Most of my photos have a strong graphic element. I love the interplay of shapes, forms, shadows, reflections and light. I appreciate patina, and the sensibility of a culture that embraces it. Interestingly, I find that my current work resembles the graphite pencil drawings I did in art school more than 30 years ago.”
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
1975 Graduated with Fine Arts Degree in Photography from Arizona State University.
1975-1977 Served as assistant in Chicago for two commercial photographers.
1977 Started work as a freelance photographer in Los Angeles.
EXHIBITIONS
Fall of 1992, part of a group exhibit at Silver Image Gallery, Seattle
Spring of 2001, part of a group show at Joyce Petter Gallery, Saugatuck, Michigan
August of 2006, part of a group show at Americas Collection, Coral Gables , Florida
October of 2006, part of a group show, Masters of Photography International Exhibition in Curitiba, Brazil
February of 2007, part of a group show at Benham Gallery, Seattle,
March of 2007, part of a group show at Tilt Gallery, Phoenix
December of 2007, part of a three person show at Los Gatos Museum, Los Gatos, CA
May of 2009, one-man show at Appel Gallery, Sacramento
PUBLICATIONS
Graphis Nudes 1992
Black & White Magazine, Feature, February 2001
SilverShotz Magazine, Feature, December 2006
Nine photos to appear in upcoming book, “The World’s Greatest Black & White Photography, No.1”
AWARDS
Spider Awards, International Competition. First Place, Photographer of the Year 2005
CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Silver Seas Art Collection
Collier’s International, San Francisco
W Hotels, Chicago and Seattle
Latham and Watkins, Silicon Valley
Greg S. Binon
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My photographic work is the result of a passion, a passion for the delicacy and magnificence within the natural world. This passion drives me to hike for days, drive for weeks, and sometimes wait for years in pursuit of a moment. Moments when light, form, and time merge, reveling stunnng beauty rarely witnessed by most people. The camera's lens is then opened allowing the lumence of these moments to trickle upon a sheet of film.
I control all aspects of the images I create: the capture, the development, and the print. This gives me the ability to create the exact image that was within me and before my eyes as I pressed the shutter release. I strive to create fine art prints that convey a moment with all its detail and feeling to the viewer, inviting them to experience it as I did. I prefer to photograph "the edges", seams in nature, the merging of seasons, water cutting land, the beginning of a storm, the end of rain and of course the transitions of day and night. Every image is my humble attempt at sharing the grandeur, subtleties, and magic that is our natural world. I hope my photographs move your spirit with wonder and peace, as each moment presented, did for me.
Michael L. Watson
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As a child I would dream of climbing high peaks and having incredible adventures in some far off corner of the world. Early on, climbing came naturally to me and I began to bring camera along as a way to document climbs and friends and soon found myself torn between two competing passions: the desire to climb and photograph.
After completing my masters in mathematics my desire to photograph could no longer be held at bay. Quickly I found that my style of photography was better suited to a larger camera so I bought a medium format and shortly after, traded that in for a large format 5x4 metal field camera. The contemplative nature of the view camera and the high degree of perspective control offered suited me perfectly.
In retrospect, many of my adventures have constituted more than most would willingly chose to endure, but my reward has been in the beauty I've found and in the photographs I have brought back. Many times I have not been the first person to visit some remote area but my sense of discovery is quite powerful none-the-less. While the intent was and is to communicate with the viewer, my photography is both introspective and highly personal.
Stefan Tarzan
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One of the qualities of panoramic photography that has always appealed to me is the ability to show an entire vast landscape with a single image. When I was a child I remember being fascinated by the scrolling landscapes of Chinese parchments; I loved the way the eye could wander throughout a landscape on paper just like in reality.
Panoramic photography refuses to focus your attention on a single viewpoint or feature of the landscape. It lets you take in a place as a whole, seeing the interaction of the features of the landscape and how light and shadow spread throughout.
I guess I've been as influenced as much by painters, as by photographers; the importance of both mediums is to convey an emotional response to a place. While many of these panoramas show moments of dramatic atmosphere and light, I hope that people also taken time to admire the subtle details of the texture of a rock or a tree.
It you take away from each image a sense of the place, I've succeeded.
Stephen Baumbach
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For over 25 years, Stephen Baumbach has been involved with photography. During this time, he has taught photography, captured various images from rodeo to body building and has had several one-man exhibitions in Wyoming, Colorado, Massachusetts and Vermont. Steve was literally dragged in the digital world thinking as a purist, nothing would ever compare to film. New technology has proven him wrong. Today he makes the majority of his photographs digitally and prints the finished product himself. Steve looks at everything as though he was looking at it for the very first time and approaches his subject matter with the energy reflected in his work. He’s always looking at new ways to present the ordinary or familiar.
Richard Groenewold
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What is today the beautiful ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belice and some other countries, was once a huge civilization called Maya. The Mayan civilization was most advanced in Architecture, Medicine, Astrology, Art, and even War. So how could they fell as a culture?
Because they were superstitious. They believed that Cuculcan, a God of them that promised to come back as a white man one day was back when the Spanish arrived. So they trusted the Spanish people. And they as all the other cultures in America at that time were betrayed.
Some people think that the Mayan culture was a death culture by the time in which the Spanish conquest was done. That is far from the truth.
Most of the Mayan cities were still alive and with a lot of activity on them, only some of them were abandoned. But the Spanish thought they were most abandoned because the Mayans when they saw the Spanish conquering the Aztecs, the bravest and strongest of all the cultures of the ancient Mexico, and after that they destroyed all their Temples to build where they were and with their own stones the Spanish Temples, they thought of covering with sand the Mayan temples, so they would look abandoned for the Spanish. So the Spanish wouldn’t end with all their culture. The Shamans (the magicians, doctors and astrologists) of the Mayan civilization told the people that the Spanish will leave alter few years, so it didn’t matter if they just abandon their cities for only a few years, and after that they could come back, leaving in every city a watchman of them who will watch the buried city while the Mayan people was away. This watchman is called an “Lushes”, and there are still Alushes in every Mayan zone. They are descendants of the Alushes that stood there almost 500 years ago. They only speak Mayan, which is still a language speaker in every Mayan town in Mexico and other countries.
Some other Mayan cities were not abandoned and they as the Spanish did with the Aztecs, and almost every huge civilization of that time was converted in a Spanish city, the Mayan temples buried, or destroyed, and with their same stones the new Spanish Churches were created. That is the case of what it is today Merida in Yucatán, Campeche, and all the cities surrounding this ones. Valladolid, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chetumal, and so on.
I had been photographing and studying from this culture in the last ten years, and it is so amazing that there are still 1500 Arqueological Mayan zones only in Mexico. With more than 20,000 of Mayan structures.
After the Spanish inquisition there was few information left of the Mayan World, al their books were burned, all their traces erased. Almost all the warriors, Shamans, and royalty from them killed. And what the Spanish left alive were the lower casts of the Mayan, that is why we today wonder why if the mayans were so little if the steps in the temples are so big. Well, the mayan were not short people. But after 300 years of inquisition, killing and burning. The Mayans left are the ones which were not a threat for the Spanish. And after the Spanish killed as many brave mayans as they could the mexicans in a war called “The Casts War”.
After the Independence of Mexico the mayans thought it was their time to reborn. But the Mestizos and Criollos (the spanish born in Mexico) didn´t agree with them.
So, today we have many Mayan towns, but the government don´t let them be the owners of the mayan cities. So what is it left for them. They are not Spanish, they are not treated like Spanish, they are Mayans, but they don´t want to fight again for their rights. They know what happened the last time they did. Where is the World taking them? To globalization? To extintion? I hope not, I really hope so.
Adonis Abril
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I have always pursued my artistic endeavors through music and poetry. It wasn’t until I became passionate about outdoor activities from hiking to mountain climbing, where I learned to appreciate the natural beauty of the Earth, when I picked up my first camera. I fell in love with the intricacies of light and how it interacts with nature. I wanted a way to share the things I saw, the colorful display of light, the movement of the waves but words simply could not accomplish this.
I study the natural surroundings through perpetual contact and observation. The wilderness is something that draws my attention and engulfs my vision to capture fleeting moments in nature that we sometimes fail to notice, be that a small rock in the sand or the grand ocean in the horizon. I am drawn to both intricate and grand details in nature where I allow my eyes to lead me to a composition.
Equipment is irrelevant to my photography. I focus more on technique and composition than I do with cameras or lenses. I am just as comfortable using a 4x5 Large Format (fully manual) camera as I am with a full featured modern Digital SLR.
I strive to always let my viewers experience what I experience being in the wilderness and my images reflect this. I don’t digitally manipulate my images, granted digital manipulation is subject to individual interpretation. I don’t, for example, take objects from photo and replicate it on another. My processes and workflow resemble processes that photographers from yesteryears used prior to the advent of digital imaging.
Mitch Dobrowner
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Landscapes are living eco systems and environments. They have existed well before, and will hopefully be here way beyond the time we are here. When taking photographs, time and space seem hard for me to measure. Whenever I shoot a ‘quality’ image, I know it. At those moments things are quiet, seem simple again – and I obtain a respect and reverence for the world that is hard to communicate through words. For me those moments happen when the exterior environment and my interior world combine. Hopefully the images presented on this website help communicate what is visualized during those times. My work today is produced using a digital workflow. All darkroom work is performed in a dry darkroom with minimal dodging and burning. Prints are produced using pigment inks on archival quality 100% cotton rag paper.
Frank Sirona
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The aim of my landscape photographs is to combine two ostensibly incompatible modes of perception of nature with one another: namely the perspectives of the painter and the scientist.
The classical landscape painter is interested in the picture as a whole. He engages contours, forms, and colors, in search of balance and a successful composition. When seeing a dune, for instance, he perceives its harmoniously curved forms and the play of light and shadow when the sun is low on the horizon. Were someone to hand him a camera, he would shoot images that capture the beauty, power or evanescence of what is seen.
The natural scientist's interest is focused much more upon detail. He is preoccupied with causality, determinism, and natural forces and their interaction with one another. In seeking to explain why things are the way they are, he strives to trace natural phenomena back to the laws governing them. Were we to lead him to the selfsame dune, he would examine a single grain of sand and would attribute the dune's form, the angle of its slope, and the continual changes in shape caused by the wind to the physical properties of the grain. Through a camera lens he would concentrate on structures, patterns, and surface qualities by dint of close-up shots, which would then in turn bear witness to the play of natural forces and their formative effect on animate and inanimate nature; and, by doing this, the scientist would render the reasons for the qualities and constitution of the natural world visible.
The use of large format cameras as well as a complex process of enlargement-production allows me to capture both modes of perception of nature in one and the same picture. My aim are photographs that evince two very distinct, and yet inseparably interwoven, levels: an aesthetic level (the effect of nature on the viewer) and a purely analytic level (the effect of formative forces on nature). As these levels are often located on very different scales of magnitude, an extremely high optical resolution is required for the fusion of both in one picture. In most cases, the 4 x 5" shot format is not sufficiently true to detail; thus, I predominantly use 5 x 7" or 5 x 13" cameras for my work. For the same reasons, I prefer a final enlargement format of 30 x 40", at the least. The use of "Cibachrome" photo paper lends the photographs a maximum brilliance that further underscores the images' extreme richness in detail. Thanks to the fine-tuning of a great number of technical parameters I have arrived at over years of work my pictures succeed in providing a synthesis of the two complementary world views outlined above: the painter's and the scientist's perspective.
Henry Paine
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Inspired
by the infinite tonalities and luminosity of Ansel Adams’ photographs,
Henry Paine taught himself the Zone System technique that was first developed
by Adams. The Zone System is the path from the photographer’s vision
to the final print. It is a philosophy of technique and approach, an attitude
where the values of fine art and photographic science support the photographer’s
perception of the world in front of the camera. Henry uses 5" x 7"
and 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" format cameras exclusively. His film is
developed in Pyro, a formula legendary among photographers for its abilities
to render the subtleties of light and shadow.
Steve Appel
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I’ve taken photographs since I was a young pup. I honed my skills through
high school and college. Initially, developing and printing black and
white photographs in the school labs. Eventually, I became a lab assistant.
After college I continued to dabble in photography; however, not very
seriously. I strived to keep my vocation separate from my avocation
in order to preserve the innocence of art. Upon the dramatic changes
in digital technology, I was entranced to once again pursue my creative
dream.
Lewis Kemper
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Lewis
Kemper has been photographing the natural beauty of North America, and
it's park lands for over 27 years. His work has been exhibited and published
in magazines, books, and calendars. He has been named to Canon USA’s
elite group of photographers: The Explorers of Light. Lewis teaches
photography for many organizations. He is the author of The Yosemite
Photographer's Handbook, and The Yellowstone Photographer's Handbook.
Dan Baumbach
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Dan
Baumbach has worked in advertising and fashion photography. He interned
with some of the top commercial photographers. Among his clients were
Gentleman's Quarterly and Eastern Airlines. Presently, he is drawn to
capturing his experiences when out in nature. "I like to shoot
during the times of the day when the light is out of the ordinary. Sunrises
and sunsets especially during cloudy or foggy conditions can bring out
incredible colors.
Mark Howell
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I
started photographing with artistic intent about fifteen years ago. A
recovering poet, I had had enough of wandering about inside myself, of
trying to put myself into words. I soon discovered that the basic impulse
that caused me to trip the shutter was to praise. In the process of learning
to convey what I saw and felt, I discovered a deep satisfaction in printmaking.
Thus the twin motives of my photographic work: to make and to praise.
Robert A. Hicks
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Simply recording a landscape is not enough; I must attempt to make an
image that gives the viewer an intimate view of its essence, that essence
that I find attractive, comforting or catches my curiosity. Our current
and ancestral relationships with the land have produced modifications
to both humans and the occupied regions. These modifications leave artifacts
that interest me. This is indeed a curious relationship since it has evolved
and changed with time. I find it engaging to find and isolate these remnants,
record them in current context and present these images, occasionally
sad, sometimes contemplative, and often humorous, for viewing.
Jennifer Wu
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I strive to create images that evoke a mood or a chord of recognition
or even a sense of longing with the viewer. Some may sense tranquility
and peacefulness or perhaps powerful and vivid qualities to draw one on
to more and more discoveries before leaving one image to explore the next.
I photograph dramatic landscapes that are at the edge of the light of
night and day even as I search for exquisite and unique places.
Elizabeth Carmel
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I believe that experiencing the Earth's beauty has the power to help nourish
and unify us, both on a personal and global level. Through my photography
I endeavor to translate these experiences into fine art prints. I strive
to create images that link us to feelings and perceptions we may not access
regularly in our daily lives. I believe that great fine art photographs
are a gateway through habitual thinking to a larger perspective.
Bill Obernesser
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Photography
is a wonderful form of recreation and the source of much personal satisfaction
and pleasure. For me, image capture is driven primarily by the choice
of subject matter, with a view toward achieving a point of view, composition
and use of light that will create a descriptive and evocative representation
of the subject.
Larry Brenden
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Larry
Brenden’s photography provides evocative glimpses of the natural
world. Most often captured at first light, these images represent that
magical moment when light and color fuse, to produce a lasting photographic
memory. The combination of art and nature allows Brenden to produce photographs
that have the depth and color saturation often found only in images produced
in oil or acrylic. Through the utilization of a medium format camera and
a digital printing process, Brenden has the ability to produce large,
often abstract images of nature, that allow the viewer to experience the
mystical and often emotional manifestations of natures glory.
Gary Hart
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When
I was 10 I helped my father photograph lightning from Yosemite's Sentinel
dome, holding an umbrella high to shelter his precious gear. We didn't
consider the danger-it just seemed like the thing to do. The storm eventually
moved on and Dad didn't get his shot, but later that day the heavens granted
a consolation prize-a perfect rainbow across Half Dome's granite face.
I can think of no better illustration of a landscape photographer's relationship
with Mother Nature's whimsy. Sometimes we wait and wait and wait and then
wait some more and still the world refuses to be perfect. Then we give
up, and she grants us a view. Nature's generosity, ephemeral and not always
as obvious as my father's rainbow, is limited only by our ability to see
it. And I'll never tire of looking.
Terry Nathan
Galleries: Landscape - | Waterscape -
Terry
Nathan is a commercial and fine art photographer whose work is rooted
in portraying the aesthetic qualities of order within both natural and
human-made systems. In this exhibition a series of black and white photographs
explore those unique points in space and time when lightfuses land, air
and water. At those points architecture and landscape transcend their
literal interpretations and unite to spark the imagination.
John Lane
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As
a landscape photographer, my greatest
satisfactions are sharing images that emotionally and visually stimulate
people, connect people to the spiritual power of the nature, and finally,
inspire others to engage with the natural world and the things that affect
it. It is my sincere hope that, through my work, others are motivated
to seek outdoor experiences for themselves and find the places I have
been fortunate enough to call on.
Edward Mendes
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Much
of the world is missed while living life. The world around us speaks everyday
but all-to-often we don’t hear it; too busy with our own lives we
fly by at the speed of life and often miss the beauty that is waiting
right in front of our eyes. The world around us is immense, filled with
overwhelming sights and sensatory stimuli. When we do slow down for a
moment it’s often just to take in the environment as a whole, leaving
the intimacies of the world unnoticed or forgotten. I enjoy focusing on
these intimacies of the larger world; whether it is the soft coastal light
bathing a seaside pasture or the architectural and angular subtleties
produced by shapes and light, these easily overlooked moments are what
draw the attention of my lens. I grew up and continue to live on my family’s
farm; and doing so has installed a great appreciation for agriculture
and hence nature in general, something that I believe shows in my work.
As a boy, intimate landscapes and beautiful architectural details were
everywhere. The farm was a place where nature and man worked together
and depended upon one another. My work today continues with this influence
as a tie that binds nature and man together.