A thousand thanks to The Photo Review for the wonderful surprise New Year’s gift in featuring my updated website and “Ardor” in its January/February 2020 Newsletter. It also gives a link to my Picture of the Week, an often quirky, sometimes serious image.

I am very grateful to the Black and White Spider Awards jury awarding #1, a digital montage, a Nominee Award in the Abstract category in international fine art competition — especially since #1 represents my return to the world of black and white, where I began my career in photography.

The Black and White Spider Awards is recognized as the leading international award honoring black and white fine art photography.

My work pays homage to the endless ability of the environment to create its own arresting art forms. Essentially shooting “straight” photography, I would like my images – which clearly do not look straight - to be seen as expanding the definition of realism in contemporary photography.

The realism I explore are unaffected, natural forms occurring in an astonishingly wide variety of color, shape and intensity in nature. Using slide film (“chromes”) and committed to capturing such forms faithfully as they exist, I often use the reflective qualities of water to achieve through-the-lens abstractions of reality.

SATURN RISING is from this body of work. Far from being a planetary or cosmic object as seen through a telescope, the image captures a scene from a high vantage point at dawn in the Norfolk, VA, Harbor.

I call such photographs constructed abstracts. I frame the abstractions in the camera’s viewfinder, then print images full frame. Although perhaps appearing manipulated, cropped or painted, they are not.

SATURN RISING, appearing now in an exhibition at the Cosmos Club, 2121 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20008

A short (10-minute) talk - mostly slide presentation - on seeing the abstract in the natural environment, Tues., Jan. 13, 2015, 7 p.m. Sponsored by American Society of Media Photographers, DC Chapter (ASMPDC), American University, McKinley Building, Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater (2nd Fl.), 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016.

An international competition honoring excellence in color photography, the Photography Masters Cup "selected the best from among 7,416 entries" worldwide.

I am honored to have my work, "Starboard Suite, #1, Horizon, " chosen for the forthcoming Fiftieth Anniversary Biennial Exhibition of The Washington Print Club, at the Katzen Arts Center at American University.

Three of my images, "Earthview," "Modulation" and "Confluence," each printed 60 inches x 40 inches, are featured in this exhibition.