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Q: Can you put me in touch with this model?

A: Sorry, but under no circumstance will I give out contact or personal information for any model. This is a matter of privacy for the models. Maintaining their confidence in me is of vital importance to my ongoing work.

Q: Do you have more photos of this model?

A: Probably. But you also probably aren't going to get to see them no matter how nice you ask. Editing photos, formatting them for the web and building the supporting web pages takes serious time. No matter how into a particular model you are, I don't have time to share all the work I shoot.

Q: What kind of camera do you use?

A: The bulk of my work is now shot digitally using a Canon 40D. I have shot everything from 35mm up through medium format (4x5 in my case). I also use a very old (~1958) Graflex 4x5 large format view camera. A large portion of my work was shot with my medium format Mamiya 645AF.

Q: What kind of film do you use?

A: As I said, I now shoot largely digitally. However, when I was shooting film, for black and white, I prefer Kodak TMax. For color I use a combination of Kodak EliteChrome for slides and Kodak E100SW for medium format transparency. I generally shoot 100 speed film whenever possible for purposes of sharpness. Occasionally I will shoot as fast as 3200 speed for accentuated grain. The real secret on film is to learn the characteristics of the particular stock, and shoot it accordingly.

Q: Where did you train?

A: I have a Bachelor's degree in Motion Picture and Television Production from Montana State University. While some of the creative techniques overlap, still photography is considerably different from the world of film and television. My still photography technique is largely self taught. I've learned from my fellow photographers, from books, but mostly by shooting many rolls of film and critically and honestly reviewing the results. I have also studied with world famous photographer Andreas Bitesnich.

Q: What is the difference between a fine art, erotica and pornography?

A: To my mind, it comes down to three things. Intent. Style. Execution. Let me address the points one-by-one.
Intent. Regardless of style, subject or medium, too often, the question "Is it art?" gets asked. To me, art is in the intent. I think when the "Is it art?" question is framed, what is really being asked is "Is it good?" That is a matter of execution. If the intent is to create something beautiful that elicits a meaningful emotional response, then regardless of the quality of the execution, then it is art. If the intent is solely to arouse prurient interest (lust), then it is pornography. Certainly there is a gray area. Desire is a valid emotional response. Erotica legitimately falls in the area of art, pornography does not. Which leads us too...
Style. There is generally a style difference in how art and pornography are approached. Eros is frequently in the suggestion. Shadow and light. An unreality of expression. Sex and sexual acts can still be the subject matter of an artistic work. Portraying a sex act does not make a work a piece of pornography. As long as you approach the subject with respect and emotional honesty, you can achieve art. If you are careless, disrespectful or emotionally hypocritical, you can't.
Execution. Sometimes you just fail in the execution. You generally don't get to see these works. I've done work that I consider to have failed artistically due to bad execution. Wrong lighting, wrong angle, whatever. It's not art. I've occasionally considered a piece of my work to be pornographic due to bad execution -- you don't get to see those!

Q: What does “moral rights of the artist” refer to?

A: In addition to legal rights as a copyright holder, the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 laid out a series of “moral rights” for visual artists. These rights pertain to the artist’s rights to have their work displayed in a respectful manner, be properly attributed to the artist, not be mutilated, or willfully destroyed. Additionally, an artist has the right to not have works by others attributed to them and to disavow works which they feel no longer represent them.

Q: What are the "latent image blues"?

A: The “latent image blues” are the excitement and trepidation which a photographer suffers through between the time they have exposed the film (capturing a "latent image" in the chemistry of the film) and the time they get back the developed film (at which point there is a "real image").

Q: What reccomendations do you have for framing?

A: My standard print sizes are 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20. Other sizes are available by special arrangement and would require a quote. The right size for you all depends on how the prints will be displayed, and your taste in in decorating.

The larger the print, the farther away it can be comfortably viewed. The larger the frame in relation to the print, the more dramatic the presentation (but the more wall space is taken up by framing and matting). Generally, the larger the print, the wider the matting should be. But a small print floated off center in a larger frame can be very dramatic.

In my home I have a mixture of all three, 8x10's, 11x14's and 16x20's. The 8x10's and 11x14's are framed out to 16x20 size using standard, pre-made Nielsen/Bainbridge matte black museum frames. These are a little expensive, but time saving. My 16x20's are all matted and framed out to 28x32 and framed using custom cuts of Nielsen framing and 6 ply matte (purchased from Light Impressions over the web).

In small spaces (like the water closet of the master bath) I have 11x14's. On the other hand, I have a large collection at the top of my stairs, which is most often viewed from below; there I used 16x20's. The 8x10's are architectural prints and are displayed in places where it is easy to walk right up to them to take a closer look. They are also displayed as part of a collection of objects, so no one thing is supposed to jump out.