Nature and Us
Bio
Education
M. I. T.
Yale School of Medicine
Born in Richland, Washington
Lives in Newton, Massachusetts
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Retired Psychiatrist
Study Group Leader
Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement
Photo credit: Amelia Altavena
My dad guided me to my first camera, a 35 mm Pentax viewfinder I bought in Hong Kong. In my mid-twenties I immersed myself in Ansel Adams’s books on exposure, development, and printing, shot a lot of black-and-whites, and spent hours in the darkroom. When our kids got older I joined the Newton Camera Club and learned how to create 35mm slide images. In the last few years I’ve been studying nature and conservation photography and trying to understand how successful photographs work.
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My ongoing project is depicting scenes where nature and people respond to each other. I’m always on the lookout for teetering dune houses, restored marshes, fire-scarred forests,, old and new farms, and recovering clear cuts. Then it’s finding good light and prowling around by or canoe, looking for scenes worth exploring.