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I began as a young professional road cyclist nearing the end of college and traveling to races all over the country when the famed fashion photographer Bruce Weber came to Austin where I rode in the annual “Tour of Texas” racing series every year in March. He had been in the area photographing Brooke Shields for an Italian magazine and athletes for Interview magazine, for which he was well known. Of course I had no idea at the time that he was actually the world’s dominant fashion photographer. So after a couple of local shoots with him he asked me to call Alan Mendel in New York at Click Model Management. I also had no idea that within a month I would be shooting a Calvin Klein ad campaign with him in Los Angeles and within two months I would be living in New York beginning a very successful modeling career. While I did no photography until years later, this became my education about the visual art of photography, and while working with so many talented and well-known photographers along the way my eye for photography began to bloom. It was years later, in 1999, that I moved to Boulder and discovered my real intuitive work with flowers.
When I photograph each of my subjects, there is a communication that exists between the plant and myself. It is a unique and living dynamic and it is this that I would like the viewer to see. If the viewer allows himself or herself to sense that which lives in and is available to us in these plants, then my work is successful. I have also come to realize that our respective arts cultivate awareness and peace, a very important dynamic.
The technical description of my work is very simple. It is digital photography, digital image management and the production of museum quality chromogenic prints. We have an abundance of technology at our fingertips, but the overriding and primary influence upon me as an individual and as an artist remains nature itself. When I see a magnificent flower very closely, it captivates me completely and I would like for the sensuality and grace of such an experience to overcome people. My images are made to affect people with this transforming moment.
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