I was born in 1936, the year Kodachrome film was introduced, and my photography spans more than fifty-five years and many technological changes leading to the current “digital age.” I've worked in both the fine arts and commercial milieus and as a teacher of photography.

I first experimented with digital photography in 1997. Since then, I have studied constantly in order to stay abreast of the technology. I'm now using my tenth digital camera and I'm more excited about my work than I've ever been.

Three decades ago, I became convinced that the digital image was the future of photography. By the mid-nineties, I had observed several professional studio photographers at work with high-end digital equipment, but I couldn't make a financial commitment to that level of digital imaging and wasn't interested in owning a digital camera that had to be tethered to a computer, no matter how portable. Most of my work was done on location, often in remote locations.

In 1997, I began experimenting with a reasonably priced Olympus "prosumer" camera, which proved to be a rather remarkable product, despite it's limitations. I discovered it could be "tricked" into doing things it wasn't programmed to do. I also discovered that with Adobe® Photoshop®, I could interpret the original JPEG files in a way that produced striking results, some of which were commercially applicable.

Since 1998, I have continually upgraded my cameras, computers, printers and computer software. The tools I currently use include Adobe® Photoshop®cs3 and a number of plug-ins, notably Genuine Fractals PrintPro 5.0-one of four tools I have used to enlarge image files. Many of the photographs you see on this site have been printed as large as 24" x 30" with results that rival those recorded on medium format film.

Contrary to opinions you may have read and heard, many commercial photographic requirements can be fulfilled with lower end digital equipment. Even with my earlier prosumer cameras, I produced many digital photographs for reproduction in printed media without an apparent compromise of image quality. The important consideration always was the size of the final image required. It was–and still is–important to recognize the limitations imposed by the size of the image file and not to overestimate the cameras' capabilities.

Between 1999 and 2002, I completed several projects incorporating the images made with Olympus digital cameras. The most ambitious of these was the revised edition of my book, Tulsa Art Deco, a large format "Coffee table" volume that was originally published in 1980 and totally re-designed for the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture in 2001. For the first edition, I used medium and large format cameras and film. For the new book, I made my own digital scans of the original photographs and supplemented those with new images made with an Olympus E-10.

In 2001, I also used the E-10 to photograph the Williams Championship LPGA Tournament at the Tulsa Country Club. In July 2002, I traveled to Alaska with the Olympus E-20N and used that camera under a variety of conditions that took the measure of its capabilities. The results were totally gratifying.

In 2003, I began using a Nikon D-100. Nikon was my mainstay for 35mm photography over the many years I worked with film and I have a substantial investment in Nikon lenses and accessories. My 5 megapixel E-20N images simply did not have the quality of those I made with the 6.1 megapixel D-100.

Late in 2004, and after much deliberation, I decided to purchase a Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n, featuring a 36 x 24 mm, 12 bit RGB CMOS image sensor yielding 13.5 megapixel image files. My decision was guided by a desire to have a camera with a full-size 35mm frame sensor, and compatibility with all my Nikon equipment. While I was satisfied with the quality of the images I made with the DCS Pro, Kodak has discontinued its manufacture and will not support it beyond the end of 2008.

In June of 2006, after three months of research, during which I tested competitive products and made side-by-side image comparisons, I bought a Nikon D2X. I was delighted to discover that the 12.4 Megapixel D2X produces images superior to those I made with the Kodak DCS-Pro. There is much more to image quality than the megapixel count.

I also use an Epson "desktop" scanner to convert images from my "conventional" medium and large format negatives and transparencies. My results frequently have exceeded the quality of scans of those same images made by pre-press houses with much more costly hardware.

The negative remarks about digital photography that I used to hear so often from graphic designers and commercial printers have faded in recent years. Though we sometimes engage in friendly debates over the relative merits of film vs. digital, the digital medium has become well accepted.

Photography and the graphic arts have seen enormous changes over the past decade. The "rules" that governed my activities throughout my years as a commercial photographer have changed remarkably and the opportunities that were opened to me through the use of computers and digital cameras have afforded me control over the finished product that I couldn't have imagined at the outset of my career. Today I have the ability and tools to manage the entire work flow, and that continually makes photography more exciting for me.

As photographers who have shifted from analog to digital become more proficient in using image-editing software, and as they become more familiar with the language of today's graphic arts professionals, the acceptance of the digital product will increase. The proficiency gap that always has influenced the level of trust between photographers, processing labs, printers and lithographers is likely to remain, but there is no question that digital photography is becoming the standard. Still, I hope we always will respect the alternative processes and the craftsmanship and artistry that each requires, and I hope those methods of image making remain a vital part of the photographic curricula in our schools and universities. An understanding of the findamentals of photography is as important to digital photography as it is to film- based image making, and solid grounding in those fundamentals shortens the digital learning curve and stimulates one's creativity.

To know one's limitations is the first step toward overcoming them. Recognizing possibilities and working intelligently to achieve them are the only guarantors of satisfaction.