Jim is lifelong resident of central Massachusetts. His acquired his first camera, an Olympus rangefinder, in 1969. Very quickly, he knew that he wanted to become more than a hobbyist. Having received formal instruction while at SMU in the early 1970s, he credits his professors Ted Meade and Elaine Fisher with training him in classic 35mm photography and helping him develop a critical eye toward his subjects and art in general. After graduation, he operated a studio and concentrated on weddings, portraiture and photojournalism. By 1976, marriage and buying a home caused him to secure more steady employment. His involvement with picture taking became limited to filling up family albums.
Now, decades later, he has revisited the hobby. As with all his passions, he has done so in a big way. His love for outdoor work, coupled with early commercial experience has helped him to “pose” (frame) his nature subjects. In order to bring an image beyond a snapshot recording, he attempts to evoke a feeling or mood from the picture without sacrificing technical accuracy.
Jim’s equipment choices are Canon, Fuji and Olympus; not necessarily in that order. Because he still admires the 35mm era he uses older manually focused legacy lenses on a DSLR camera of similar size to the classic 35s. Virtually all of his photographs are taken outdoors. None of his work is ever shot in a studio. Not wanting to be encumbered by a tripod, he usually avoids them unless absolutely necessary. Hand held shooting can be difficult. Because one of his favorite modes is to shoot macro, Jim has had to develop ways to compensate for this. When in the field, he generally avoids people. He regards them as less cooperative than landscapes. Often, he spends 80% of his time scouting and 20% of his time collecting. When he does begin to collect images, he loves pushing the “shutter release” with reckless abandon.
The advent of digital photography has permitted the limitless alteration of captured images when they are worked at the desktop stage of processing. For this reason, Jim does all of the post processing and printing himself. He wishes to offer his own creative viewpoint of the subjects he presents. Even though he is nearing retirement age, he believes that his best creative years are before him. He does hope that you find one of his images pleasing.
Galleries at Imagekind.com contain almost one thousand of Jim’s images. Jim has had his work represented for sale at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens, Borders Book Stores and Hopkinton Card and Gift. He recently was fortunate to be chosen as a shop artist at The Danforth Museum in Framingham