Since I was a baby I was the subject for my father’s camera. A Ziess Ikon 2 ¼ X 3 1/4 folding camera which for it’s time produced
an excellent negative in black and white, comparable to large format. At some point I will publish some of my fathers photography.
My first real camera was a Leica 4C 35mm which I purchased while in the Air Force during the Korean War.
I still have that camera and it can still capture excellent image although it can not compete with my Nikon F100 and computer designed lens. But the image quality is different due to the construction of the lens.
Next I purchased my fathers Roliflex 2 ¼ camera. This twin lens reflex camera had a 80mm Ziess Planar lens which is still the standard for normal lens. But the lack of interchangeability of lens seemed to be a handicap to me so, as soon as I could, I acquired a 4X5 Crown Graphic and three lenses. This led to the beginning of a real career in photography. Later I began adding a Hasselblad set which became the work horse of thirty years of weddings in Yosemite and elsewhere.
Today my work is mixture of digital and large format (4X5 mostly). I am happy to perform custom printing from your negatives or slides, and to copy your prints to make enlargements. I can also restore damaged black and white or color prints or negatives back to their original condition or better. The computer is a wonderful invention and in the hands of a professional photographer, much can be done. Give me a call at 966-5522 to arrange for me look at your project and give you an estimate. All work is done here in Mariposa with no chance of your precious originals getting lost in the mail.
During the intervening years I worked as a pharmacist at Mariposa Drug and John C. Fremont Hospital but it was photography and writing books and for newspapers that sustained my creative needs. This web site is now growing with many of the original photographs that I took over the last 35 or so years. My favorite subjects are nature and the evidence of man in unusual places. I am not so interested in what man was doing, like mining, but the evidence of life in these places. I like the towns of Mariposa County very much because I have a personnel connection with their history and the people who lived there.
Other places like Bodie are special because of how nature preserved the structures that were built but also understanding that lives went on, men worked, had families, dreamed of a richer future, became sick and died and lost many of their children to disease and accident. The cemetery at Bodie is full of children. At one time and for a short period, this boom town that raised the hopes of many people, like most of the Mother Lode, was subject to failure. But they became aware of their surroundings and reduced their expectations to understand the beauty of nature and how it could provide if only one would let nature be understood. The native populations of the Sierra survived generation after generation living off the land. They were hunters and gatherers who lived in harmony with what was provided to them. They became so close to nature that somehow their numbers came into balance with what was available. For example, their diet was rich in carbohydrates and the fact that many stored fat easily, limited their reproductive processes.
I like to photograph the sea coast as well as the mountains, as a similar set of properties exist in that environment. I also am interested, as I have demonstrated through many of my books, my love of the history of my native land. I have collected thousands of images of the past and have included in many books. Hopefully in the future I will be able to publish my current work, but times change how we expose the product of our art.
Therefore I use the web site as a way to accomplish this.
I also like to work with photographers who have similar visions and their work while different than mine are a personnel expression of their vision. Robert Chapanot is a retired San Francisco photographer whose work helps define the nature of the urban setting in juxtaposition to the natural world. Hopefully my long time friend, Ira Estin, will join me in helping to express his vision through catalogue pages of his work. All of the images that we display will be available for purchase which will be the way that we satisfy our urges creatively as well as support this unquenchable habit of photography.
I hope over the years and months ahead as we develop our inventory of images that you will enjoy seeing them as much as we have enjoyed creating them.
If you have any photographic questions please ask them on the blog and I will answer as soon as I can. The url address directly to the blog is www.yosemitehistory.com