About

Hi! I’m Alex. Want to know a little about the man behind all of these images? You’re in the right place.

My interest in photography originally branched from one in astronomy. At age 12 or 13, a desire to capture images of the great sights to be seen while peering through a telescope led to me absconding to the back yard with my mother’s Pentax K1000. After failing to find a way to jerry-rig a means of attaching the camera to my Orion refractor telescope, I moved on to shooting photos of star & planet trails as they moved across dark Iowa skies, and cars as they whizzed by on highways. Later, with a shiny new Minolta X-700 in hand, I moved on to shooting photos of lightning found at the leading edge of massive Midwest thunderstorms. Standing on flat farmland, next to a tall metal tripod, in the middle of rampant electrical storms – nothing at all unsafe about that.

While I pursued an art degree at Iowa State University, film was still the medium of the trade, and I learned the nuances of developing film and hand-printing photos in a dark room. Though I’ve since left behind the world of film photography, I’m glad to have it in my toolbox— the experience has given me an appreciation for what can, can’t, and maybe shouldn’t, be done when it comes to digital photography.  If you can do it in an analogue darkroom, go ahead and do it in your digital darkroom. If not, use it sparingly, if at all. With the tools that we have access to today, the line between photography and digital art is a fine one, and easily blurred. I feel that many artists are more Photoshoppers than they are photographers. I try to be the latter.

After obtaining my first digital camera, a Canon 20D, I quickly left behind the black & white motif which ruled my time in school. I soon found myself making near-weekly trips to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, where there is no shortage of incredible colors & textures as time progresses from one season to the next. Who needs Photoshop when we have Mother Nature’s paint brush? Many of the botanical images you see in my portfolio – macro images in particular – come from the Garden.

Most recently, I’ve relocated from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, and am currently residing in northwest Washington. Easy access to the outdoors, and a wide variety of terrain & environments in such a small area, do well to make you want to get out and explore. From snow-capped North Cascade mountains to the clear waters of Puget Sound’s shoreline, there’s no shortage of new sights to capture.

Obviously, I enjoy travel, landscape, and nature photography, but those are far from my only interests. Portraits, candid, wedding, architecture, abstract, action, flora, fauna, travel, you name it. I’ve learned that much of what you may know about photographing in one genre can be adapted to be utilized in another – though some may not, and it’s back to the drawing board. I’ve enjoyed opportunities to shoot new subjects, learning & using new techniques, because even as long as I’ve been practicing photography, there is always more to know, more to see, and more to shoot. To add another dimension, I’ve jumped into the realm of shooting HD video on my travels, to give myself experience in filming & editing in that medium, as well.

For years I kept much of this work to myself, but that ended when I began to exhibit in 2008. Since then I’ve had a number of pieces in juried art shows and exhibited in galleries around St. Louis, and have sold work in booth art shows in Missouri and Iowa. I hope you enjoy perusing my portfolio. If you see something you like, or have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line.

– Alex