photography

Since 2006, John has produced professional-quality photography focused primarily on birds and other aspects of nature. His work in bird photography has appeared in Wild Bird, Birder's World, as well as Birds & Blooms magazines, and has taken awards in nature photography contents. John's pet photography won two first place awards in the United Papillon and Phalene Association's virtual dog show.

Images in John's portfolio are available for purchase, both for licensed reproduction and as individual prints, and can be provided in several formats. John is also willing to accept commissioned and assignment work.

A fine Pileated Woodpecker


the story of John's photography

At the early age of four or five, John's parents gave him a camera of his own. Though the simple Kodak Instamatic—which used the now-defunct 126 cartridge film format—lacked anything but a shutter release and a socket for disposable flash cubes, John managed to take some pretty decent shots for such a small-fry.

Through the years, John went through several amateur-quality cameras, from a handful of no-brand 35mm cameras obtained by sitting through timeshare spiels to a Kodak instant film camera (rendered useless by Polaroid's lawsuit against Kodak) to the 110-cartridge based model he used throughout high school to the basic "point and shoot" 35mm Pentax that served his early college years. Though these cameras produced serviceable photographs and even the occasional spectacular shot, he generally found himself wondering what he was doing wrong and how he could improve the quality of his photography.

Though he had an eye for good photographs, John lacked both the equipment and the knowledge to produce the kind of images he wanted. He began experimenting with his 35mm camera, shooting off entire rolls of film and rushing to get them developed to see the results. As the price of digital cameras fell and their performance increased, John switched from film to electrons and made good use of the ability to instantly review the results of each shot to refine his technique... but he soon began to realize the limits of his little point-and-shoot digital.

When John acquired his first SLR camera, he finally discovered what his photos had previously lacked in the fine control over exposure that is so basic to good photography. Finally, his eye had been given the proper complement of a good camera, and no longer were things like aperture, depth of field, and shutter speed mysterious and unfathomable arcana over which he had no control. His technique soon caught up to his eye given the freedom of expression his new camera had gifted him, and no longer were professional-quality images only the occasionally-serendipitous results they had been before.