About Me
...or welcome to the fishbowl I call my mind.
I woke up this morning breathing, and evil space vegetation hasn't tried to clone me yet. This is a good thing.
Graduated from the University of Manitoba, School of Art with a 4 year Bachelor of Fine Art Honours degree. Majored in drawing/mixed media. Mixed media focus was drawing, painting, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, Polaroid photography, lots of coffee grounds and autobody putty.
Since the late 90's I've shifted into digital photography and the computer as my medium of choice largely through the influence of the jobs I had found myself in - a web designer for 5 years and then as (and still) a photo restoration specialist / print technician. In 2000 I retired the Polaroid and Pentax K1000 and moved on to an early P&S digital camera in. By 2001-02 I had moved up to a full dSLR (Canon D30) and since that time have fully transposed my traditional artistic skills to a new tool and medium.
How I approach my photography - not as your typical photographer. I actually prefer the freedom in the term Artist. Though, artistically I'm a traditionalist (AKA perfectionist to some), I have no issues in bending reality as how the camera saw it for the sake of bettering an image esthetically. I'm not a journalist bound by rules after all. I do take the approach that I try to limit enhancements to an image to what could have been done in a darkroom with film - but I'm not a zealot about 'pushing' an image in Photoshop. I worked at photo restoration long enough to see what those old masters in the darkroom could do to realize that 'photoshoppery' has been with us for a VERY long time - long before digital wizardry came along.
What am I known best for. Most know me by my panoramics and my creative Photoshop editing. Some see it as some kind of voodoo magic but it's really not when you've used Photoshop pretty much since the software came out. I just happened to have taken the time to learn it. What I really like doing is just making damn nice images whether it's just a single shot, a panoramic, a Photoshop 'push' or an infrared.
What I shoot. Pretty much everything and mostly when most people have packed away their cameras. Running through ditches after birds, getting soaked (all the time) or stuck for 9 hours in mud (once) or nearly hit by lightning (more times than I care to know) chasing storms, freezing in the middle of a winter night for Auroras and starscapes, to being pelted by burning crud while in a fireworks fire zone. Doing the odd extreme stuff makes the normal everyday shooting seem easy - that is till you realize that is your normal shooting day.
Enjoy the site.
~ GEOFF ~
