I have had a camera close by since I was a very young child. I have always, and I mean always, enjoyed taking pictures starting with my Brownie Box camera in the 1950s. During my college years, while I was pursuing studies related to nature and coastal geology, I began to get more serious about photography and started. shooting with an SLR loaded, usually, with Kodachrome 64 color slide film. Occasionally I shot black and white film which I developed and printed myself. When I first discovered Ansel Adams’ work I was mesmerized. Then I found a book by Eliot Porter who veered away from the traditionalist monochromatic landscape photography of the 1930s and ’40s and shot in color. I first saw Porter’s work in a book in the 1970s. His isolation of small areas within a landscape was very interesting. I found his “intimate landscapes”, as he called them, to showcase pockets of beauty and, to me, serenity that nature provides. He appreciated color, texture, and pattern in a way that I related to and I have never forgotten the lessons I gained from his work. While I love shooting majestic sunrises and sunsets, and all the likes they receive on social media, a photograph such as this one is closer to my personal art. This patch of thick marsh grass shot on Assateague Island a couple of days ago is reminiscent of the eye of Eliot Porter, if I am not too presumptuous in making this comparison. So, I hope you enjoy this simple intimate landscape that highlights color, texture, pattern and form. Enjoy.
