This body of work is intended to be both fun and thought provoking. The title of this collection was inspired when I walked down a visually interesting, if sketchy, alley near Seattle’s Pioneer Square, and spotted pink, chalk graffiti offering the tongue-in-cheek insight, “Chalk is Cheap.”

In the image Worn-out Welcome, we have literally that. This might come in handy for certain guests, not that they would take the hint!

I have long sought to prove the adage that the grass is, in fact, greener on the other side (of the hedge, in this case). If you’d like to see for yourself, just stroll through this neighborhood in Tacoma (Grass is Greener). If you don’t like housework, I have just the bumper sticker for you (Screw Housework). He didn’t seem that interested in car washing either.

If you’re wondering what happened to all of the salmon that used to swim past Seattle, look up. Here a hardy steelhead swims up the electrical stream, apparently (Steelhead Swimming Upstream).

Is the crane, a symbol of progress, taking our Buddha away (Buddha and Crane) or putting him back? Sometimes I prefer to leave a work untitled (Untitled) so as not to encourage disturbing thoughts in the mind of impressionable viewers trapped in a futile search for meaning!

When I lived in India, I tried my best to understand life in, what I found to be, a very foreign culture. How about this entertaining and confounding sign in Srinagar, Kashmir: “Photography makes up happiness in height for what it lacks in length,” (Falcon Photographers). OK!?

One of my favorite phenomena to photograph is the dazzling, evanescent, refraction of light into the rainbow colors of iridescence.

Feather-like swirls of light dance across the surface of a stainless-steel sculpture in the image Steel Sculpture forming a virtual wing. Using a 500mm telephoto lens for the image Cascade Falls, I was able to shoot from a distance across the pool at the bottom of the falls in order to capture the many colors of the falling and splashing water.

I first noticed the phenomena of iridescence as a child when, looking through half-closed eyes, I saw the light iridesce through my out-of-focus eyelashes. A similar play of light can be seen in the image My Cat, Wild Thing, a macro shot of my cat in which its black fur reveals unexpected tints and hues.

At low tide in the San Juan Islands, one can spot what I call “splendid, iridescent, rainbow-leaf seaweed” or as phycologists call it, mazzaella splendens (Seaweed). The shifting, shimmering colors are best viewed when the seaweed is just under water. I photographed this ephemeral phenomena in the shadow of an overhanging rock, which reduced surface glare on the water for an optimal view.

Has anyone else noticed the dazzling display of glittering color produced by the oils in used coffee grounds (Coffee Grounds)? Who would have thought! More iridescence can be seen in surfactants found in nature (Hoebuck Beach and Oil on Water). Oils from alder pollen floating on the surface of my pond create an iridescent sheen in the glancing morning light in the image, Waldron Pond.

The rest of the images in this series lean more towards the sculptural. In Icicle in Norway the sunlight dispersing through an out-of-focus icicle projects prismatic orbs onto the film. Many plastics are capable of impressive iridescence when the angle of light passing through them is just right, as seen in the image Acrylic Sculpture, which I photographed in a sculpture park in L.A.. The image Polished Shell reveals the painterly, abstract beauty of a polished abalone shell.

My first photographic love was exploring the discipline and challenges of seeing the world in black and white. The second was mastering the darkroom skills I employ to control tonality, contrast, and other aesthetic properties of a silver-based print. The way monochromatic art emphasizes composition and adds an element of abstraction is enticing. In the first image of this portfolio (Madrona Bark), is that tree bark, paper, or fabric?

My favorite black-and-white photographer is Edward Weston. His contact prints glow with an unsurpassed luminosity. The image Cascade Falls in this portfolio was taken with a Deardorff view camera, like Weston’s, on 4 x 5" Tri-X film with a 30-second time exposure at an aperture of f/64.

Several photographs, Buckhorn Beach, Old Man, Buddha and Child, were included in the Tacoma Art Museum’s juried group exhibit Photography 1975, my first group show. Others, Madrona Bark, Cascade Falls, Irene, were exhibited at the Odlin Gallery at Whitman College in Walla Walla in 1976 as part of my first solo show. This edit of 12 photos was first displayed at the Living Room Gallery in Eastsound in December 2004.

While nothing can replace the tactile, analog experience of chemical film processing and photo printing with an optical enlarger—the end results are uniquely beautiful—I prefer the flexibility of modern, digital tools. Today’s pigment-based, inkjet printing technology, in tandem with the software I use to creatively transform a digital file into a fine-art print, yield impressive results with superior longevity. Properly framed and displayed, these prints will last for centuries.

When my son, Will, took up skateboarding as a passion in 2002, I decided to paint and play with the photographs I took of him to emphasize the energy and artistry of this fast-paced sport. I had fun with the colors by over-saturating or altering them. Many of the images, such as Brooklyn Bridge feature selective tone reversal, a process in which I reverse the tone of the background in order to heighten the contrast between it and the skater. These transformations celebrate the ephemeral moments of beauty that enliven the life of a city.

Skateboarding is a sport that is incredibly hard to master. The harder the tricks get, the more skaters get to know their good friend, cement. Many skaters deepen this friendship in attempts at “jumping the door,” (Jumping the Door) a rite of passage at the Orcas Island Skatepark. To do the trick imagine carrying enough speed to not only hold yourself against a vertical wall, but to jump a sizable hole in the middle of it!

An Ollie is the most basic skill: it is the ability to pop the board as high as possible above a surface. The use of a fisheye lens in shooting Ollie into the Sun exaggerates how high a skater can fly.

In The Red Balloon a red ball provides a reference point for gauging just how deep the big bowl at the Orcas Skatepark really is. A huge amount of speed is needed not only to reach its upper edge, but to stay planted against the wall on the way down.

Something as seemingly simple as consistently landing a kickflip (shown in the images Kickflip Shoreline and Water Street) requires intense practice and extreme precision under constantly changing conditions.

I find it thrilling to witness the bravery and ingenuity of the most inventive skateboarders. The images Wall Ride NYC and Brooklyn Bridge show a what’s known as a “wall ride,” the art of skating a vertical surface for as long as possible.

This portfolio collects subjects and ideas that play with, and inform, our perception of bold opposites: hard versus soft, bright opposed to dim, tattered or new, fleeting versus ancient.

The first image, Iridescent Shell, offers a close up of a polished shell, warm and aglow from within, as bright, morning light illuminates the translucent spiral from behind. Another photo, Light Through Pitcher Spout, captures the ephemeral moment when sunlight, refracting through a glass water pitcher handle, transforms the object from one of everyday utility into a sculpture of extraordinary radiance.

Juxtapositions of feeling and texture include July 4th on Waldron Island, in which an older, faded flag drapes over a madrona branch at a July 4th potluck, and July 4th Parade Costume, in which a hat is adorned by a tiny, crisp, new flag, glued to a matchstick.

The hand-formed, Cerulean-blue bowl (seen in Dried Fuchsia in Japanese Bowl) that my parents found in a small, Japanese, mountain village hints at contemplative tranquility. The Venice, California, kitchen of a sculptress friend of mine (Venice Kitchen) offers quite a different state of mind.

The environments people create in their homes are as fascinating and varied the people themselves. An artist friend living in Olympia turned her apartment walls into a fashion show featuring vintage dresses and advertisements (Black and White Dresses and Pink Door and Green Dresses).

A tended garden at full flower provides a vibrant cornucopia, bursting with the most beautiful colors and shapes that nature has to offer (Flowers on the Patio). Contrast that with the dusty remnants of what was once a dried flower arrangement, shown in Sunlit Bottle.