As a follower of Jesus Christ, one of the things I am always aware of when I look through the view finder is that the image I see is, in every case, the work of our Creator. As I frame my shot and prepare to take a photo, it is always in the back of my mind that I am capturing His handiwork. I strive to honor Him with every photo I take by doing my best to take a photo that exhibits the wonder of our Creator's awesome creation.
Most of my work is focused on creating Landscapes in Ultra Large Format (Gigaramas as I have coined them) images for use as wall murals, very large photos for commercial use, TV & movie sets backgrounds. Most of the images on my website consist of anywhere from 10 to 150 images all merged into one final composite.
It was Christmas 1964 when I got my first camera, a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. I was 13 years old and for a young boy in the 1960's film and processing was expensive. Each roll of film only took 12 pictures. Living near Lusk, Wyoming we had to send the film off to a developer "Back East". You would drop the film and about $3 in the mail and two or three weeks later your pictures would show up with a fresh roll of film. I remember the Fall of 1964 when I went to Jackson Hole with my Dad on an elk hunting trip. I used a whole roll of film taking pictures of the Grand Tetons. As many of the photos on my website sight testify, the Tetons are still one of my favorite subjects to photograph.
The little Brownie served me well through my high school years. During my Junior and Senier years I spent hours in the school's dark room helping my chemistry teacher develop photos for the annual yearbook. It was always a thrill when he would let me use his 35mm camera. I would take pictures around school and at sporting events for use in the school Annual.
I graduated High School in spring of 1969. About two weeks before graduation I managed to convince the chief engineer at the TV station in Casper, WY to hire me as a TV cameraman. It was a big change for this country farm boy to move to the "big" city. For the next year I worked at the station learning the in's and out's of videography. In addition, the station had a operational dark room that was used to process still photography. That summer they purchased a new 16mm movie film processor which I participated in setting up and operating. One of my jobs was to process any 35mm still photos or 16mm movie film the news crews took during the day. It had to be ready for the 5 o'clock news.
Marriage, children and life happened and many years passed. My interest in photography always took a back burner. Finally, in 1983 I was able to afford my first real 35mm SLR camera. It was a Canon A1. I used it for the next 20 years, until it finally wore out. During those years I developed my skills at photography. I eventually replaced the old A1 with a Canon 5Diii that I am currently using. In 2009 I establish Abba's Creations Photography and began to shot Fine Art photography.
