Artist Statement

I am an artist specializing in 360-degree panorama photography. Twenty years ago I "discovered" southern Utah. I photographed the wonders of the canyon country with conventional format cameras and failed to capture the totality of what I saw. I was missing something. The Navaho express it so simply in The Beauty Way:

With beauty before me, may I walk,

With beauty behind me, may I walk,

With beauty above me, may I walk,

If it is finished in beauty,

It is finished in beauty.

I realized that it took a panoramic view to capture the beauty I saw.

My first panoramic photographs were made by gluing together consecutive photographs to make a 360-degree picture. Then I discovered the Hulcherama camera, a shutterless, motor-controlled camera that rotates in a circle making a single-image 360-degree photograph. There is no viewfinder. I learned to pre-visualize the final photograph. Only after the film is processed do I learn if I succeeded.

My 22 years using the Hulcherama camera has given me a new understanding of the geometry of panoramic photographs. I am photographing a three dimensional world, not just the depth-of -field in front of the lens as most cameras do, but the entire 3-D world around me.

I see the world in 360 degrees now. Everywhere I go I am aware of the total scene around me as I picture in my mind what the scene would look like as a 360 degree photograph. It has given me a new and very different perspective of the world in which I live. I have discovered that all scenes can take on a new meaning and beauty from the perspective of the panorama camera. The challenge for me is to capture this beauty on film.

All that remains is to share this beauty with you.

It is finished in beauty.