ZEN GARDEN

This project is part of an ongoing body of work called Zen Garden. I've been very interested in the concept of zen photography - always trying to improve as a photographer, but accepting where I am in terms of my own photographic vision without succumbing to the pressure of comparing myself to others, and measuring my growth and success not in terms of 'likes' but in terms of getting better at communicating connection, depth and emotion. So I decided to start this Zen Garden project, a rather simplistic interpretation of zen photography, working on a series of images in black and white, focusing on shape, texture, line and theme without the distraction of colour - black and white like a zen garden, with just a few basic elements, removing everything extraneous and concentrating on how all the elements work together to enhance rather than take away from the balance of the overall picture.

A TRIBUTE TO ANSEL ADAMS

This is a series of pictures taken in New Mexico in January 2015. Before I went there, I did my homework and found, to my immense delight, that Ansel Adams had spent a great deal of time in that very same part of the country. Some of his most famous photographs of the American Southwest have been taken in Northern New Mexico. Adams’ seminal book, ‘Taos Pueblo’, published in 1930, has been described as ‘the greatest pictorial representation of the American West’.

This is my attempt at emulating the style of the master.