Chapala

A quiet afternoon on Lake Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico, taken with my iPhone. Or, as I prefer to call it, my iCamera, since I seldom talk on it, but am constantly taking photographs with it. It is, after all, always in my pocket or my hand, ready to freeze a moment in time.

I have been photographing for as long as I’ve been painting. I never cared for darkrooms and smelly chemicals, though. I was for a long time, a taker of photographs, but not a maker of photographs.

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Ansel Adams

I used the camera mainly as a sketch book for my career as a painter.

Then the digital age came along and opened photography to me as more than just a way of gathering ideas for my paintings. I could now do the things with my photos that I had not been able to do in a darkroom. And more.

I worked my way through a number of digital cameras, and had a lot of fun. I still used the camera mainly as a sketch tool for my career as a painter. The thought of photography as a second career, however, was slowly invading my thinking.

After all, I’ve been painting full time, now, for fifty years. How could I possibly devote the majority of my time to photography? Increasingly, I began to think of myself as a painter and a photographer.

Then it dawned on me. I am an artist. Whether using a brush or a shutter. or, for that matter, a burnt stick, a pencil, or my finger. Or an app.

Oh, I still paint, but photography, that is, art made on my iPhone or my iPad, after the picture, the sketch, is taken, is increasingly more satisfying to me, somehow.

I know that some of you prefer my paintings to my photos, but I hope you will bear with me for a while. Give the photos a chance to grow on you as they have for me. They are my art, too. I’ll be sharing them here, on this blog, and on Instagram, for the foreseeable future. I don’t know when paintings will come back to the fore, or even if they will.

Meanwhile, I’m planning ways of sharing what I’ve learned, and my enthusiasm, my passion for mobile, smart phone, camera phone photography, or, as it’s most popularly known, iPhoneography.

I will be offering photo workshops and photo tours, and combining them with my love of travel.

This blog will become a way of explaining, sharing, teaching, discussing, and exposing my followers to my photography, and, specifically, the world of iPhoneography.

Wow! It’s great to be back!