FOLLOW US ON
My aerial photographs present a sense of selective design applied to an extremely small and specific area of the vast landscape over which I fly. I find the need to make geographical sense of the earth, as well as the need to make visual sense of a photograph. I work with ambiguity of scale, the graphic quality of nature and with the hand of man upon the landscape. My images have an abstract and often painterly quality. They are at once factual and interpretive.
Familiar landscapes take on a fresh context when airborne. The images require the confluence of several factors. There is the subject – a minuscule segment of the landscape that has captured my interest due to its sense of pattern, order or disarray. There is the essential contribution of light. There is the position and altitude of the airplane, and there is a need to capture the stillness and composition of the moment while moving over the subject at more than seventy miles per hour.
These aerial photographs, taken from 1,000 feet, show volcanic ash mixing with pristine blue water. The contrast between the dark ash and vibrant azure hues creates a captivating scene. Dark gray patches appear as beaches or sandbars of volcanic ash along the southern Icelandic coast. The patterns and colors are due to sediment in these shallow, glacial streams. The water’s surface illustrates nature’s powerful forces and the balance between earth and water. This perspective highlights the raw beauty of volcanic activity and the harmony of natural elements.