This ongoing portfolio started during the pandemic restrictions of 2020, when for months my own travel was limited to walks around my neighborhood. Looking up, I was taken by the fascinating canvas of ever-moving cirrus cloud formations in the sky. So I began taking my infrared camera along on my walks, looking for compositions with foregrounds that complemented the clouds overhead, concentrating on the feathery cirrus and cirrocumulus in particular. Because IR renders the cold blue atmosphere as a deep black, even the wispiest patterns are revealed in stark contrast. Since then I've become a card-carrying member of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and continue my search for photographs in the heavens wherever I go.
The reason I love photographing in b+w is the way it takes the viewer one step away from the everyday world of color. Infrared, which I've been doing for about five years now, takes the viewer one step further, transforming the landscape into a beautifully surreal, dream-like world. One of my favorite places to play with infrared is along the Oregon Coast, especially during extreme low tides, where a landscape teeming with life in dull browns and dark greens comes alive when viewed in infrared illumination. I have come to love the haunting, other-worldly, even eerie quality this way of seeing brings to the coastal landscape.