Thanks for visiting my photo pages. I am a birder and amateur photographer
living in Columbus, Ohio. I have been a professional musician since the
age of 20 and have been employed as the English horn (cor anglais) soloist
and oboist of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra since 1986. I was born near
Buffalo, NY, but grew up in Rocky River, Ohio, a western Cleveland suburb.
I was fortunate to attend 3 years of high school at the Interlochen Arts
Academy in the northern lower Michigan peninsula after attending the summer
camp there for 6 seasons. I then studied at the Cleveland Institute of
Music as a student of John Mack, the Cleveland Orchestra's legendary principal
oboist. My first professional experience was during those student days
playing the English horn in the Akron and Canton Symphony Orchestras. My
first full-time gig was serving as the English hornist with the San Francisco
Symphony for a one-year appointment. The next year was spent in the soon
to be defunct Kansas City Philharmonic. My interest in wildlife photography
originally began when I lived in South Africa from 1983-1986, where I served
as principal oboist for the Cape Performing Arts Board Orchestra in Cape
Town. Enchanted by the scenery and wildlife, I purchased a Yashica FX-D
and a few inexpensive lenses and traveled extensively throughout southern
Africa.
In the '90's I renewed my interest in photography with the natural world of my native Ohio. I replaced my FX-D's and low-quality lenses with wonderful Contax cameras and Zeiss lenses. As I became a serious birder, I also added a Nikon F4s and the 500/f4P to begin photographing birds. In 1998, I switched to one system, Canon, to take advantage of their autofocus telephotos, namely the EF600/f4L. In 2000 I replaced that 600mm with the Image-Stabilization version. This lens has helped my bird photography in leaps and bounds, and most of the photos on this website were taken with it. My 600mm lens is always used on a Gitzo 1548 carbon fiber tripod with a Wimberly head. Most of the film photos here were taken with a Canon EOS3 body filled mostly with Fuji ProviaF film. In October, 2003 I purchased my first digital camera and haven't used a single roll of film since. My current camera of choice is the Canon 1D MarkIII.
Please check back at this site often, since I will regularly add more photographs from here in Ohio and future travels when time and money allow. I'm first and foremost a musician and not a photographer. My photos are regularly used, however, in a wide variety of book and magazine publications and other diverse places. All wildlife presented at this site is shown in the wild in natural habitats. You will see no birds at feeders and prearranged set-ups, captives, or feral exotics here. Since I'm a birder as well as a photographer, my goal is to represent the best of what I see through my binoculars when I release the camera's shutter, depicting birds in their environments both as realistically and as aesthetically as possible.
All comments are appreciated.
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