When the digital world started to change how we photographers usually worked, many of us initially were lost trying to understand and learn digital photography. Many of us lost our traditional income from stock photos almost overnight. Microsoft bought the Corbis stock picture agency and began offering photos for a fraction of what we were being paid from traditional agencies.

At first, I purchased an Olympus digital camera and started photographing various subjects to understand how the new medium worked. Once I felt better with the new medium, I purchased a Fujifilm S-Pro camera which utilized my old Nikon lenses. The chemicals and darkrooms of the past were quickly disappearing so I also had to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop to work with the digital images.

Initially, most of my photos were from my wife's flower garden. Most of my personal photography in the past was in black & white. After photographing flowers for a while I realized that I really didn't care much about the color photos of the flowers I had photographed. I have previously photographed in color for my commercial clients, and felt that black & white was what I really wanted to do. With an ample collection of beautiful color photos of flowers which I was not happy with, so I began converting many of the flower photos to black & white with photoshop.

Along the way, I became aware that most barns and other buildings were no longer being built with wood, so I started photographing old barns and other uses of wood for building. What probably fascinated me were the details and wood patterns in the wood. Many of the photos are close-up images of these patterns.

The project: VANISHING WOOD is ongoing and may be continuing for years to come.