In the early 1970’s while attending one of Ansel Adam’s workshops in Yosemite I was fortunate to have Jerry Uelsmann as one of the instructors. I was familiar with his work but my interest at that time was learning classic black and white photography.
At the end of summer workshop sessions each of the visting teachers gave a slide show. When it came to Uelsmann’s turn, who was the last to present, he put up a wonderful series of his classic darkroom composites. His final slide was a portrait of Ansel’s face embedded into and projecting out of Yosemite’s famous Half Dome. It was amusing and a brilliant end to the workshop. I pondered that slide for years, always thinking I would like to do work like that.
Some 20 years later I began to study Adobe Photoshop. My first classes were at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. It opened a whole world of fantasy and new way of seeing for me. I could create illustrations that were created in my mind’s eye. That was 1993 and now some 30 years later I am still learning and love making these types of images.
