While visiting the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle Virginia I loved the patterns of the flooring and shadows of the skylights above. While looking down over the main room in the museum this man paused to check his brochure just long enough for me to capture his thought.

This image is the first in my new gallery called Concept.

Artistic photography is not just about finding new ways to see things. Its also about finding new things about oneself. This morning I woke up and decided I HAD to post something today. Looking back through my archives I found this image from a recent trip to KC. Not sure why I captured it, but at the time it just felt right. I’ve always been attracted to geometric shapes, lines and form. I think this is why I am so attracted to architectural photography.

With the power of the internet and this image I found something out about myself. You would think at close to 40 years of age you would know yourself, but as an artist I don’t want to. I believe that once you know everything about yourself your art will loose its ability to convey feelings and emotions. With nothing left to discover, art becomes cold and lifeless.

While there is not much life or warmth in this image it does represent a structured part of myself. One that feeds on form and composition.  I do not have a traditional education. My art comes from within and is not restricted by taught ideals, but what I discovered today is that I have found a traditional art theory that fits my way of viewing things. What I found was that I have an attraction to the formalism style of art.

According to wikipedia.org “…formalism is the concept that a work’s artistic value is entirely determined by its form–the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content.”

Reading this was like finding your lost keys. While I probably have stressed harder over loosing my keys then I have trying to find out how to “classify” my art, it was still a little bit of a relief. I knew these types of art theory classification existed just never took the time to understand if my approach ever fit into one. While I like the concepts of formalism and intend on dedicating a gallery to these types of images, it will remain just one aspect of my art.

I titled this image Full Moon. I could have easily called it Sun Raise or Sun Set, but I think you get the picture…no pun intended. I look forward to seeing where this is heading check back

Well, here we go again. Calling for 8″-10″ in Richmond, VA. We typically do not get much snow, but this make two half-way decent snowstorms this winter. In the spirit of the day I bring you Architectural Snow Fall (I). I actually took this one back on my DC trip during the “Blizzard” of 2009. With 22″ of snow that storm made the top 7 worst snow storms for the DC area ever. While we are not going to come close to that today its very reminiscent of that snowy day in DC.

There is something about skylights that are beautiful. In lining up for this shot I thought about going for the symmetrical look, but the sun light shining through would make it imposable. I decided to stand off to one side and shoot at a slight angle. The result I feel is well balanced and more visually interesting then the standard symmetrical ceiling shot.