This project shows my early investigations of the scanner as capture tool. When I look at these now I realize the content is all about what the scanner can do —now with my recent work the scanner is only a tool that allows the viewer to see what I can see, to feel what I can feel. Over time my work with the “scanner as camera” has evolved from it origins in the investigative formal aspects of the images the process produced to the much more personal emotional beatific power of the images I now create.

These images were all captured with a large format Epson 10000XL flat bed scanner as a camera. I had purchased the scanner to scan my large format film for my Architectural clients. In 2002 upon finding a dead humming bird while on an ice cream outing with my kids, I examined the iridescence. I wondered what it would look like scanned and so gave it a try. That was the humble beginning to the journey that I still follow today.

These images are from the Smithsonian series, they were created from the classification called the Echinoderms (starfish). These amazing specimens collected over a hundred years ago connected me with the naturalists and collectors in a way I still find profound and inspirational.

Working with the German Bearded Iris flower has offered years of artistic engagement. Every year the results are remarkably different.
This flower, as it decays, goes through a process called Deliquescence. The flower liquefies and as it does, an array of colors is revealed with new prominence. (Although not the same process I liken the color changes like leaves changing in the Fall)
I grow the flowers and when at peak bloom in May, they are picked and arranged on the scanner’s glass surface. I allow them to decay, transition and deliquesce. I periodically scan the composition observing and waiting for the “decisive moment”. I have left the flowers on the scanner for up to 30 days as I scan and refresh the composition with addition flower parts.
This particular project is also very important to my Scanner as Camera process as I am introducing a background (other than the deep black space). The backgrounds vary but I find that a copper sheet plate (also in a state of decomposition with it’s turquois coloration) offer a whole new approach. The compositions become far more abstract as the flower parts lose their identify in the atrophy process.

These are ten scanner images I created at the Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. I was offered the honor to work as an official Visiting Scholar/Artist at the Smithsonian, creating images over a three-year period. This was a unique opportunity. I was allowed to leave my scanner at the museum and each day commuted to work with the freedom to render images from any collection of my choosing. I had complete access and a space to work.

Here again I am using the scanner method as described in detail in the previous projects.

These are flowers that have been placed on a large format flat bed scanner and scanned. They are in various states of transition, decay, and aging. Photographing with a camera and lens, the image is captured from a single conical pint of view—with the scanner the lens is a long line of sensors captured what is directly in from of itself so when you view a big print you are standing at a 90 degree angle to the subject.

I have continued with working with the scanner as a camera for ten years now so the physical act of what I do has changed very little, yet the characteristics of images achieved by the scanner are still fascinating to me. As the viewer can see here characteristic traits include a unique light source similar to “ring light photography” (not unlike the straight on natural light of Edward Weston’s nudes where the drop shadow outlines the form), the ability to select, magnify and render the subject in a surreal way, and finally the way I can isolate the subject with an appreciation for “straight” photography.

Over the last ten years I have been using a large format flatbed scanner to capture images. With scanner photography the practitioner is more related to a studio photographer or painter who starts with a blank platform/canvas and only what they put there gets rendered. This I call the “additive process” as I create and compose my image by adding to the material to be scanned. It is a completely different thought process based on creating and composing —as opposed to field photography where the photographer is finding images in the outside world and rendering them with the aid of a viewfinder or ground glass to edit out unimportant unwanted features. The scanner is unique in the ways it can render three-dimensional objects. I have found by using a scanner I can create work with distinctive qualities and a very broad dynamic range. The images in this set have all been created through the use of advanced scanner techniques.

To capture a desired image, I suspend the objects to be scanned from the ceiling and lower them precisely onto the glass surface allowing very little contact (contact with the scanner glass flattens the subject) to capture desired depth of field. I use armatures that stretch across the glass in order to precisely capture the point of view. I then focus on my point of interest and make a “sketch scan” to my computer. Using my sketch, I make needed adjustments and once committed to the image I create a final large scan at a high resolution and file size (approx. 500-600 megabytes). This final image is then printed to archival paper using a professional large format grade printer and archival ink.

New Work Cell Phone: Mirrors Messages and Manifestations (or everybody is guilty of something)
This summer I used the iPhone as a photojournalist would use a high-end rangefinder or SLR camera. Sensitive to Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment concept I stalked my prey from my living room rocker as I watched the televised version of life and confrontation.
These are portraits of accusations, denial and astonishment. These pictures capture the expressions of “peak” action while civilization breaks down to anger and retaliation.
The art of cell phone photography is in its infancy. It is not to displace the regular use of DSLR camera. By nature the use of the cell phone camera is flexible, available, silent, invasive, random, creative, aggressive, innovative, boundless, and free to be new!
Its use should not try to duplicate or displace “conventional” camera quality or their points of view. It is in its own right a new aesthetic.
 
Title borrowed from Minor White!