Revealing Nature’s Beauty Through a Digital Process

Nature amazes, charms, enchants, and inspires me. She often leaves me breathless. Mother Nature is fleeting and waits for no one. I ask myself, “Where can I place my feet to best capture her divine beauty?” With a sense of wonder and quiet solitude, I stroll through blooming gardens and hike enchanting forests carrying my digital camera. When I am capturing nature, I feel a harmonious passion that is quite liberating. I strive to convey this flow to you so that you may be transported to a delightful memory of nature that brings you peace and tranquility.

How do I start from a simple digital capture and end up with an image somewhere between a photograph and a painting? After reviewing each shot, I choose only my favorites to take to the digital playground. The computer allows me to quickly process through endless possibilities to my heart’s content until I express why I clicked the shutter in the first place. With a taste for unabashed color, I push the limits of saturation and vibrancy. My goal is to add depth to my images. I can do this with subtle adjustment layers of color, tone, and texture that I paint on with a pressure-sensitive pen tablet. With some subtleties of a traditional paintbrush, the pen tablet connects my hand and heart to my work. My work teeters between a world of intricate detail and texture to one of delicate softness and enchantment. I lean toward the real world when I find it’s intricate detail utterly beautiful. More often, I feel the need to soften what appears too harsh and make it painterly instead.

In 2008, I attended my first photography workshop held in Bose, Montana. Two well-known Nikon professional staff members led the seminar, Moose Peterson and Joe McNally. There I learned about landscape photography and the use of flash.

In 2011, I attended the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Missoula, Montana. There I completed the school’s three-month Summer Intensive course and honed my photography and digital image editing skills.

Upon returning, I explored pet photography by taking online classes and photographing my three Labrador retrievers. Shortly after, I attended a certified Corel Painter educator, Heather Michelle Chinn’s workshop to learn how to digitally paint and print to canvas my client’s pet portraits.

In 2014, I started my photoblog, “A Bloom a Day.” I started the blog with the intent to dedicate a couple of hours every day to making images. I traveled to attend several more professional photo workshops across the country to acquire content for my photoblog:

Richard Bernabe’s the Smoky Mountains workshop

Tony Sweet’s workshops held in the Smoky Mountains, and Charleston

Denise Ippolito Swan Island Dahlia Farm workshop in Oregon.

To this day, I am still posting my “Blooms” and experimenting with different digital processing techniques, never seeking perfection, only self-expression.

www.abloomaday.com photoblog

Art Shows:

Critical Mass 8 2020

Feb 2017 Awarded Bossier City Art Council WAM event at Boomtown 1800 Prime Steakhouse.