Background

Your profile lists you as living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. How long have you lived there, and how did you end up there?

I'm a Southern California native (San Diego) but went to school at Brown University in Providence, RI in the mid-60s. I Spent a lot of time on the Cape and promised myself someday I'd live here. I came East in 2000 to work (briefly) for a software company outside Boston, and the co-worker who recruited me has a house across the street from where I am now. When the dotcom bubble burst and we were laid off, I ended up here. And stayed. It's a great place for photography, wonderful light.

You have mentioned that you are retired on numerous occasions, but what was your main occupation while you were a part of the grand ol' workforce?

I was primarily an Architectural Photographer, working for architects, interior designers, builders, and shelter magazines, and I taught photography at UCSD for a while also.

Can you expand on other careers you've been involved in?

Additional occupations have included fishing boat deckhand, yacht maintenance, sailmaking, freelance and staff writer, graphic design, editor, professional chef, and probably others I've forgotten.I have published poetry off and on for my whole life, but there's no money in the po-biz unless you teach, basically.

What brought you to DPC?

I was a moderator at a high-end poetry site, we had a section there for incidental posting of images, and someone there pointed me at DPC in late 2004.

As many people on DPC may or may not know, you are Deaf. Can you give us some insight into how this affects your life in Photography specifically, and your life in general?

I was deafened by meningitis in 1949, at 2 ½ years of age. It's hard to pinpoint how this has "affected" my life as it's always been a part of the only life I have. Certainly, it made me more visually aware than your average bear, I'm sure of that. For what it's worth, I don't listen to music, I don't use the phone, I can't hear doorbells or timers on the stove, and so forth and so on. I'd guess a hearing person would have a better idea what I'm missing than I do :-)

What are your main forms of entertainment?

Update button? I watch movies on TV (closed captioning enabled) and I explore the Cape when I can afford the gas. Cooking is entertainment for me too. I used to play a lot of golf, though the economy has slowed that way down. I watch golf on TV (this is Master's week as I type these replies)

Some of my favorite movies would be:

. Jean de Florette" & "Manon of the Spring", basically the swan songs of the great actor Yves Montand, and the movies that introduced me to Gerard Depardieux. Breathtakingly beautiful, and thought-provoking for anyone who grew up in the American Southwest, as they are about conflicts arising from water rights.

. "Babette's Feast", an absolutely wonderful film about an isolated, shrinking puritan community in Jutland (Scandinavia), and the changes wrought in the community's life by a world-class, French chef (Babette) who exiled herself there to escape persecution during the French revolution.

. "Pulp Fiction", Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece film that changed the way we structure mainstream movies and provided the springboard that brought John Travolta back to life as a serious actor. Incredibly violent movie, of course, but there's a rhyme and a reason to it. I've probably watched this film 15 times.

. "Das Boot", a wonderfully, claustrophobically intense film about a U-boat crew during WWII. Fantastic accomplishment, cinematographically and emotionally.

. "Ratatouille", the great, very recent animated film about haute cuisine from a rodent's point of view :-)

. "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels", an absolutely hysterical caper film starring the unlikely pairing of Steve Martin with Michael Caine: Caine's attempts to turn a bumpkin, Martin, into a suave man-about-town are priceless.

. "La Cage aux Folles", original version, which I cherish for the way it totally humanizes a wildly eccentric, alternate-lifestyle relationship. My gay friends have mixed feelings about this one, but I think it's wonderful.

Some of my favorite books are:

. "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter. One of the most unusual Pulitzer prize-winners of all time, this book takes you on a journey through the concept of consciousness by interweaving connected threads from music, art, and mathematics as Hofstadter explores the idea of machine intelligence, the question of whether than ever be a conscious, thinking machine.

. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the masterpieces of world literature, which threw wide open for me a window into how differently different cultures can view reality. It builds on a foundation laid by Jorge Luis Borges, another great Latin American writer I cherish.

. "The Black Swan" by Nicholas Halleb, which absolutely blows out of the water conventional ways of looking at risk and shows us, very graphically, just how irrational we ALL are.

. "The Book of One Thousand Nights and a Night", translated by Powys Mathers from an unexpurgated, French translation from the original Arabic. This book, 4 volumes in length, is one of the great translations into English of all time. The "conventional" one-volume abridgement of the Arabian Nights bears about as much resemblance to this incredibly complex masterwork as, say, "West Side Story" does to "Romeo and Juliet". It's an incredible experience to immerse yourself in these volumes, to soak up the utterly compelling, and totally alien, worldview of a culture that was at a high state of civilization when our own, Western European ancestors were groveling in caves and discovering tools and fire. I can't recommend it too strongly to anyone who'd seek to understand the cultural roots from which the part of the world we now call the "Middle East" has descended.

Another aspect of your life that you tend to share with DPC is that you like to cook. What are your absolute favorite dishes?

That's like asking a mother who her favorite child is. It's not possible to answer. Here's some things I cook a LOT, some because they're so good and some because they're economical-but-good:

1. Home-made carnitas, enchiladas and refried beans. Carnitas is tender morsels of braised & roasted pork shoulder with a nice crunchy exterior. I make the beans from scratch from dried black beans. My enchiladas are usually corn tortillas wrapped around a cheese/onion/cilantro stuffing and baked briefly in a red chile sauce, though of course I can (and often do) make a variety of others. I cook a lot of Mexican food because I love it and there are no decent Mexican restaurants on-Cape.

2. Roast chicken. I'm *really* good with roast chicken. Most of the time I cut out the backbone and flatten the bird (cooks more evenly that way), then place a paste of herbs, lemon zest, garlic, salt, and pepper under the skin so the flavor permeates the meat as the bird roasts.

3. Roast anything, actually. Lamb (love lamb), pork, beef, etc. I do ducks every now and then, not least because I can save the rendered duck fat to use in cooking; duck fat, chicken fat, beef fat, pork fat, all bring distinct and complex flavor profiles to many dishes.

4. I cook Chinese frequently; I learned to cook doing oriental dishes in a wok. I love cooking Chinese, usually Szechuan or Hunan dishes with a little heat to them. But I do a Cantonese tea-smoked whole chicken that's to die for, if a bit complex in the execution, LOL.

5. Risotto. I love risotto. It's usually a simple shallot-and-mushroom risotto with some cheese and fresh herbs added at the end.

6. I've just started making fresh-fruit sorbets again after a longish hiatus, yum.

7. I do breakfasts seriously when I do them at all. I particularly love making a batch of home-made hash with scraps from roasting, and serving it up with poached eggs

8. I gotta stop here. This could go on forever. I focus a lot on rustic cookery, and I work a lot with Provencal and Tuscan-based recipes aside from the Mexican and Chinese mentioned above.

Do you have any pets?

Certified Assistance Dog: 'Karma'

Karma the Assless Wonderdog, a certified assistance dog who's legal to follow me anywhere I go except into ICUs, basically. She's smart and loyal and thinks she's a person. I acquired her courtesy of the good folks at NEADS (http://www.neads.org/), who provide assistance dogs to deaf and disabled Americans. If you have an urge to be charitable, they rely on donations to provide their service.

One final thing for this section. Do you have an amusing anecdote about your path through photography to this point that you would like to share with us?

Hrmmm. "Amusing" doesn't come to mind, unless you like pratfalls. I once lost a very expensive Sinar-P 4x5 view camera and a Majestic tripod when a cliff I was shooting from gave way during a winter storm near Big Sur. I almost lost me, too, but I scrambled to solid ground, and the gear was insured.

Hardware

You've obviously had a long history with photography. Take us through a journey of the kinds of equipment you've used through the years, both film and digital.

Geesh. I started in 1958 with a simple Kodak, while we lived in Switzerland and traveled around Europe. I stopped shooting when we returned to the USA, then started again in 1966 with a Nikon F 35mm SLR. I've owned Linhof and Sinar view cameras, Nikon and Olympus 35mm gear, a Bronica and a Hasselblad for medium format, a variety of "antique" cameras, and a bunch of Polaroids (LOVED the SX-70, which I still have).

For digital gear, I started with a Fuju Finepix 4900Z, moved on to a Nikon Coolpix 5800, and from that to the current Canon 20D. I recently acquired a used Panasonic Lumix FZ30 on extended loan, which I carry around as an in-the-car-at-all-times camera.

Your profile lists a Panasonic FZ30 Prosumer as your default camera. Do you still use a DSLR with frequency, and how happy are you with both cameras listed in your profile?

Ah, that's just me goofing. I habitually mark the last-acquired camera as the default camera in my profile, but I still use the 20D nearly all the time. Penny_weaver (link to user) gave me the Lumix because she got a more compact P&S for a carry-around. It's my keep-it-in-the-car camera, haven't used it hardly at all yet.

What are your preferred lenses for your DSLR?

I can't live without my EF-S 10-22mm ultrawide. The Tamron 28-75mm is a workhorse too. I'm delighted with my Lensbaby 3G. The 60mm macro is great but I rarely use it. The Canon 70-200mm f/4L is a wonderful lens but I tend to shoot wide more often than I do long. The 50mm f/1.8 came from my brother-in-law (he had it on film canon) but I've only used it once so far. Ought to use it more. I covet the new 17mm tilt/shift Canon, but it's way out of reach price-wise.

What kind of storage do you have and/or frequently rely on?

I'm a captive of my own history, I don't make a lot of images but work hard on composing the ones I do make. I have 1GB and 2GB CF cards, and that's ample for me. I have an external, 250 GB Maxtor hard drive for storage. I'm not really up to speed on archival storage, actually, and it worries me.

The big one, do you shoot in JPG, RAW, or both?

RAW exclusively. I can't imagine working any other way.

Do you have any horror stories regarding your memory cards and image loss?

Not a one. I've been fortunate that way.

List any additional equipment you've collected that would relate to photography (studio equip, etc.)

I'm totally bare-bones. I have a Manfrotto tripod and a Canon 13x19 inch printer. I have a tiny maglite in my camera bag, if that counts :-).

Software

We're in an age where there are a thousand choices for digital processing and workflow. Share with us what your preferred programs are, and simplify your workflow for us.

Photoshop CS3 is the workhorse. I use ACR for RAW processing, it's adequate for my needs. I use Photomatix Pro for HDRI work, which I do a lot of. I now use Topaz Adjust within CS3 for single-exposure tone mapping instead of Photomatix. I have Neat Image and Topaz DeNoise, am using the latter more now.

My workflow is pretty fundamental: I browse images in CS3's Bridge, process RAW in ACR, process merges in Photomatix, then work in CS3. I stay in 16-bit and Adobe RGB until I spin off a DPC version, at which point I convert to sRGB and 8-bit. I sharpen for DPC using "Adamus sharpening", where the image is resized to twice its final size, sharpened 3 times, then resized to final dimensions, which tricks CS3 into applying a very smooth, precise sharpening effect. I keep the 3 separate sharpenings on 3 cloned-off-and-sharpened-again layers, so I can turn 'em off and on at final size to check desired degree of doneness.

What Photoshop skills would you consider essential in the Digital Photography world that would have been done by hand in the Film Days?

Well, for *me* that's HDRI, the merging of multiple exposures into a full-toned master image. This is analogous to "Zone System", which I taught and practiced in my large format days, and which allows the precise rendering of an extended tonal range within a single image.

Which personal photo of yours did you spend the most time with in Photoshop or similar program?

That's really hard to pin down. I don't spend as much time editing as people seem to think I do, and the ones I spend the most time on, as a rule, are not the ones that *look* extreme in the editing. The HDRI-type images I'm apparently known for come pretty easily. So I'll sort of take a pass on this question :-)

DPC is a pretty diverse and polarized place at times, when it comes to editing. What is your stance on Digital Editing, where do you find yourself in the 'Pure' vs. 'Digital Art' debate?

I don't think it's a valid debate, really. I think people are way overreacting, mostly. I'm more of a purist than a "digital artist" in my mind, that's for sure. You almost never see me combining multiple images except "identical" ones for HDRI purposes. And as far as I'm concerned, HDRI is mainstream, right smack-dab in the flow of photographic history, and I can't for the life of me understand why so many people get bent out of shape that we allow it in "advanced" editing. I understand that tone mapping, when pushed to extremes, produces images that seem to straddle, or even cross, the border between photography and graphic arts, but that border was being straddled back in the film days facripesake, what else is new?

I'm OK with the camp that says DPC should not become an "unlimited editing" site, where multi-image compositing is the flavor of the day, though I enjoy the occasional "expert" challenge, which as of late we haven't seen any of. Heck, one of my ribbons is in "expert", but it's pretty tame stuff: it's just an HDRI image, basically, which at that time wasn't legal otherwise, and I tossed some birds in because I could.

What direction would you like to see DPC go in regarding editing, if any?

I have this nagging suspicion that the rules could be simplified without giving up anything at all of the soul of the site. I feel like we've gone on and on trying to make more and more precise certain things that can't really be nailed down. So I'd love to see a new approach to how the rules are *stated*, but I'm pretty much OK with what they are trying to define. It's just a matter of how we lay out the definitions.

I do think "basic" editing is a bit off-track, in that as it's written now it gives a HUGE processing advantage to people who really, really understand Photoshop, whilst "advanced" editing is actually, to my mind, an easier ruleset for neophytes to produce quality work in, but maybe that's just me. I have this fundamental belief that it's better to encourage the newer Photoshop users to develop clean, effective workflows with layers and so forth, it's not that hard.

Photography

It's time now to go through some of your work and get a little insight into what you think you are as a Photographer, and what some of your work means to you. You're quite well known as a landscape photographer on DPC, and some of your highest scoring photos are your wide angle scenes of the Cape. What draws you to this genre, and why do you think DPC enjoys them so much?

"Winter Sunset"

"Flood Tide & Cattails"

"Herring River, Clearing Storm"

I've always been a landscape photographer, it's just what I do. Why does DPC enjoy landscapes? It's sort of a universal thing, really; every one of us, more or less, can find something to respond to in depictions of the natural world, and little to feel negative about, so these images tend to score relatively well in challenges.

What does my work "mean to me"? To whatever extent it has meaning, it's in the area of a search for serenity in an ever-more-complex, discouraging world. I like to re-establish contact with what never changes, with what will outlast us all.

I actually moved to Cape Cod *because* it is a wonderful place for landscape photography, not so much on the grand scale of the American West, which is where I cut my teeth (as it were) on the bones left by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but on a more intimate, more personally-embracing scale. The light here is often fabulous, and I love to wander around and soak it in.

You also seem to enjoy experimenting with HDRI/Tone mapping in your images. What is it about this editing genre that you enjoy, and how much do you feel you still have to learn regarding it?

"Voyager"

"The Local"

"...No Country For Old Men..."

For me, HDRI is a non-issue, photographically: it's the digital equivalent of B/W Zone System work, and it's a direct response to the age-old photographic conundrum of how to render, in the print, the very wide range of tones that makes up the natural world. It's not far-out or extreme in and of itself.

Now "tone mapping", outside its direct use as a component of the HDRI workflow, is something of a different beast, I understand that. People who rail against "HDRI" are actually complaining about excessive tone mapping, a certain effect that's perceived as "cartoonish", and this has nothing to do with HDRI per se.

I've used tone mapping as a visual effect often, and with mixed success, sometimes going way too far as I explore the limits of it. But I *do* like what you can do with it. The thing of it is, when I actually *look* at a scene, I'm seeing these details, I'm seeing these colors, it's all *there* and I want to depict what I'm seeing.

In "No Country for Old Men", for example, this extreme rendering of the texture of the skin is, to my aesthetic, more "faithful" than what others would call a more natural rendering, more emotionally complex, basically. I like that image a lot. But it was criticized by quite a few people for being "overprocessed", a position which I think is entirely superficial, but what do I know?

"Voyager" and "The Local" are quite a bit less extreme in their tone mapping, and to me are unflinchingly faithful renditions of their subjects, but they garnered mixed reactions, with a lot of praise mixed in with criticism of the aggressive tone mapping. So it goes.

Finally, it seems that you also have a bit of a fond spot for abstraction. You made some waves by almost winning a brown ribbon in a Self-Portrait Challenge (I Am My Work...) some time ago, and you seem to be playing the abstract game again in more recent challenges. Once again, what draws you to this genre and do you think DPC will ever embrace more Abstract photography outside of specialized challenges?

I doubt that pure abstraction will ever become any more mainstream than it currently is, and I'm not surprised it gets mixed reactions. People mostly like images that lay the whole thing out for the viewer with easy clues (as it were) for how the image is to be approached. Any abstraction that's more than achingly pictorial leaves a lot of people uncomfortable.

"de ( POST - IT ) ion"	The whole concept "abstract" isn't very well understood at DPC anyway. Speaking literally, to "abstract" something is to reduce it to its essentials. I sometimes earn outside income doing abstracts of published works, for example; 5 pages or so that distill the essence of an entire book, for those who need the information but don't have time to read the book itself.
"The Visionary"	So it's not necessary for an "abstract" to be "unrecognizable"; to be an abstract, a thing just needs to be a reduction-to-essentials, and that concept doesn't fly well in here.
"Evening Flight"	So that's what draws me to abstraction, basically: the idea of taking complexity and reducing it to its essentials, the idea of finding the still spot at the center of the turning world, so to speak.

Are there any photographs or challenge entries that have a special story attached to them that you would like to share with us?

"For My Mother & Father"

I was driving down the main street in Harwich Port, glanced down a side street I had never traveled, and saw this scene at a distance. I felt an inexplicable pang of melancholy as I glimpsed it, and after a couple blocks I pulled a U-turn, went back to the side street, parked, and made this shot. I was thinking how lonely the chairs looked, how strange the foliage looked, I was wondering when someone would return to sit in the chairs. Later that day, I received from my sister the message that my father had passed that morning, at 7:04 AM Pacific time. A few days later, as I was processing this image, I noticed in the EXIF that it was captured at 10:06 Eastern time, a couple minutes after my father left us. Meaning that my first glimpse of the scene, and my pang of melancholy, occurred more or less exactly as his last breath left him. And then, of course, my mother passed a few days after THAT, and I have two chairs here, so... This is my memorial for them. I'll miss them. The "dizziness" on which so many people have commented is absolutely intentional, I wanted a sort of twilight-zone sense of being sucked away, or of viewing through a rapidly receding tunnel. I'm sorry as can be that this met with such broad disapproval :-(

"...And nature, from a simple recipe, has brewed a cup whose strength has dizzied me..."

This image was shot when I was staying in the Bay area in October, taking care of my parents as my sister took a much-needed break. Eerily enough, as I was emailing a copy of the finished image to her the morning of 1/12, she was busy making the arrangements for my father's interment via the Neptune Society, who will be scattering his ashes right smack in the middle of this view :-( Our beloved Felipe Viejo passed away this morning, 1/12/2008. Pray for his soul.

Do you have any eccentricities when it comes to photography, either regarding shooting for yourself, or shooting for challenges?

From way back in the day, I don't like artificial light much, and rarely use it. Even as an architectural photographer, I was "famous" for not using strobes when shooting interiors, preferring, for example, to balance inside/outside lighting by carefully choosing the time of day to shoot. So I rarely use additional lighting, I like to work with what I find. I had a speedlight for the Canon at one time, but I sold it to Juliet when she was visiting :-)

What kinds of photography and/or editing do you NOT like, or do you avoid shooting yourself, if any?

I don't much like super-smooth, "professional portrait" type lighting/processing very much. I never do it, and I don't usually respond well to it. But that's just personal taste, really.

Now, I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but please list your 5 favorite photographs (as shot by other DPCers), and give us a little write-up on why each of them are a favorite.

"The Violin Lesson"

"Floating"

This and the next are the categories that have been hanging me up. It's just impossible to nail down to 5, basically. Here's a larger sampling of images I really, really like from my favorites: You'll note that none of them are landscapes, incidentally. There are plenty of landscapes in my favorites portfolio, but all of these images are resonating with me at an extremely emotional level. "The Violin Lesson" and "Floating", I notice, are in many ways very similar images. There's something about the high, "God's Eye" POV and the way the subjects have lost contact with the earth that makes me gasp with happiness.

"Fish"

"Eye Contact"

"Sunset Bow"

The NShapiro image, "Sunset Bow", is just absolute perfection as far as how the tonalities are rendered, it's breathtakingly serene and beautiful. JJBeguin's "Eye Contact" image is another that just seems utterly perfect to me, and it is perhaps the single DPC image I most "remember", the one that pops into my mind most often and most unexpectedly. I wish I could do shots like that. I've also put up JJ's "Fish", which is pretty much equally flawless in its in-your-face objectivity. Hell of a shot.

"Protected?"

"Wasteland"

"Saviour"

Ubique's "Wasteland" and "Saviour" are so intensely personal, so compact in introspective, that I feel like I'm being drawn into his mind. Xion's "Protected", on the other hand, is drawing me, quite dismally, into the elephant's mind. I appreciate that the image is so understated, that the photographer was willing to let the subject speak for itself.

"far away"

Smardaz's "Far Away", a portrait of his daughter, is so intensely human it takes my breath away. She's like a *prototype* of some sort, I can imagine her being a model for one of the old masters hundreds of years ago. The lighting, the expression, are wonderful; the photographer's avoided engaging in any sort of trickery at all, and the image just sings with light. The pearls are the final grace note, as if they are providing the luminosity that informs our perception of this angelic woman-child.

What are your own personal 5 favorite photographs, as shot by yourself, and why?

"I Am My Work -- the Thorn that Weeps, & Holds the Sky Entire..."

"The Visionary"

"Voyager"

Again, this is terribly difficult for me. I don't think I'm gonna choose between my own images, at this time. Except to offer up three self-portraits, each distinctly different, and each of which I do love:.

Do you have an entry on DPC that you believe should have done far better? Do you have one that you believe should have done far worse?

"Duckie Cornered - Version Blue"	I was bitterly disappointed at where "Duckie Cornered, Version Blue" finished in the "Lighting" challenge; I thought, and still think, it was an excellent image that answered the challenge creatively:
""Down to the Waterline" - Dire Straits . (Homage to Peter Max)"	"Down to the Waterline" finished at the absolute bottom of the recent "Rock Songs" challenge, which vaguely ticked me off. I mean, I *know* it's overprocessed to the max (pun intended) but c'mon, folks, it was a ROCK SONGS challenge and the image is totally a blast from the past :-)
"Clearing Storm, Wychmere Harbor"	On the other side of the coin, I took a top-10 with "Clearing Storm, Wychmere Harbor", and I absolutely cringe every time I look at it. The light is lovely in the fore-to-midground, but OY, the sky's totally screwed up. I don't think it's worth more than a 5.5, myself, and my only excuse was that this came early in my experimentations with tone mapping.

DPC

What do you like most about DPChallenge? What keeps you coming back?

Honestly, I'd have to say it's the community, the sense of an extended, and vaguely dysfunctional, family.

Is there anything you would like to see different about DPChallenge, and do you believe it could benefit from any changes in direction?

I like to dream about a complete revamping and simplification of the challenge rules. I think we've gotten to a point where people honestly can't understand what is and what is not legal in the different rulesets. I think we get DQs that are wildly inconsistent with prior rulings, and that SC is forced into a rearguard position where they have to defend the indefensible. I don't think we, as a community, would lose a blessed thing if the rules were simplified dramatically, and we'd gain a lot emotionally from it.

And if we're NOT gonna totally change the challenge rules, I can't understand why we don't have some sort of an appendix database that shows examples of DQ'd images along with detailed explanations of WHY they were given the heave-ho: a lot of problems could be avoided if incoming members could easily research past decisions.

Finally, a few years ago we had a lot of interesting "mentorship" threads, some of which I coordinated, that were (IMO) a real asset to the site. At that time I lobbied for a new forum section, a "Learning" forum, where we could control the structure of these lessons, basically. I thought, and still think, that this would be a wonderful addition to the site (the old mentorship threads were hosted in "Out and About, which made no sense), but the powers that be have not opted to create this new forum section and the Learning Threads, basically, have died out.

What would you say to someone that is trying to find their place on DPChallenge?

I'd tell them they take out of the place basically in direct proportion to what they give to it. I'd tell them not to take things personally, that this is the internet and people don't really know them. I'd tell them to be as non-judgmental as possible, and to open their eyes to the many other ways of seeing that DPC exposes them to.

Are there any challenge entries that you regret entering now, especially considering that they're next to impossible to hide should you want to?

The Three Dimensions of Our Love (Because the Heart Remembers)

This was a complete disaster, conceptually and aesthetically. I did it on the last possible evening, and I had this whole, metaphorical framework for it (which at the time I didn't know was the DPC kiss of doom), and I wrote the title for it (I'm a poet, remember.), and I set it all up from scratch, and I got so wrapped up in the *process* that I never stopped to consider that the work itself was utter dreck. When I woke up the next morning and saw what I'd done, I couldn't believe it. At the time there was no such thing as a self-DQ, or I might well have taken advantage of it.

. Explain to us your process when it comes to challenges. What draws you to certain challenges, do you have a routine after you choose one, do you seek opinion before you enter, etc.?

For a long time I entered them all. Totally non-discriminating. I still enter most of them. It's pretty much when the mood strikes me. I show my images around a bit sometimes, when I have something I think is really worth the effort, but as my scoring average shows, I'm willing to enter just about any piece of junk just to be in the game. It's a disease.

It is well known that you have met a number of other DPChallenge users/members. What have your experiences been like, and do you have plans to meet many more?

It isn't just DPC: I've met hundreds of people from various online communities. I enjoy meeting people, and it's not that easy when you're basically a hermit, and a deaf one to boot. No specific plans to meet more, but an open invitation to all to stop by if they're in the area. I *do* expect to get some fishing in with one of our new members this summer, we've communicated about that.

Last one for this section: If you were ever elected to Site Council, what policies would you seek to get implemented?

I won't be elected to Site Council anyway, that's quite obvious, since it's a selection process rather than an election situation, and they've had a couple chances to select me and have opted out both times. If it WERE a popular election, and if I ever DID campaign for the position, I'd be tempted to run on a platform promising that I'd work for term limits for SC members. It seems to me (and no disrespect is meant to any current SC) that more regular turnover would keep the DPC juices flowing a little more freely. I'd be good with a core group of SC who remained constant and a rotating group of term-limited members to keep things from stagnating, conceptually. I understand that there would be serious drawbacks, continuity-wise, to total turnover, but I think there are equal drawbacks to a self-appointed, stagnant "managing group" that, by its nature, is compelled to work more or less defensively.

Final Question

I know you're probably exhausted by now, but I'd love it if you could give us a run-down on what makes Photography such a long-time hobby/interest/etc. for you, and why you think that it grabs so many people?

I live in a silent world. Seeing is all I have. I live for light, basically, and embrace it in all its subtlety. Why other people obsess about it, I don't know. I'm sure there are a million reasons why.

I appreciate all the time you've put into this, and thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope that DPC enjoys this deeper look into Robert Ward, aka Bear_Music

You're quite welcome :-) This has been a difficult task for me, because contrary to most peoples' perception of me, I'm not all that comfortable talking about myself. Still, I hope this interview may kick-start the process of getting more "DPC Interviews" up and running, because I think they are a fascinating feature of the site. And I'd like to apologize to Strangeghost, because he tried to get one of these going on me a couple YEARS ago, and I totally failed to follow through. My bad, friend!