Questions people ask

I won't tell you. That's not evasion for its own sake, it's the point of the work. These are photographs of ordinary surfaces, cropped so that nothing tells you the scale, the place, or what you're looking at. If you knew, you'd stop looking. Guess if you like, and send me your guess. I read every one. I almost never confirm them.

Real photographs, every one. Nothing is generated, drawn, or built in software. Everything you see was in front of the camera.

No. I don't combine images, stack exposures, add or remove anything, or use Photoshop. What I do is crop, and make the small adjustments any photographer makes to get a file printing the way the scene looked. The composition is made in the camera, not afterwards.

Because a square has no direction. A rectangle tells you which way is up and pulls your eye along its length. A square doesn't, which helps an image stay unreadable a little longer. A few pictures are other shapes, where the square didn't serve them.

No. I don't make pictures to order. The work is found, not arranged, so I can't promise to go out and come back with something blue for a particular wall by a particular date. What I can do is help you find something in the existing work that fits.

There is one exception. If you have a building or a property and you want to turn me loose in it, I'll do that. What comes back will be my work, abstractions found in your walls and surfaces, not architectural photography in the usual sense. Nobody will be able to tell it's your building. If you want a picture of a specific thing, I'm the wrong photographer. If you're curious what I'd find, write to me.

Every image has an option to inquire about a print. Tell me which picture, what size, and which material, and I’ll come back to you. Sales are handled personally rather than through a checkout.

Paper, metal, and acrylic. Paper runs from 8.5 by 8.5 up to 30 by 30 inches. Metal and acrylic run from 12 by 12 up to 30 by 30. Anything 24 by 24 inches and larger is a limited edition, in every material. Current prices are on the prints page.

Every paper print 17 by 17 inches or smaller is made by hand, one at a time, in my own studio. I work from a monitor calibrated for photographic printing, so what I see is what ends up on the paper, and I inspect each print before it goes anywhere.

I print on a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 using genuine Canon LUCIA PRO archival pigment inks, never third-party or refilled cartridges, on fine art papers from Hahnemühle, Moab, and Canson. Pigment inks on cotton rag and baryta papers are the standard for work meant to last, and a print kept out of direct sunlight, or framed behind UV-protective glass, should hold its colour for many decades. Each one is hand-trimmed. For paper prints, the size quoted is the sheet, with the image centred inside a white border: half an inch up to 17 by 17, two inches on the larger sizes. Metal and acrylic have no border.

The printer sets the ceiling. It takes paper up to 17 inches wide, so paper prints larger than 17 by 17 inches, and every metal and acrylic print, are produced by a professional lab under my direction. Prints up to 17 by 17 inches are open edition. At 24 by 24 inches and above, in any material, they are limited editions. The edition size is listed with the prices.

On the back of each print I note its catalogue number, and in most cases I sign it. A certificate of authenticity comes with every print, packed with the work when I print it myself, or mailed separately when it comes from the lab.

I ship within the United States and to New Zealand. Nowhere else at present. If you’re somewhere else and you want something, write to me anyway and I’ll see what’s possible.

If a print is damaged in transit, tell me and I’ll replace it. Send a photograph of the damage and the packaging if you can, which helps with the carrier.

Otherwise, sales are final. Each print is made to order, so there are no returns or exchanges. Ask me anything you need to know before you buy, and I’d rather talk you out of the wrong picture than sell you one you don’t want.

Yes. My work has been used in film and television, and it suits album covers and book covers particularly well, where an abstract image can sit above the type without fighting it.

Licensing is non-exclusive and priced per use. Album and book cover licensing typically starts around $400, with the fee depending on the print run, the territory, and how long you need it. Commercial campaigns are quoted separately. Exclusivity or extended use raises the fee.

Tell me which image and what you want to do with it, and I’ll quote you.