I began working with black and white  materials years before venturing into colour. I worked for small newspapers as a writer but was expected to carry a camera. One night there was a fire and I read the instructions on how to soup film that were taped to a darkroom wall. Everyone starts somewhere.

In art school I used black and white films, colour neg, and colour transparency in 35mm and large format. We developed black and white and colour films and did our own printing. It was labour intensive. I began nosing around with Photoshop somewhere around 1990. I remember the big deal when layers were first introduced. Everyone was blown away. At first fundamental changes in how images are made and stored were slow, and then they came very fast.

These days I work almost exclusively with digital processes. While I have nostalgic feelings for film photography, I have never seriously returned to it. I love working toward a black and white end product.

Working digitally means I can aim for a realistic depiction of the world, or reinterpret it completely. I like these black and white pictures. They were all made in southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. I have lived here since 2011.