Over the years there have been a number of occasions where people have asked me about my photography, how it relates to my artwork, and whether I consider my photography to be artwork in and of itself. I am, of course, primarily an artist working in oil paint, and I like to work outside on location painting directly from nature whenever the opportunity presents itself. But there are many occasions when that is impossible, or inconvenient, and I work at home in my studio - painting from photographs. Over the nearly 22 years that I’ve been painting professionally I have accumulated a massive collection of approximately 60,000 photographs from travels near and far. This photographic reference library is always available and ready to be used in the creation of new paintings, and I am not solely limited to painting what nature has provided outside (which, as I write this, has been a solid 6 months of snow on the ground here in the Calgary area, and there are only so many snow paintings that one artist can do!).

Usually, when photographing subjects I keep a keen eye toward composing images that will be useful for me when I’m back in the studio painting. But occasionally I think of those people who’ve asked me whether my photography itself is ever a form of finished art. And that happened again earlier this year. I was on a return holiday in the Baja Sur state of Mexico in a town I love called Todos Santos (you can learn more about the town here: http://www.todossantos.cc/ ), and as I was taking various photographs I started to see compositions that I would never consider painting, but that I still wanted to photograph. They were photography for photography’s sake, not for another later purpose. And so I followed the impulse and began taking these shots that I normally wouldn’t. And what happened? Well, I came home with over 1200 images, and once I started sorting through them I realized I had the makings of what could be a quite interesting photographic book about Todos Santos, and its surrounding area. And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Some of the photographs in the book will be reproduced more or less exactly as they were originally shot, while others have been more significantly altered and processed in PhotoShop. I found in some cases that the mood, spirit, and atmosphere of a picture was greatly enhanced by these alterations, whereas other images spoke for themselves without any assistance from graphic tricks. In combining the photos together into one 160 page book, I think that I’ve struck a balance between the different image styles, and am pleased with the result. I hope I’ve succeeded in capturing part of the beauty and magic of this unforgettable town.

“Todos Santos - Pueblo Magico”, will be released on this website in April, 2011. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy this selection of a few of the images that will be featured in the book:

(Please note: As with my paintings, these photographs are Copyrighted. Please do not copy them without permission from me.)