Synthetic image, not a photograph, generated by Google’s Nano Banana Pro in response to a text prompt by Rodney Martin, November 2025.
I will be giving a presentation on photography in the digital age at the Glen Arbor Art Center in Glen Arbor, Michigan, on April 25. As photography has moved out of the darkroom and into the computer, the ability to “doctor” an image or to create one using artificial intelligence has caused some to conclude that photography is dead. In this presentation, I will explore the impact of digital photography and the implications of generative artificial intelligence on our understanding of photographs. My hope is that those who participate will come away as savvier consumers of photography in the digital age.
INteriors is a juried exhibit at the the Glen Arbor Arts Center in Glen Arbor, Michigan. The exhibit runs for another month, closing on March 12, 2026. The exhibit challenged artists to look inward and explore “inner spaces, both real and imagined, spaces of the home and of the mind.” One of my photographs, a montage, was accepted into the exhibit and is on display at the Arts Center. (Slide 42 in the Virtual Exhibit.)
If you are in northwest lower Michigan this winter, it is worth stopping by to see the exhibit. If you can’t attend in person, you can view the exhibit virtually by clicking here.
Here is my submission to the Glen Arbor Arts Center‘s Members Create exhibit this summer. Titled Quiet Moments, it is a triptych of images taken during in the winter of 2018. Winter is my favorite season in which to do photography. Dressed in layers, I willingly endure the cold so that I can enjoy the solitude of the beach. Except for the sound of the waves, the world is silent, muffled by the layers of snow, and I embrace the peaceful feeling that wells up in me.
The images are separately framed, but have always been exhibited together. The Members Create exhibit runs from June 6 to August 7, 2025, at the Arts Center at 6031 South Lake Street in Glen Arbor. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Over the weekend, I attended the opening of “The Sky Is Always There,” a new juried show at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. The Arts Center asked applicants to go beyond direct representation and portraits of puffy clouds “to consider the sky from its atmospheric characteristic to its mythic history.”
I was fortunate that my submission “Noctures” was accepted for the exhibit. Nocturnes is a triptych of photographs of the night sky that I printed as cyanotypes.
From left to right, the images are of a moonrise over Shalda Creek, the Milky Way over Port Oneida, and the northern lights over a farmhouse in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, a village in the south of Iceland.
I shared the inspiration for my entry in my Artist’s Statement: “When my children were young, we would lie on the shore of Sleeping Bear Bay at night and watch for satellites. Those moments when we marveled at the night sky have remained with me all these years. I wanted to recreate that sense of awe for this exhibit. More recently, my grandchildren and I created cyanotypes of leaves and twigs. We shared a similar sense of wonder as we watched the images coming to life in the developing tray. These experiences gave me the idea to process photographs of the night sky as cyanotypes for this exhibition.”
To create the cyanotypes, I converted my digital photographs to monochrome images and then reversed the tones to create digital negatives. Using a mixture of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide, I treated hot-pressed, 100% cotton watercolor paper to sensitize it to UV light. Then I made a printed image from each negative by exposing the negative and paper to a UV light source. To deepen the blues, I bathed the final prints in hydrogen peroxide.
There are some remarkable works in the exhibit. If you are in the area of Glen Arbor this winter, I encourage you to stop by the Glen Arbor Arts Center and enjoy it. The exhibit runs through March 20.
As I write this, 2024 is quickly coming to a close. Time once again to look back and select some photos from this year that I especially like.
This year was a little different from previous years because my main photography focus for the year was researching and preparing two lectures that I delivered in November at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (“OLLI”) at Aquinas College. The lectures were titled, “Editing Reality: The History of Manipulated Photography.” The first lecture dealt with the period before the digital age, while the second began with the digital age and got into the consideration of the impact of artificial intelligence on photography. I had a blast doing the research, reading a wide range of sources and, though the lectures are done, my reading continues to focus on the history of photography.
Incidentally, I was honored that OLLI sought my permission to use my photographs on their Fall and Winter Course Catalogs.
I am principally a landscape photographer who shoots in what some have termed, “the eyewitness tradition.” I edit my photos to create a realistic image that truthfully presents how I saw what was before me when I clicked the shutter. I do not use generative artificial intelligence or insert items into my images that were not before me. That said, this year I experimented making multiple exposure and montage images. There were two that I particularly liked.
I created this first image from three exposures taken of the side of a dumpster at the East Grand Rapids Public Works Facility. I blended them together in Photoshop. I rather liked the result.
This tree is one of my favorites. Standing alone in a farmer’s field, it reveals its majesty. On the day I took this photo, the sky was cloudless. While the sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful blue, to my eye, the sky offered nothing of interest. Photoshop now allows one to replace the sky with a menu of clouds. Doing so seems disingenuous and certainly would violate the eyewitness tradition I adhere to. Rather than create an artificial photo and present it as real, I chose to try something a little different – a composite of two photographs, one the photo of the tree and the field, the other an image of the bark of a tree for the sky.
Earlier this year, the Glen Arbor Arts Center put out a call for entries to a juried show titled “The Sky is Always There.” The prospectus called for entries that “move beyond direct representation, beyond portraits of puffy clouds.” I was eager to try to get something accepted for the show, but my photography is very representational. I gave it much thought but was coming up empty. Then, after creating cyanotypes of leaves and twigs with my grandchildren I got the idea of submitting photographs of the night sky processed as cyanotypes for this exhibition.
I selected three digital images – a moonrise, the Milky Way, and the northern lights – to create a triptych. From the digital files, I created monochrome negatives of each image. I used a mixture of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide to sensitize hot-pressed, 100% cotton watercolor paper to UV light. Then I made contact prints from each negative by exposing the negative and paper to a UV light source. To deepen the blues, I bathed the final prints in hydrogen peroxide.
I am pleased to say that the juror selected my entry for the exhibit, which will run from January 10 to March 20, 2025, at the Glen Arbor Arts Center in Glen Arbor, Michigan.
Here’s a selection of more straightforward images that are among my favorites for 2024:
“Sunrise on Sleeping Bear Bay,” Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
“Hall Lake Morning,” Yankee Springs Recreation Area
“Lake Superior Lakeshore from Above,” Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
“Lake Superior Stones,” George Hite Dunes, Eagle Harbor, Michigan
“Milky Way,” Port Oneida Rural Historic District, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
“Northern Lights over White Lake,” Wabaningo, Michigan
“Hanging On,” Teichner Preserve: The Leelanau Conservancy
“Fall Foliage,” Howard and Mary Dunn Edwards Nature Sanctuary, the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy
“Turkey Tail and Maple Leaf,” Houdek Dunes Natural Area: The Leelanau Conservancy
In the coming year, I will continue to research the history of photography. Of particular interest to me are cabinet cards created in the second half of the 19th century. I will also continue to deepen my understanding of generative artificial intelligence and its impact of the art of photography. And, of course, I will continue to get out with my camera in an effort to capture nature’s beauty.
Happy New Year
Here are links to my my year-end review of images in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024.
My photo “Exposed” is currently on display at the Glen Arbor Arts Center as part of its “Members Create” exhibit. The exhibit runs until August 8, 2024. The exhibit can be viewed online by following this link.
In the 1920s, photographer Man Ray began processing photographs using a process called solarization “to create a photograph that would not look like a photograph.” Ray created his solarized photos by exposing a photographic print in the wet darkroom to a brief flash of light. Solarization created an unpredictable reversal of tones giving a photograph an otherworldly quality. I attempted to recreate the effect in the digital darkroom by adjusting the tone curve on this photo of a cedar tree whose tap root has been exposed by erosion along the shore of Sleeping Bear Bay.
