Think about it. What would this site be without pictures? When you look at any of the sites that Irene or I create, you will note that pictures are a indispensable part. Besides Internet publishing or sales, let me list several other digital photography services that may be of use to you...

Perhaps you have a report to do in PowerPoint or a periodical to produce or you have a business that uses the great outdoors and you want to produce your own website. You need 25 or more images and you would like to have a choice. I literally have thousands of images, artfully captured, of the flora and fauna in and around these northern gulf islands at your disposal. See a sample of Flora and Fauna pictures here. Simply write me and describe the kinds of images you need and I'll send you a CD with 2 or 3 times more images than you request.

In the 70s and 80s, while teaching Photography and Graphic Arts, I had a variety of cameras, Nikons, Hasselblads, a a View camera. I had a basement darkroom where I would develop and print, mostly black and white, and would even concoct my own developers. (Colour was a pain in the butt and used horrible chemicals.) I studied Ansel Adams, particularly his Zone System that used predetermined exposures leading to predictable prints.

In that time, I was teaching programming and typesetting with computers and to decorate the printed page we used a scanner to acquire the clip-art type graphics or a process darkroom to develop black and white halftone photographs. (Colour printing was a long costly process that involved 4 negatives, plates, and 4 press runs to achieve the final product.) The Internet was in its infancy then with a text-only Netscape browser that was no threat to the Print Industry.

In 1999 Irene Blueth and I experimented with a borrowed first generation digital camera. Despite its limitations, it brought the excitement of immediacy into photography. Now Photoshop, which I first saw in the 80s and said, "Neat! But what can you do with it?", had an every-day use. Soon we both bought the next generation digital camera. Then, Irene and I started cortesisland.com and began publishing the current events from our community on the web. Being on the cutting edge made us "experts" and soon we were giving digital photography workshops and sharing our enthusiasm for this technology. Irene and I both expanded into website creations; thus combining art, digital photography, and internet publishing.

I'll state this flat out. I would never go back! I recently was required to photograph a wedding with traditional cameras; -one for black and white, one for colour. (With digital, this is a post-process decision!) I couldn't believe how heavy the cameras were, how long they took to rewind and reload -even with motorized assist! (I felt I lost some picture taking opportunities during those reloads.) I felt insecure not being able to check the exposure in the LCD viewfinder after taking certain pictures, especially after using flash assist. I hated not being able to see or share the results that same afternoon.

So, in summary, digital cameras equal the traditional cameras in most areas, surpass them in some areas and only fall short at prints of 16 by 20" and bigger. But that will soon change! I am completely portable. That means I can take pictures at your place and show them to you immediately so we can decide which ones to use or whether we should re-take some.