RICHARD J POWELL, ABOUT ME

I have been a photographer since the 1950’s, but the evolution into serious fine art photography started about six years ago, after many years in other careers  such as Electrical Engineer, Solid State Physicist, and Practicing Physician.
Over the years, hiking and backpacking into the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and living part of the time on the Oregon Coast increased my appreciation for the colors, tonality and intrinsic beauty of landscape and nature.

During travels to Europe I was inspired by studying the art of the great masters, who centuries ago produced masterpieces still unmatched today in their realism, depth and beauty, I realized that they had an innate ability to use color, tonality and composition to produce images with almost universal emotional appeal. I have also been inspired by the work of past great photographers such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Galen Rowell, and I have learned a great deal from contemporaries, Bob Evans, and Alain Briot.

My emphasis has been on landscape and nature, but whenever the opportunity presents, I try to capture the human element in my work. I have expended an inordinate amount of time learning the basics of HTML and Dreamweaver© to design this website, but the scientist in me could not resist.

I love color, but I now understand the importance of tonal gradations in providing the depth and realism of a true masterpiece.  Oftentimes the study of tonality is best visualized in monochrome, i.e. black and white, images. I am now in the stage of trying to develop my own style of fine art photography.

Many of the images on this site are from my travels and are of general and human interest, but the images in the Fine Art Album are some of the those which I have printed after spending many hours and sometimes days to correct what the camera is capable of producing to what I visualized and what evoked within me an emotional response when I viewed the scene.