bio

here's my updated bio:

Matt has been a event and portrait photographer in the DC area for more than 12 years. He graduated from Towson University with a Bachelor of Science in Photography in 1998.

Matt grew up around photography and has always been drawn to making images. "My father started a photography business in 1980 with a studio and darkroom in the basement of our house. I would watch him work and by the time I was 9 or 10 I was tagging along on assignments."

After graduating from Towson, Matt started his own photography business. "I have always been drawn to wedding photography. I love weddings because each one is a unique story...it's my job to create a pictorial narrative that communicates the wedding story for future generations. A good wedding photographer is part story teller, part visual artist, and a little part tecno-geek."

Matt is also an accomplished fine art photographer. Flowers, the human face and historic architecture have all been subjects Matt has explored. He has exhibited his photographic and multi-media work in a variety of local venues and juried shows. Matt's work has been featured on Maryland Public Television and in Japan in Photo Technic Magazine.

Matt's hobbies include painting and mixing music. "I love to work with oil paint, the smell...the texture...to mix and smear it around a canvas is a wonderful experience...mixing music has a similar appeal for a different set of senses."

Matt has been happily married to his childhood sweetheart for ten years and together they spend a lot of time chasing their two boys and a girl, ages 6, 3 and 7 months. Matt lives in Maryland on the Potomac River south of DC.

Here is a picture of our house under construction in the late '80s.

Haven't posted in a while, but would like to keep this blog going, so I will try to make time to post occasionally.

I took my boys for a walk along the Potomac river starting from my parents house in Accokeek, MD and crossing over the county line into Charles Co.

There must have been a river clean-up in the recent past as there was very little trash along the shore. 

 We found many very small wild flowers growing on the forest floor. Here are some close-up images. 

       

Very small flower growing on the forest floor.

Can anyone identify these plants? 

Litho film

Working on some lithos ( Litho film = antiquated term for transparency film used for making half tones) 

Actually I'm using the stuff you can print on with your ink jet printer that I bought at Staples... It's marketed for use with overhead projectors. I paid extra for the kind that you can write on with a marker as well... 

3M makes it. I looked for the slightly cheaper (and probably wouldn't work at all) Staples brand, but no go...so I went with 3M.

Really the stuff is nice...at a dollar a sheet...I had to buy 40 sheets, so I've got a surplus now.

Above: a halftone image.

I started printing and promptly ran out of ink (my fault for not checking)...Back to Staples...(next time I buy a printer I think I'll make sure CVS stocks the ink cartridges.)

Anyway...every few years I get the urge to silkscreen some tee-shirts. To do this I convert an image to halftone in Photoshop than print it onto litho film. Then I can transfer the image to a silk screen with a light sensitive emulsion (sometimes called photo screen emulsion).

The resulting silk screen may then be called a photo-screen, and can be screened onto a tee-shirt or paper or anything that's reasonably flat.

Rolli Photog = A photographer using a Rolleiflex camera. 

The Rolleiflex Twin Lens is (or was) one of the great film camera systems. Compact and VERY durable, its up there with the best (and has inspired many poorly constructed nock-offs like the Yeshica-12). 

I've used the Rolli Professionally to shoot large groups (back in the days of film) and extensively for personal use. (I'd use it still if I was inclined to expose film) But sadly all my film cameras are collecting dust so to speak... 

...Actually they are well protected from dust. 

(oh dust...the eternal enemy of the photog)

Sadly the days of film are (like the Jedi) gone, and anyone with the skills to shoot film is setting on a big non commercially viable skill set.

oh well I'm not bitter, life goes on, and all that film knowledge makes one a better digital photog.

Matt

  

Close-up of a rose