During the Fall of 2016 and Spring of 2017, I photographed the Hudson River Valley as the focus of a sabbatical project for Marist College. Initially I completed a series of photographs showing the Hudson Valley as it appears to all of us. As I worked, I found myself experimenting with a number of representational models. In addition to traditional still images, I found myself combining several images into single panoramas. This process has its roots in the 19th century but is far easier today than it was with glass plates and collodion as a carrier for hand coated silver-based emulsions. Due to the combination of several images to create a single panorama, their scale could also be larger. The resulting images were often four to eight feet in length. In addition, I worked with the pairing of panoramas in single images attempting to show a broader interpretation of a single site.
I also wanted to explore locations based on work from the Hudson River School of painting. Photographing historic locations used by a variety of Hudson River Valley painters became an interesting way to rediscover the manner in which various painters envisioned their environment during the 19th century. It was a great pleasure to rediscover the area I grew up in and realize, once again, that the history and beauty of the Hudson River Valley is worth exploring for everyone.