Artist's Statement

Welcome to my website, wherein I share my vision with you. Most of the images on the site were captured within the last couple of years. You can expect the contents of this site to change periodically as I update the collection of images with new and old material.

I've spent over 40 years behind the camera and in chemical and digital darkrooms. By training, I am both engineer and artist. The two disciplines are complementary when you consider the technical nature of photography as well as the need for good design in engineering. I have an MSEE in computer engineering and solid-state physics from Stanford University. I've spent decades in the computer and semiconductor industries designing nano-scale microprocessors and building and marketing chip-design software worldwide. I am an avid software developer since the days of paper tape and punch cards and have personally built this site and another website called YAKiToMe! (http://www.YAKiToMe.com). Both are works in progress. I have electronics projects going as well. Nevertheless, I spend a good part of almost every day engineering new photographic images in my mind, in the field, and on the computer.

Recently, I told a new friend that I struggle to comprehend what a photograph really is. My physics professor, Leonard Susskind (the discoverer of string theory), once said to me so poetically, "The stuff of which we are made is indistinguishable from light." The late David Bohm, one of the great physicists of the 20th century and a close friend of the current Dalai Lama's, said that we are made of condensed light. I won't attempt to explain it here, but if you have studied quantum physics you know that it is so. Photography means literally drawing or recording with light. So what is this image that I record? We know that space-time is a solid and that all events in the past still are ... but can no longer be directly accessed by us. What part of that reality does my photo constitute? Was the "superstition" to which some Native Americans ascribed, that a photograph captured one's "soul," really so ignorant? My new friend told me that I think way too much. "Typical engineer," she said with a knowing smile. How right she is.

Photographing birds is a deep and enduring passion of mine. Living in Pittsburgh has given me access to more bird species in one locale than anywhere else I've lived. As an observer, I am captivated by the intelligence, personality, pragmatism, habits, songs and daily challenges of my avian subjects. As a photographer, I've fallen hard for their colors, textures, detail and individual character. Not to mention the immense challenge of capturing subjects as kinetic as tiny woods'-edge song birds ... especially flight.

I am enchanted by how my bird friends seem to live their lives entirely in the moment and intensely mindful of their surroundings. As romantic as this may sound, I like to think of it as their pragmatic side being manifested. When you're flying fast through dense forest, you either pay close attention to what's around you and where you're going or you end up kissing a tree -- hard. Distractions like thinking about the worm that got away are invitations to a broken neck.

My photography is also colored by a love of technology and its transformative abilities, both for good and bad. Urban and engineered landscapes provide a way for me to express this vision.

Finally, I have always enjoyed photographing people, behavior and personalities. We are all entangled at the quantum level. I believe sincerely that when you look at another sentient being you see, in good part, yourself. Portraiture, whether of human subjects or otherwise, is best when it reveals as much about the subject as the observer.

Peace.

Richard Gordon