Flora da Madeira
When I first fell in love with photography, my passion was ignited by the natural world. I grew up in Colorado, with the Rocky Mountains as my playground. The Rockies have an arid climate; the flora of the region is unique. My first forays into the wilderness with the camera were focused on aspen, columbine, lupine, indian paintbrush.
Over many years, as my photography has become more abstract, I've generally moved away from making pictures of natural things. As I spend more time in the built environment, so my photography has transitioned to more imagery derived from the world of man.
But this has reversed since I started doing infrared photography. Photographs in infrared can be most interesting when they feature living plants, because of the way flora reflects infrared light.
Infrared creates a unique kind of abstraction, simply because this isn't how we naturally see the world. Though the photographs are of real, natural things, the capture in infrared renders them looking dreamlike and otherworldly. Exotic and strange-looking plants and trees thus make perfect subject matter; the oddity of forms completes the abstract effect.
In the summer of 2025 my wife, Ruth, and I experienced a truly magical week in Madeira. This tiny archipelago is around 400 miles off the northwestern coast of Africa, nearest to Morocco. Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal, settled by the Portuguese beginning in the 1600s. The territory is made up of four main islands, only two of which are inhabited: Madeira and Porto Santo.
We stayed on Madeira island, in Funchal, from which I managed to get out with the camera every day. And I soon found myself shooting infrared almost exclusively, owing to the fantastic botany found here.
Over several days I made many hundreds of infrared photographs. I am releasing them in complete collections, the first of which is Flora da Madeira. This collection features plants, trees and other botanical beauty from around the island.
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