It has been difficult for me to describe my art to others. I shy away from using "digital art photography" or any other phrase with the word "photography" in it. I believe that the work is better described as just digital art. Many digital artists utilize multiple photographs or other raster images along with vector based drawing to produce a wide array of what is called digital art. Nearly all art that we see today in the commercial, media and entertainment space is digital art. So the use of digital processing techniques to produce art is well known and appreciated by many.

While I refer to my work as "digital art" I do, in fact, utilize digital photography to produce an initial digital image from which to begin any piece that I do. I then utilize image processing software to manipulate the initial image to produce the art work.

I have one principle that I use in developing the art images; that being the use of only one initial image as input into the work. I do not composite multiple initial images or utilize any vector drawing in the art work. While this sets some limits on my materials it also creates a material set in which I have to work to create a finished image.

I create the base image with a simple digital camera or, in some cases, utilize an existing image from a large collection of images of plants that I have amassed over the years. I try to take or select base images that I think would make interesting starting points. The base digital photographs do not have to be fabulous renditions of nature. They do not even have to be totally in focus. Since I manipulate them so heavily I just look for an interesting plant subject with interesting composition.

In manipulating the images I make a number of layers from the same initial image. These layers are just manipulated versions of, or parts of, the initial image. I also do not add any individual new colors to the imagery however since I highly manipulate some of the layers sometimes the initial colors can be radically altered through hue or contrast changes or through the use of a variety of artistic filters. The end result can look very different from the input image that goes into any particular layer.

I often also apply some significant geometric processing to image layers, which is why some hard geometric lines appear in some images of plants which really do not have such hard geometry. Sometimes this geometric processing can result in images where the subjects seem loose and flowing in ways in which are hinted at in nature. Othertimes the images result in the preservation of hard geometries blending with the natural plant forms.

I sometimes do some small area editing on the images. Occasionally there will be an image artifact from the original image that can not easily be removed by layer processing work. An example might be a sun glint in an original image. I might do some localized pixel doctoring to remove the glint, although some sun glints are good and I keep them. Some times as a result of layer combinations there may be a areas where I do some pixel replacement or local processing to achieve the effect that I am looking for.

In the end, just like a lot of digital art, the created layers are composited together to produce a final one layer image. I often will have 15-25 layers that are composited to produce a final image.

The final images vary a lot in their degree of fidelity with the original subject. Sometimes the final images bear a good relationship to the actual plant and those familiar with plants can easily identify the plant from the final image. Other times the images are so highly manipulated that even with careful study of the image it can be hard to identify the plant species which is the subject of the image. I do this because I enjoy the diversity of results and I find that some people are drawn to those images that depict the plants in a fairly good, but not completely representational way, while other people are attracted to the more abstract final images. I like them both.