Charlie Anderson's Biography and Artist Statement Fine Art Photography of Colorado, the Great Southwest, and Beyond

BIO

I was born in Minnesota, but my family moved to Colorado when I was six, so I grew up hiking in the mountains and learning to love the crags, lakes, and meadows, with all their plants and animals.  Even then I took a few snapshots, but didn't become infatuated with photography until the digital era.  I worked in business for a few years, then taught school for almost 30 more.  Along the way I got a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (I was afraid the remedial classes I was teaching were rotting my mind, so I was curious to see if it still worked), then seized a favorable opportunity to retire.  My wife and I saved up our shekels for several years and took a month-long trip to Antarctica.  WOW!  There were three pro photographers along, and I was hooked.  I've spent the time since taking pictures, spending too much on gear, and refining my skills through workshops, reading, and study. 

STATEMENT

Artist statements make me uneasy.  Most of them are some kind of airy fantasy, and all I do is take pictures.  I'm always looking for compositions that are beautiful, fascinating, unusual, and preferably some combination of those.  I hope the photographs give you enjoyment and maybe prod you to get out and see some things for yourself, but I don't think it's my place to tell you what to think about each one.

I live within at most a long day's drive of some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth:  Yellowstone, the Great Plains, the Colorado Rockies, New Mexico's arroyos and clay hills, the stupendous canyons and mesas of the Colorado Plateau, and even the Mojave Desert.  I really prefer to be out among all these natural wonders, so I don't like to spend a lot of time at the computer fiddling with photographs.  Also, I grew up with color slide film and took my first workshops using it -- it's a finicky medium, with little latitude for error.  All that is justification for my philosophy:  get the best possible photograph in camera, and don't mess with it afterward. 

I do make minor adjustments to control saturation, increase sharpness (absolutely necessary with digital cameras -- in jpegs your camera does it for you), crop slightly, and clone out dust spots.  Unless otherwise stated in the notes by each photo, that's all that's been done.  I consider myself primarily a nature photographer, and I want to show you what I saw.  I hope you will supply the appropriate emotion.