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Artificial is a lovely word, etymologically constructed from the Latin Ars and Facere, meaning “To make art.” The making of art means the intervention of a human mind to show the world a perspective never before seen. Until quite recently, photographers have had a more limited expression because of the assumed “reality" of the medium, though some brave and adventurous souls have shown us ways in which the unexpected can be fashioned from the expected. Some are called Impressionists, a title not meant to flatter. Some are called Surrealists.

One of the aspects of my life was having been brought up in a colonial port city, Cape Town, in a colonized country.

If one can't find the right cliffs, or the right model to do the climbing, there's always hope. The "cliff" is made from the leftovers clinging to the inside of a glass after drinking a breakfast smoothie of whipped fruits and vegetables. The "climber" is my favorite model (my wife) whom I photographed seated on a chair in my studio. I had a choice with the aircraft: I could spend months learning to fly a biplane and trigger the camera with a remote control as I flew by; or, I could do what I love best: haunt the local second-hand toy store.

Children, Actors and Musicians are not the only ones who play.

When he was very little, my grandson David imagined a celestial body called Andracoola, where his friend Untun lived. So I jouneyed into space with my camera to confirm his fantasy.

Recipe: One veggie chip (much like potato chips, but made from root vegetables); a hazel eye borrowed from my sister Susan (and immediately returned), and hours of careful design work on a computer. f-stops and shutter speeds irrelevant.

For the 32 years since we met, she has been the love of my life, my intellectual partner, my dance partner, my teacher for relating well to all those we encounter. I love her graceful physicality, the sweet kindness of her temperament, her generosity of spirit, her laughter and her hugs. I love the sound of her voice, as well as the content of her speech. Is it possible to love to infinity and beyond? I do.

Created for Easter and Passover, 2019, Hands of Friendship across the earth.

The poet is my friend Lindy Hough. whose last anthology was titled Wild Horses, Wild Dreams. A word on iconography: I placed her head in the clouds; shaded the right portion of her head in monochrome, to suggest the perfect darkroom of the cranial chamber where great ideas are born, here represented by a colorful image of the right hemisphere of her brain, and the rare, beautiful orchids of her work.

My Niece playing the role of Madame Thaileah, Clairvoyant.

Two Autumn leaves found on the street in front of my home, and given new life in this recreation.

I love flowers and hate most flower photography, much of which is only useful as illustrations on seed packets. Occasionally, a friend has given me gifts of floral beauty, and another contributed one of her lovely eyes for the sake of art.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Baskerville; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Take 10 colored pencils, an aerosol of shave cream, a single leaf picked up on the street near my home, mix the ingredients well in a camera until they look and taste right, let them stew for a few nights in your brain, add a pinch of powdered Photoshop and a heaped tablespoon of imagination, then place them in a warm monitor for a day or two. Results my differ.

Because I’m unable to hike up the Sierras or down the Grand Canyon, having limitations is a useful creative challenge. So I ride my stationary bike, conduct the great orchestras of the world, look at the sky above San Francisco Bay, and dream. So much of life is about saying yes and saying no, and it’s often hard to tell which is right.

You may not know this - few people do - but on full-moonlit nights, Jinns, the spirit survivors of those who labored on the Taj Mahal, come out to play, deconstructing the Taj and then carefully putting it back together again before dawn. I photographed there one night, pretending to be one of them, hiding my camera in the folds of my Jinni cloak.

Six hundred years before it became a tiny northeastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, the Kingdom of Schach was ruled by King Rudolph “The Rapacious,” abetted by his conspiratorial Bishop, Sacramento “The Slimy.” A coup, led by gallant knight Sir Equus “The Exalted,” offed both king and bishop, and restored Queen Justitia “The Just,” to the Leaf Throne. Now part of the European Union, Schach retains its traditional single-note currency, the Bauer. Schach hosts the annual World Chess Tournament.

What Beethoven heard during the composition of the second movement of his Fifth Symphony.

This image was created from a download of Piero del Pollaiulo's Portrait of a Young Man c. 1470, from the Open Content Program of the J. Paul Getty Museum. I am grateful for that program and the challenge it provides to create new artworks from old.

A partnership between 17th century Dutch artist Adriaen van de Velde and 20th/21st century American artist Raphael Shevelev. The cow on the right followed me for an hour in the town of Eklingji, Rajasthan. The van de Velde Cow Grazing courtesy of the Open Content Program of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

My narrative: In 1328, Captain Joost de Blank, near the end of his service with the Dutch East India Company, explored land trade routes across India, and was invited by the Maharaja of Jaisalmer, Rawal Kalyandas (who ruled 1624 - 1634) to inspect the Jaisalmer Fort. Captain de Blank subsequently took the year 1629 to make his way by long ocean voyage to retirement in Amsterdam.

The new Open Content Program of the J. Paul Getty Museum has released 4,600 objects for free download. My latest work was to construct an ultra-modern background for an ancient object, a Persian amphora-rhyton dating from c.325 B.C.

Virtually all artists who work with two-dimensional media attempt to create the illusion of a third dimension with uses of perpsective, light, shading, color and texture. In this piece, time, the fourth dimension, is also included.

  I’ve tried to characterize my condition as a creative artist with this image of a tiny clump of foliage exposed in space, subject to the winds and weather of my own mind, but retaining a slender connection to the society of which I am a part and from which I draw nourishment. I am a single artist, creating alone, but needing peers with whom to exchange ideas, and a chorus with whom to sing my picture-songs. See my column Art Minus One.  

Pushing the envelope is what I love to do. The envelope in this image was designed by Gus DiZerega. It helps to have access to my grandchildren's toys, too.

This image is in homage to the painting Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe) from the series "The Treachery of Images" by René Magritte (1898-1967). He was making the point that images are representations of objects, not the objects themselves.