I have lived a duel life. One half scientist and one half photographer. After a long day at the bench, I would grab my camera and go out for a long walk and photograph anything in the city that caught my eye. More often than not, that anything was or included plant life. I have always been fascinated by plants. My wife has christened me a photographer of shrubbery.

Up until a few years ago, all my work was in black and white. Texture and tone drove my creativity plus all the photographers whose work I admired worked in monochrome. Admittedly this was because many of them worked before there were versatile color processes available. I'm sure that my two greatest mentors, David Vestal and Ansel Adams, who worked almost exclusively in black and white, had an influence.

As I grew older, I began to think about my dedication to black and white and I realized it was at least partially because the colors I saw were never good enough for me. At about this time, I met a photographer who hand colored photos using transparent oil paint. What a revelation! It wasn't necessary to be satisfied with the colors I saw. I could substitute any color I wanted!

I started hand coloring with oil paint, but after a few years, I fell prey to the digital juggernaut and began to experiment with coloring my photos on the computer. All of this year's entries were colored using PhotoShop. These photos are otherwise unaltered. As always they were photographed with a camera on my walks.