Some people have noted that my photos are similar to the Hudson River School and Barbizon painters. This is such a compliment, because though I am not a student of their work, I do appreciate and enjoy their paintings. Taking their lead, back in 1995 I started, with my wife, Carol Capobianco, the Hudson River School of Photography. This is not a brick and mortar school, but a school of thought, where we raise awareness of the river’s beauty through photography.

For me, what is extraordinary and ever-changing is a play of light. It is in this ‘ever-changing-ness’ we find the infinite.

Like some of the masters — André Kertèsz, Edward Weston, Ralph Gibson — it is finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Finding the ever-changing light that is at our doorstep instills magic in the camera’s captured moment. For me, what is extraordinary and ever-changing is a play of light. It is in this ever-changing-ness we find the infinite.

What was your vision in establishing the school?

Like the Hudson River landscape painters, I am attracted to the beauty and romance of the river. My mission is to raise awareness of this beauty through photography. We help celebrate the Hudson’s magnificence through workshops, presentations, in-classroom talks, lessons, exhibitions, and note cards and prints. I urge people to go to the river with their cameras and seek out its wonders. By encouraging people to get closer to the river, we foster public awareness of its beauty. Photography is an ideal medium to share this vision; it is powerful and accessible — just as the Hudson.

Some photographers feel that black and white, and all its subtle shades of grey, is the best means for emphasizing meaning, ideas, and mood — that black and white cuts past the “dream” of color. You capture intense natural beauty using traditional gelatin silver prints. Why that choice?

Photography as any other medium of expression is one step away from the real world. Black & white photography immediately attracts the attention of the viewer because it is different from the real world.

The intense natural beauty you speak of is realized by bringing the viewer beyond color to the light, line, shape, composition, shadow and sense of place. This, I believe, is why those who see my work can transcend the print and actually experience ‘being there.’

There is so much more to a rendering of the natural world than just the color, and often the viewer will stop at the “façade of color” and not move into the sense of the place. The intense natural beauty you speak of is realized by bringing the viewer beyond color to the light, line, shape, composition, shadow and sense of place. This, I believe, is why those who see my work can transcend the print and actually experience “being there.”

There has always been a practical side as well of why I shoot black & white: when I began to make photographs in the mid-1970s, I built a darkroom and purchased film in 100-foot bulk rolls to process and print myself, to keep costs down. To print color in one’s own darkroom at that time was difficult and costly.