Since 1992, the Moab Music Festival has persuaded world-class musicians to perform in some pretty unlikely places. For three weeks every September, they haul Steinway grand pianos, 18th-century violins and more to various remote (yet stunning) locations, offering conert-goers a truly unique musical experience.

I have served as their principal photographer for several seasons. Nearly all of the work is shot outdoors in available light.

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My early photographic work was almost entirely in black and white. A big fan of traditional printing, I spent a great deal of time in darkrooms. This was never an issue in Montreal or Seattle, where long months of lousy winter weather made time in the darkroom seem well spent. Not so in the Utah desert. Once I moved to Moab, the desire to spend hours under the glow of the safe light faded.

Most of these portraits were taken in the early 1990s when I freelanced for the Seattle Weekly and the Washington Free Press.

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I never had much luck with landscape photography until I started using a view camera in 1993, though my first effort went badly. I convinced my friend Peter Zahn (who appears in the portrait gallery) to loan me his wooden 4 x 5 field camera for a road trip to Utah. Perched on a cliff edge one evening, I was slowly getting the hang of the bulky thing. But just as I turned away to reach for a film back, a gust of wind blew the camera and tripod off the cliff. After a fall of twenty feet, the beautiful camera splintered to bits.

When I returned home, I handed Peter his camera in a paper shopping bag. Of course I bought him a new one, but I will never forget the look on his face when he opened that bag. And I will never forget to weight the tripod.

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To view the portfolio, click on any of the thumbnails. In the window that opens, you can click on the image itself or use your arrow keys to navigate between images.