Steve Gould

Biography

I have been drawn to photographing the natural world for over forty years. Beginning with travel photography, I have focused more and more on the landscape and the “underwaterscape” for my inspiration. An avid SCUBA diver since 1979, I began underwater photography in 1991. While landscape and underwater photography have been my major subject matter, since moving to San Diego in 2002 I have frequently walked our local beaches to capture the remarkable colors and compositions presented by the sand, sea foam and cobbles.

Artist Statement

I find that the beauty and complexity of nature is unsurpassed. I look for nature’s myriad colors, textures and complex patterns, especially in those moments that are fleeting and never to be repeated. In addition to traditional landscape photography, I draw my inspiration from the “underwaterscape” and from compositions I find on our local beaches. The underwater world provides colors, shapes, and complexity very different from our everyday world. While we move above water in a two-dimensional world, underwater we get to explore in all three dimensions: simply using breathing to increase or decrease buoyancy, a diver can move up and down or hover weightless. But, underwater photography provides unique challenges: the photographer has to remain perfectly balanced and weightless to hold position in the water column while composing and taking a picture. And, since water absorbs more colors at deeper depths, flash photography is essential to bring out the colors in close-by subjects. The photographer has to adjust the power of the flash to not only get these colors but also the blue of the background water provided by the ambient sunlight. Just as one finds bands of beautiful colors in soap bubbles or in an oil film on a wet road or sidewalk, colors can also be seen in the bubbles of sea foam on rare days due to the effects of natural surfactants from our local seaweeds. The optical phenomenon that causes these colors is called “interference”. Under the right conditions, wonderful abstract color photographs can be obtained. I have developed a series of images that I’ve named “San Diego Beach Gems”®. On San Diego beaches, there is also a wonderful variety of colors and textures of sand, interesting cobblestones, shells and various seaweeds. This creates an opportunity for “found” compositions that are ephemeral and ever-changing. I have develop two series of photographic images; one that I’ve named “Time Scales”™ and one that I’ve named “Torrey Pines Cobbles”. The digital darkroom allows me far greater control and precision with processes analogous to those used in a traditional wet chemistry darkroom. However, it also provides opportunities to blend images in ways that are truly novel, yielding variable transparency and image depth that open new vistas. I have been creating photomontages using these potentialities with foliage images, landscape images and with underwater images.