This Website

Welcome and thanks for stopping by! This site is a series of galleries meant to acquaint you with my photography. To simplify your visit the images are organized into 6 main categories on the "Main Gallery" page:

Landscapes    International    Urban
Polarized Aerials    Still Objects    Botanicals

The first three categories have sub-galleries within them (Landscapes 9, International 10, and Urban 3), creating a total of 25 galleries for your viewing pleasure. You may want to visit more than once to see everything; no problem, admission is always free. Once you arrive in each gallery (the white lettering at the top, just below my name, tells you which gallery you are visiting), you may click on an image to see it enlarged.

Don't get lost in the galleries! Simply click on the black link "Main Gallery" or "Home" to go back to the beginning.
For more information about each category, see "The Photographs" section below.

Excuse me while the legal department has a word here:
All photographs in this website are copyrighted by Wm Kirk Moore and are protected by United States and international copyright law. Enjoy viewing them on your computer and buy some prints for your walls, but do not download images for any use without written permission from Wm Kirk Moore.

Many thanks to ATG Productions, Inc. for their patience and the programming of this site.

Wm Kirk Moore

Photography and travel have intrigued me since a trip to Egypt at age eleven with my grandmother. I got hooked when the (pretty crummy) prints from my Instamatic camera came back from the drugstore. It was amazing to see myself in a different time frame, re-live the experiences, and share what I had seen with others. After studying photography at the University of Colorado, and taking plenty of party pix for my frat, I graduated in Fine Arts.

Wanderlust, acquired from family camping adventures (and that trip to Cairo), has always been a determining lifestyle factor. This precipitated numerous "hunting" trips, fully armed with film. Bicycling from Denver to Los Angeles, kayak/rafting through the Grand Canyon, exploring foreign lands with World Campus Afloat, and traveling around South America in a VW bus were all formative experiences, but when I discovered airlines the world really opened up.

Pan Am hired me to be a flight attendant based in London. Soon Europe, India, and Asia filled my 35mm viewfinder, and trekking in the Himalaya became a recurrent vacation habit. I know, I know...what a life! Later I transferred to San Francisco and married my Pan Am sweetheart, settling in the Half Moon Bay area. Until recently, I continued "feeding the need" for photography and travel by flying for United Airlines to Asia, Australia, Hawaii, and Europe. Many of the photographs on this website were taken during lay-overs for Pan Am and United; a very economical way to see the world.

"Seeing" is what photography is all about. Understanding requires perception. Photography makes me perceive better. The camera frames my world, cropping chaos, so I can focus on things that stimulate a sense of beauty, mystery, art. Consider these images as windows for your imagination. Some are over twenty years old, some were taken only two months ago. All show another time and another place; and perhaps a few are timeless. I hope you enjoy the journey. Back to top

The Photographs (by category)

Last time I counted, there were 290 images on this website. I won't bore you with in-depth stories about every one, although I have put a brief description below the title when you enlarge each photograph. I will talk about them as categories, just as they are organized on the Main Gallery page. All photographs on the website are single images except for Urbanscapes and Still Objects, so I will discuss those first.

Urban images depict my fascination with the graphic design of buildings and bridges (Architecture and San Francisco). Urbanscapes takes that a step further by combining two images carefully chosen to compliment and contrast with each other. Rather than simply putting them side-by-side as diptyches, I split one photograph into two halves, creating triptychs. Striving for more than just "interrupted urban panoramas", Urbanscapes suggest three-dimensions and the images that go together best are often from different cities. Most photographs selected for Urbanscapes contain reflections to create a sense of confusion, depth, and mystery. Mounted on four ply mat board with reverse bevels, Urbanscapes "float" slightly off the back mats, creating even more dimensionality.

Still Objects is a collection of triptychs that are studies in color, texture, and shape. These are close-up "field" photographs of unusual objects found in markets and side streets all over the world. All the pictures were taken on location and no alterations were made to the displays. Three images are combined based on the entwined relationship of their colors and shapes. The result is a playful interaction of texture and color, which also may convey a bit of intrigue. Still Objects are mounted like Urbanscapes, on 4 ply mat board with reverse bevels, "floating" slightly off the back mats.

Polarized Aerials are created in the same manner as most images on this website, with a polarizing filter. These filters reduce reflections; but normally don't create color. The difference here is that I am shooting through a polarized window aboard a commercial airliner. When sunlight bounces off the water below, the light rays are bent slightly. As they pass through the polarized window they get tweaked a bit more. Finally the rays are skewed yet again, when they go through my polarizing filter. This is enough bending to refract the light into individual colors (like a rainbow). Light that is not bounced (bent) off the water is not refracted, such as the clouds, which remain white. The most successful Polarized Aerials were made on clear, haze-free days, through clean, unscratched windows, during winter months when the sun's angle was lower to the water. My apologies to any passengers I neglected while making these photographs in-flight.

Botanicals are all from either Maui or the Sydney Botanical Gardens. Like the Still Objects images, I take these photographs close enough to create a "field" effect. This minimizes backgrounds (removing context) to concentrate on the subject at hand, the "never-ceases-to-amaze-beauty-of-nature". A polarizing filter and tripod are mandatory; overcast light is preferable.

International images are all from layovers or vacation trips made possible by working for airlines: Thank you, Pan Am and United. Please tour Japan, Hawaii, Bali, Hong Kong, China, Europe, India, Australia, and Nepal through my eyes. But bear in mind that photography, like all art, is subjective. I have pointed and zoomed in chosen directions to capture the "essence" of each place according to my experiences, romanticized notions, and photographic style; your mileage may vary. Of course the glue that holds all these diverse places together is people; don't miss the "Faces" gallery. Consider each of my International photographs as small attempts at fostering global awareness. Check them out; then go traveling to see for yourself. Seeing is part of understanding and understanding is a step toward promoting peace. Wouldn't that be nice?

Landscapes...yes, I know; hug a tree, save the whales; you've heard it all before. But from a DESIGN point of view, nobody beats Mom: Mother Nature rocks. She is "the MAN". Check out the graphics in those Dunes, the perspective along the Coast, the color in New England, composition in the Sierras, lighting in Colorado, dynamics in Trees, scale in Himalaya, and the forms in Utah. When I am "out there" something speaks to me in an ancient dialect I don't want to lose. It is gorgeous and it's "our" house, so I hope you're thinking twice about chucking that beer can out your car window. Even if you don't buy any of that environmental mumbo jumbo, you have to admit these photographs would look terrific on your walls at work or home.

For print information, click here. Back to top

Equipment

OK, if you've read this far, I may as well tell you how I took all these photos. For years I have been using Nikon cameras (Nikkormat, FE, 6006, and F100) with various Nikon lenses (24mm, 24-85 zoom, 50mm, 200mm, 70-300 zoom) shooting Kodachrome and Fujichrome (Velvia and Provia) slide film. I use a polarizing filter and a tripod (Gitzo Mountaineer 1228 with Giotto MH1000 ball head) whenever possible. Lately I have made the switch to digital, using a Canon 5D with a 24-105mm L lens and a 70-300mm DO lens. So, take all this stuff outside, wait for the right light (photography means writing with light), compose properly (composition is important), and press the button. Then be brutal and chuck 85% of what you shoot. Voila!

Yes, I know I should be using larger format or the latest digital multi-mega-pixel machine, but until I win the lotto, I am trying to get over it. Hey, thanks for reading all this stuff. Click here to go somewhere else.

Wm. Kirk Moore