Jerry Peek

I took my first photos at age 7... my parents had good intuition! I'm mostly self-taught, though I took a graduate-level class at the University of New Mexico with a professor who was making black-and-white photos of golf course greens. I learned a lot about abstract photography there and came to love it. Composition is especially important to me... I don't know any formal rules; I've learned by looking at photos and paintings. By now I have some 80,000 photos (and have thrown away several times that many... I spend a lot of time looking at photos, picking the very best, and tossing the rest). Although I mostly shoot digital color now, black and white is my favorite because it emphasizes shape, texture and light. The photographer who's influenced me most is Harry Callahan; I can't get enough of his simple, elegant and mysterious compositions. People ask what kinds of things I photograph... my answer is "anything that interests me"... though, if I had to choose, I'd say modern architecture. I've taken hundreds of photos for The Tucson Murals Project blog, which is still going strong after almost 15 years.