About

When I was a boy my parents had a subscription to National Geographic.  When the issue arrived each month I would dive right in to the articles and imagine myself in those far off places.  But what really captured my interest were the photographs.  Photos of exotic places, people of different cultures, wild animals in wild surroundings – I was absolutely captivated by those images and dreamed that one day I, too, could take such photographs.

  When I was a teenager I bought my first real camera, a Kowa SE.  It was a low end 35mm SLR, but it was a huge step up from using my mother’s  Brownie Target Six-16.  I immersed myself in everything photographic.  I learned how to develop film and make prints.  I took classes and made a concerted effort to learn everything I could about photography.  Then I went off to college and became an impoverished student.  Photography became too expensive a pursuit for me to follow, but it remained a passion in my heart.  After graduation I returned to it as a hobby but soon the realities of making a living and raising a family once again put photography on the back burner.

  Now I am retired and I have both the time and enough money to allow my long smoldering love of a well crafted image to come back into full flame.  I have made the transition to digital work and I have enjoyed the challenge involved in it.

  James Joyce tells us in 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' that art is that which produces aesthetic arrest. This is what I strive for, to produce images that will stop the viewer and bring about a state of separation from the everyday world where the true nature of the universe can be contemplated. 

  I hope that you will use my photographs for just this purpose and see the world as I once did, as a boy leafing through the pages of the National Geographic.

Loren Gilbert
5thGateLLC@gmail.com