“We are all visitors, some simply stay longer than others.”

He has a persistent awareness that he owes a responsibility to place and a need to put form to that insight, hoping to strike a chord in others, to share an understanding or a passion.

In the 1950s, a Kodak Brownie Bull’s-Eye was Tom’s first camera, which extended his view of his hometown of Milk River, Alberta and initiated a lifelong love of photography.  At the University of Alberta, in the early 1960s, he utilized a Pentax on such projects as Blue Grouse Behaviour, assisting Stu MacDonald (Stewart D. MacDonald 1927-2010, Curator of Vertebrate Ethology at the National Museum of Natural Sciences).  At this time, Tom began developing his own black and white film.  Graduate school at Carlton University and his job at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (both in Ottawa) brought more opportunities and more cameras.  Returning to Alberta, he deepened his explorations as well as refined his darkroom technique, becoming a devoted advocate of the zone system pioneered by Ansel Adams.  Tom attended workshops in California by John Sexton, a former assistant to Ansel Adams and by Freeman Patterson in New Brunswick. Sixty years later there is an impressive and extensive body of work, in colour and in darkroom-based selenium toned silver emulsion black and white photographs.

Tom’s cameras included working with a Linhof, Crown Graphic, Deardorff, Sinar-P, Toyo Field and Hasselblad cameras (to name a few).  His work reveals his interest in telling a story of how each of us participates in the historical unfolding of places and lives – human, animal, plant, geological, and geographical.  His consideration of their interconnectedness underlies his inspiration.  Tom’s desire is to provide something, whether a thought or an image, that touches a key to the karma, the spirit, and the destiny of place.

Tom’s photographs are as constructed as the traditional film medium will allow. Each begins as an interaction with the landscape, sometimes scattered over many months or years. It proceeds to the development of an image; the composition, the timing and technique, the darkroom process, all translate the perspective, the idea. For Tom the best expression, the best story, is the perfect marriage of idea and craft. 

A graduate of the University of Alberta (BSc) and Carleton University, Ottawa (MSc), Tom began his career in natural history and photography at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa (1968-70).  As a consultant, he conducted Wildlife Impact Studies (1970-6).  At the Lethbridge Community College Tom was a Sessional Instructor in Wildlands Conservation (1971-3) and the Technician for the Dept. of Biological Sciences (1976-8) at the University of Lethbridge.  As a natural history photojournalist his landscape and wildlife photographs along with his commercial portrait, aerial, and industrial photography have been widely published in both Europe and North America.  Tom is author of the natural history book A Prairie Coulee (Lone Pine Press, 1991) and has written numerous articles and given talks on museums, photography, and natural history.