Since the beginning of photography, artists have altered and enhanced photographs by
colouring them with watercolours, oil paints or crayons. They have also used photography as a tool and technique to create new and different kinds of art.

In the 1850's, such artists as Jean Baptiste Camille Corot used the photo-based cliche-verre process to produce prints that looked like etchings. Henri-Latour combined photographic processes with print-making to create drawing-like images.In this century, Picasso worked with photo-artist Man Ray to produce surreal images. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy used photographs extensively in his mixed media photomantages. Numerous artists since then, including Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali and Robert Rauschenberg, have used photographs in collages or transferred photographs onto canvas or paper.

In the mid-60's the ability to transfer Polaroid images onto other materials was accidentally discovered by a Polaroid researcher-photographer. Since the 1980s, photo-artists have used Polaroid film technology to explore an experimental medium of "Cross-Over Art" that combines images created by photography with an individually hand-crafted print-making technique.

I first started experimenting with Polaroid Image Transfers about five years ago as a fresh way of interpreting the thousands of colour transparencies that I had amassed in 15 years of travelling throughout Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and Mexico. After one or two slide showings, enlarging a few favourite images into prints, and publishing some to complement travel articles, my images lay sorted but unseen in slide binders.The Image Transfer technique let me explore an entirely new direction in my photography. And I rediscovered a sense of creative playfulness in the taking and making of images.

The creative Image Transfer process begins by selecting well-composed colour transparencies. Bright colours, tight, close-up compositions, and graphic designs produce bold and dynamic Image Transfers. Image-transferred landscapes have a unique, antique quality, reminiscent of gum-bichromate prints. Some of my favourite subject matter, such as gargoyles, tombstone details and urban scenes, appear haunting and ethereal, often veiled in pale verdigris tones.

I have learned that a strongly designed original transparency will result in the most successful Image Transfer. Thus, the basics of good photographic design - the dominant feature, balance, proportion, rhythm, and perspective - are integral to the success of the final product. The creativity continues through the transferring and hand-printing process.

1. Using a Vivitar Instant Slide Printer, I crop and transfer my 35mm slides onto Polaroid Type 669 professional film. The same slide can be transferred many times, allowing me to experiment with different exposures, transferring techniques, materials, and concepts.

2. After the slide image is exposed onto the Polaroid film, I interrupt the development process.

3. I peel apart the negative and positive layers of the film about ten seconds after the start of processing, before the image dyes have all migrated to the positive. Altering the timing of the peel lets me achieve different effects.

4. After peeling, using even pressure, I quickly press the negative face down onto a non-photographic surface or receptor sheet, such as watercolour paper. The watercolour paper has been previously soaked in water and Photo-Flo for about 20 seconds, then laid on a board and squeegeed to remove excess water.

5. After about 90 seconds, the negative is gently peeled away from the watercolour paper in one slow motion, revealing the transferred image.

6. To date, I have used various weights of watercolour paper, both smooth and rough, hot and cold press, with the wet-soak technique to achieve a painterly, watercolour effect. Dry transfers produce images with sharper resolution. In the future, I plan to experiment with silk, rice paper and cotton receptor surfaces.

7. The creative process can continue after the image is transferred and dried. Pastels, coloured pencils, watercolour or acrylic paints can be used to enhance the images, add highlights, or create frames or borders.

8. Sometimes I use filters at the slide printer stage to enhance the coloration of certain images.

Because of the wide range of variables possible during printing - in the exposure, receptor surface, the transfer technique, the timing, - no two images are alike. I find that infinite discoveries are possible when working with this delicate and tricky medium.

My specialized subject areas, including flower studies, urban scenics, and inanimate portraits, have allowed me to capture on film and transfer some breathtaking and memorable manifestations of beauty, both natural and man-made. By exploiting the unique variables of the Image Transfer medium, I can attempt to capture the pure and awesome experience of beauty, as in my natural landscape series; the haunting, disturbing essence of beauty, as in my inanimate portraits; or the beauty of the ordinary, as in my Portuguese boat studies.

By combining the artificial with the natural to create images that are at once lyrical, surrealistic and jarring, I have tried in my work to communicate the hidden nuances of beauty to the casual observer.