Robert Forrest Burgess grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, studied art and journalism at Michigan State University and has authored over twenty books on such subjects as sailing, underwater archaeology, shipwrecks, treasure, and cave diving.

As a freelance writer/photographer for over 50 years he has photographed subjects above and below water throughout Florida, the Caribbean and Europe. To see his books, please visit his book site at:

http://www.fairpoint.net/~hunterb4

Today, Mr. Burgess specializes in converting his photographs to digital art suggesting oil and water color images. He especially captures marine scenes of sailboats at night, images that are seldom photographed due to technical difficulties. But today, thanks to cyber technology, he re-creates the nighttime images in the same manner as when he saw them.

Years before such tools as Photoshop were available to photographers Burgess manipulated film images in a more primitive manner. His still-life of driftwood, fruit and dishware started out as a straight still-life photograph. To change it into an Impressionist painting, he sandwiched the original slide backed up by a clear slide coated with a thin layer of petroleum jelly. By manipulating the jelly with a fine bristled water color brush while viewing it through a slide viewer attached to his single lens reflex camera, Burgess created the brush strokes and mottled effect he wanted. Sunlight passing through the sandwiched slides refracted the Impressionist image he then photographed. The result, unchanged by digital wizardry, may be seen in his work titled, "18th Century Still Life."

Similarly, after living in Spain for three years he decided to try to photographically freeze the action of bullfighting in a manner that retained all the stark reality and movement. Using a 1/25th second shutter speed, he photographed the corrida into the sun with a small 35mm camera and slow, fine-grain black and white film. He then processed the images to maximize contrast eliminating most of the gray tones and leaving just stark salt and pepper images of the spectacle, the figures often blurred in abstract movement.

To enlarge these very tiny film images to at least an 8x10-inch size, he set his enlarger horizontally to project the image on a door 15 feet away. By manipulating the enlarger’s focusing wheel with strings leading to the door, he used a magnifying glass to focus sharply on the picture’s grain. Then, working in the dark and through trial and error, he replaced his target sheet of paper with a sheet of high contrast Kodabromide print paper and switched on the enlarger for the exposure.

His longest exposure took an hour and fifteen minutes. Others took less time. After that each scene was processed as an 8x10 inch glossy black and white print. Today, those prints are scanned at high resolution enabling him to make anywhere from 8x10 to 24x36 inch prints without the slightest lost of detail. Processed by a commercial laboratory, these and all of Mr. Burgess’ images are then printed on high quality archival materials with archival inks guaranteed to last for decades if properly protected from sunlight.

Mr. Burgess, could you tell us why you have altered your realistic
photographs so that they appear different?

To me all art is intensely personal. Seeing bright or somber colors, or high contrast black and white action that blurs the movement, we pick from this galaxy of images those that personally touch us with meaning, or perhaps share our personal ideas of beauty. An image says something to us. It may whisper a mood that warms us, or reminds us, or mirrors events or things that appeal to us. A rainy day in Venice; a beautiful rose dappled with dew; sailboats in the mists; moonlight on the  Grand Canal; the haggard features of a bullfighter; the look in the eye of a rampant stone stallion in a Paris fountain; a sun-spangled diver framed in the devil's eye, or descending down a shaft of light into a blue abyss.

I see images within images that strongly appeal to me, and would if I were that photographer have isolated and enlarged those elements of beauty. But to expect others to feel similarly is difficult. The cliche that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is true. But we all have...or feel we have...very personal feelings about what that beauty is. I am sometimes quite amazed when someone homes in on elements of beauty I am seeing and perceive as being my perception alone, a most personal thing. One late afternoon sailing with a companion I was silently savoring the play of golden sunlight on distant waves, noticing how they constantly changed and enhanced themselves. Suddenly out of nowhere my friend said, "Look at the incredible gold patterns the sunlight is making on the sea over there."

It startled me! How could this fellow read my mind? Later I found that he and I shared many similar subtle scenes of beauty, the kind you usually savor only in your mind.  And yet, yes indeed, some people can be on the same wave length with you. It’s a kind of deja vu that may come only after a lifetime of appreciating such beauty with one’s inner soul. 

This fellow once dropped by unexpectedly and found me outdoors crouched under a bush looking at a stunning world of natural beauty with a magnifying glass. He said quietly, "Bob, you have more Zen in your everyday life than anyone I know."

I hardly knew the meaning of what he meant.  But yes, beauty where you find and recognize it is a Zen-like experience, "in the eye of the beholder." The fineness of that beauty with all its uniqueness is what resonates when I see it in nature, or in a work of art in which an artist has enhanced reality to lift his work to an even higher degree of beauty. This is why we often appreciate a work of art over a realistic photograph. It is what the artist in his studio adds with water colors or oils that create his masterpieces. It is what photographer Ansel Adams in his darkroom added to his black and white prints by dodging out or burning in details to create his photographic masterpieces. Pure magic.

I hope you find some of that magic in my images.

Robert F. Burgess