I was born and raised in Louisiana. As a young man I studied in Quebec, Belgium and Spain, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In 1971 I began teaching at Clemson University, and remained there until I retired from teaching in 2006. I currently reside in Easley, South Carolina.
My research agenda as a professor was the history of photography and I wrote and published several scholarly books on the subject, including The Photographic Impressionists of Spain: A History of the Aesthetics and Technique of Pictorial Photography, New York, 1989: Schmidt de las Heras: Fotografías 1944-1960. La Coruña (Spain), 1999, and El impresionismo fotográfico en España: Una historia de la técnica y de la estética de la fotografía pictorialista, Zarautz (Spain), 2000.
In the early 1970s I became interested in creative photography and since that time have photographed extensively in my home area of North and South Carolina, in other areas of the US, and also in Canada, China, Mexico, Turkey, and Spain. I am a landscape photographer who works with both digital capture and with film cameras, including medium format, large format, and ultra large format equipment.