I notice that you have many photographs taken in nature. Do you find yourself gravitating toward the natural world as your subject? 

Yes. The incomparable beauty of the natural world draws me in, begs me to ask questions—and learn: names of cloud formations; trees that shed and don't and why; the difference between herons and cranes and egrets; tea roses vs. Floribunda roses. I live next to a creek and every time I go for a "camera walk" I feel an excitement that is indescribable. Many of the literary covers I've produced began in that rock-bound creek.

You have said you agree with Ansel Adams’ quote, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” How do you ‘make’ a photo? Are there always certain elements involved when you compose a photo?

The art of making images has and continues to change in ways that Ansel Adams could never have imagined. Today Photoshop programs can take you far beyond the old darkroom (not to mention AI). Personally, I use an old photosuite program from 2000 on an outdated XP computer. It provides only the basic elements such as crop/contrast/ saturation/ resolution.

In my opinion cropping is the least understood and most important element in a good photograph. Let's say you take a picture of your child on his first bike and in that moment there's a path, a tree, and a plane is flying overhead. What is the most important aspect? . . . Zoom in on that child. And when you crop, fill the space with him and his bike.

How do your photography and poetry inform one another?  

Photographs preserve an instant in time but as the poet C.D. Wright suggests, "Photography is by definition mute." As a poet I am offered the awesome opportunity to go from "writing with light" to writing with words. Sometimes, it is the reverse. I work with an image in a poem and then suddenly I see it presented to me in nature. Click!

You have mentioned absorbing the work of other photographers to figure out what ‘works’ in photography. Who are some individuals that you consider master photographers and why? 

I took one photography workshop offered at a museum 25 years ago. The instructor was a camera salesman. He spent two hours walking around and trying to tell dozens of eager camera buffs how to turn on and work the dials on their Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc. Finally, someone asked the question: How do you become a photographer? His answer was simple: Go out and take a thousand pictures and you'll know. (This was at a time when most of us were working with a film camera.) Since then I have taken well over 100,00 pictures. The other component in learning what makes a good image is to look at the work of photographers who have blazed a trail before you. Some of my favorites: Adams for his landscapes; Steiner for clouds and more clouds; and, of course, Harold Feinstein for flower portraiture. More recent photographers include Guy Tal and Diane Tuft who both have worked in the area of documenting environment changes in landscape.

How do you try to experiment with photography? Do you ever try new techniques or approaches? Do you enjoy putting yourself in creatively unfamiliar situations and seeing what images come from that? 

Once I have a good image—let's say a perfect daffodil, I might sit with it for awhile, talk to it. Yes, this usually happens in the middle of a sleepless night. I start turning it and suddenly it's doing cartwheels on my computer screen. Then I play with colors. Imagination is the only answer for that one. I tried street photography at an Irish Festival once and ended up with a Fiddle and hand abstract. Having fun in any art form enriches us. Thomas Merton wrote that art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. I agree.

When writing poetry, do you view the form of the poem as a kind of image? Such as the organization of lines on the page, or the use of blank space?

I believe the way a poem moves on the page is integral to the understanding and power of the words. (My early poems in college were all about Turco's Book of Forms.) Now, after 30 years of reading, writing and publishing poetry, I enjoy the challenge of experimenting with form and frame in a poem. My latest collection, Putting Words Next to Silence is an example of newfound freedom and control using cento poems. The poet Henri Cole says that a poem moves across a blank page. I hope in some way today my work—whether poem or photo—dances across the page, providing surprise and delight for the reader.

See Kathleen’s photos, “Early Light on London Bridge” and “Seaview Dawn and Dusk” in dulcet Literary magazine, vol. One, Issue No. 2, coming this february.