Rangefinder Magazine
April 2005

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David Lorenz Winston by Robert Neubert
Seeking the Essence of a Moment or Place Gone Unnoticed

For photographer David Lorenz Winston there’s more to life than just Solitude.

“Solitude” is the title of the number-one-selling image purchased by men, according to a June 2004 article in Art Business News. Bathed in brown, gray, and white tones, the moody image shows a large tree on a foggy winter day rising above an iron-pipe fence that zig-zags from the foreground, back past the tree, and into a forest. It’s been a best-selling poster for Bruce McGaw Graphics, as well as for Winston in prints and posters available from his web site gallery, www.davidlorenz winston.com/.

Winston appreciates the success of this striking photograph, and the publishers who embrace his work and make it available in a number of forms, including books, magazines, posters, calendars, greeting cards and record album covers. But mostly he considers this recognition a means to an end, freeing him to pursue photography as a process of discovery that permeates both his personal and professional life.

“Photography takes me to places I’ve never been; places that free me from the pressures of a clock-driven world; places that heal,” Winston states.

That includes Ashland, OR, where he moved in October, 2004 after living his life in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania. After two visits to the southwestern Oregon city with his partner, watercolorist Joan Franklin, both decided the timing was right for a cross-country move. Home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and far from urban pressures and eyesores, Winston and Franklin agreed that Ashland retained a small-town feel despite its sophistication and charm. And of course, the change of venue offers a whole new array of photo ops throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Since arriving in Ashland, Winston has been exploring the surrounding landscapes and finds himself “mesmerized by constantly changing cloud, fog and mountain configurations that come with more regularity this time of year (November). Getting to know the terrain like the back of my hand is what I’m after. When weather patterns begin to mingle with the terrain, magic begins to happen, and I want to be there.”

Winston had traveled through the Pacific Northwest before. In fact, his first Windham Hill album cover, “Unaccountable Effect” by pianist Liz Story in 1986, was an Oregon coastal dunes image with what he describes as “a Dali-esque feel.”

He’s also photographed much more of the Oregon coast, as well as other North American locations stretching from Nova Scotia and coastal Maine to Bryce Canyon in Utah and the eastern California ghost town of Bodie. Subjects include landscape, trees, farms, marine life, architecture and what he terms “whimsy.” His people photographs range from frenzied urban denizens of Philadelphia to quiet Amish farmers holding forth in Pennsylvania Dutch country.

In April and May 1998, Winston journeyed to India, Nepal and Tibet to assist Bob Fleischer, a Philadelphia videographer who was creating a video program on healer/artist/activist Ananda Apfelbaum and the work of her Tibetan Relief Project.

“It was an inspiring and life-affirming trip,” he states. “What made this trip different was the opportunity to hear the stories of Tibetan refugees who fled from Chinese persecution in Tibet. Some suffered frostbite and lost limbs as they courageously escaped from Tibet through treacherously cold regions of the Himalayas with little more than the shirts on their backs. Others were caught while escaping, taken back to Tibet, and tortured. I was deeply moved by their heart-wrenching stories, and it deeply affected my work during our stay.”

Winston has posted several images from this trip on his web site gallery.

He was also influenced by a solo trip to Peru and a “wild tourist” trip to Russian Siberia. (Tourists traveling to Russia in small, mostly unsupervised numbers were called “wild tourists.”)

“There was a rawness on these two journeys that remains close to my heart, which I hope I’ve conveyed in my images from them,” he states.

Today, Winston always keeps an eye attuned to what he calls “the underlying flow and energy of the ordinary.” As he notes in commentary on his web site, “I seek to reveal the essence of a moment or place gone unnoticed. I love showing things in new ways, using the elements of surprise, mystery and playfulness, fused with design and movement.”

Initial Resistance to Photography
At first, Winston was reluctant to embrace photography as a career. His father was a part-time photographer and his mother a writer who collaborated with her spouse on articles for national publications. Winston respected their work but wanted to find his own path in life. He enrolled at Pennsylvania State University with a double major in Latin American studies and psychology. But one day at the end of his sophomore year he obtained a drawing book and started experimenting with sketching. Particularly excited by some of his drawings, he changed his major to art in his junior year.

“Bill Hanson was a fine painter who influenced me a lot in his classes,” Winston recalls. “He was also the photography teacher. When I took a beginning photography class from him, I was turned on anew by this art form. The impatience I’d felt with a paintbrush fell away with a camera. It unlocked my creativity and enabled me to finally express well what I saw and felt.”

This natural ability with a camera didn’t immediately manifest itself professionally. When Winston graduated with a BA in art in the summer of 1965, the specter of the Vietnam War was lurking, so he continued on in college to earn a draft deferment and a teaching credential. In 1967 he settled into a career teaching fifth grade, but after six years of that he felt unfulfilled, so he resigned his teaching post and set out to try something he knew he loved—photography.

“I brought my photography to arts and crafts shows,” Winston remembers. “I won a lot of awards, but initially didn’t sell much. As time went by, I saw how other art-circuit photographers marketed their work. By 1978 I was making a living at it, but I wasn’t really happy with the lifestyle—sitting in shows from Nova Scotia to Florida and selling my work.”

Winston’s career changed for the better in 1982. An executive with IBM discovered his exhibit at an outdoor show in Philadelphia and invited Winston to his office, where he purchased 60 prints for the entire floor. Before long, people from other IBM facilities noticed the images and ordered prints for their offices. Within three years, he sold scores of prints to IBM offices in Pennsylvania and New York. Cash flow from these and sales to other corporations, decorators, and art consultants finally enabled Winston to exit the show circuit and focus on the outdoor themes that inspired him.

Projects such as two Windham Hill album covers followed, along with a greeting card for UNICEF (“Fence and Trees,” an image taken in a suburb of Philadelphia along the same foggy road where the landmark “Solitude” was shot). Nonprofits, such as World Wildlife Foundation, and commercial enterprises, such as Hallmark Cards, discovered his work and added to his reputation.

Winston’s career took another change for the better when he met Joan Franklin in 1994. She encouraged his passion for photography, accompanying him to trade shows and helping him find new business partners.

First he joined forces with Bruce McGaw Graphics, providing photographs for a series of posters. Then he came on board with Artville, which published royalty-free photographs and illustrations. Soon after, Image Bank bought Artville, and then Getty Images acquired Image Bank. Later, Getty Images decided to drop the photographic images originally published by Artville. Jeffrey Burke, one of the original Artville photographers, started his own royalty-free company, Brand X Pictures, and with Winston’s permission, continued to market the photographer’s images on two royalty-free CD sets.

Brand X is now a subsidiary of PictureArts, another Burke company. It has been quite successful in marketing Winston’s work. “Seven years later I’m still getting royalties for the same images,” Winston says. “Picture Arts has made more sales for me than any other stock photo house I’ve been associated with.”

Pig Farms and Publishing
Calendars with pig and cow themes were published by Pomegranate Communications of Rohnert Park, CA, between 1991 and 2000. Winston’s growing interest in farm life and the Amish of Lancaster County also led to calendars for BrownTrout Publishers of San Francisco.

In 1998 he provided the photographs for Life on a Pig Farm, a children’s book authored by Judy Wolfman for Carolrhoda Books of Minneapolis, MN. Told through the voice of a child living on the pig farm, the book was well received, earning significant sales and publishing-industry awards. The porcine pix led to photographs for a series of eight more farm-life books. The last four were published in the spring of 2004.

The posters for McGaw have gained high visibility, appearing in retail catalogs such as Marshall Field and Signals. Outlets have continued to expand, and now include the New York Times online store, which markets Winston’s signed prints.

By 1999 Winston took the great leap forward onto the World Wide Web. His web site has evolved into a sophisticated presentation of images from around the world, available for purchase as custom prints or posters. Many poster buyers return to purchase prints, he notes. He keeps in periodic contact with customers and prospects through a mailing list.

Winston’s work has been showcased in one-person and group shows at galleries and museums in states such as Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.
In photographing his memorable images, Winston uses two Canon Elan EOS II SLRs fitted with zoom lenses of 18–35 and 28–80mm, and a 75–300mm zoom with image stabilization. Occasionally he’ll use fill flash with strobe. For film he uses Fujichrome Provia 100F.

After scanning his 35mm images digitally, Winston fine-tunes them in Photoshop to enhance color, and to convert color images into sepia tones or black and white. When he wants to give his work a more painterly look he also employs Corel Painter natural-media software.

Enjoying his new home in Ashland, Winston intends to focus now on fresh horizons in landscape and nature photography.

“I feel that my best work is done close to home,” he says. “Working from a new location now, I’m eager to start capturing the countless opportunities before me.

Another ‘Solitude’ may be just around the corner.”

Robert Neubert runs a communication consulting practice in Monterey, CA. He has contributed to publications ranging from Rolling Stone to Sports Illustrated, and has had articles published on photographers such as Brett Weston.