ABOUT

PAUL:

I've been a photographer and poet for over twenty-five years. I'm halfway into the digital age -- I shoot film (35 mm and 120), scan it, use Photo Shop to tweak it as necessary and print using mostly Epson printers. I recently bought a D-200 to explore digital more fully and to avoid the hassle of flying with film, but discovered the hard way that Wolverine portable hard drives crash above 10,000 feet. I probably wouldn't have lost 100+ images of Tibet if I had only been using film. Lesson learned. Just glad I bought my film cameras as well.

I print all of my work on archival paper. I print color images using Jon Cone's pigmented color ink and black and white images using Jon Cone's carbon-based inks. (Go to www.inkjetmall.com to get more information regarding his inks.) I print using a 7800(color), 7000 (B&W), 4000 (split-tone B&W) and a 2400 (to test various ink/paper combinations).

Thanks to my wife Ann, I have been free for the last four-five years to follow my muse without the need for a day job. As the web site develops, we will be adding her images as well since we're both part of FZC Photography. The "FZC", by the way, come from our reputation of traveling often. We've been known as the Flying Zeigler Circus since our graduate school days.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy the images. Check back frequently as I continue to construct the site.

ANN:

In my “other life” as a bankruptcy lawyer, I examine the lists people have to make of all of their possessions. This is a requirement of the bankruptcy process, so that creditors can see that the debtors have no possessions that can legally be sold to pay their debts. But from another perspective, this is an ultimate violation of individual privacy, allowing absolutely everyone to see what personal possessions this individual or family owns.

As a mystery novelist, I am always looking for “locations” and “situations” to use in my work. I also will be using photos from my travels to enhance the print editions of my books, as well as to provide me with accurate visual details. (For some reason this seems to give agents the heebie-jeebies. But that’s their problem, right?)

As a photographer, I am drawn to that same process in visual form. In my “Doors” portfolio, I look through open doors and windows into people’s private everyday lives. In “Abandoned Treasures” I look at the places and possessions that people leave when they move on with their lives—things once valued but in the end left behind. In China and Tibet, I have been drawn to one recurring object, hence my “Brooms” portfolio.

I have had very limited training as a photographer. (Mercifully, the photo of me demonstrating “depth of field” by standing on a playground with a yardstick has been lost.) My ability is further limited by my small hands—there are very few cameras I can hold without fear of a gravity event. I was a point-and-shoot film photographer until my little camera decided that it would not work in JiangXi Province in rural southern China, but resumed cooperating when we crossed back into Guangdong Province (go figure!). Of course, since 9/11 film photographers have been missing flights throughout the world due to the excess paranoia of airport security screeners. Our solution—the big switch to digital. Although I am comfortable with my 35mm SLR, I am still having adventures with my digital camera, particularly in Tibet, where our Wolverine portable hard drive crashed, taking several hundred images into oblivion. (Many thanks to Forensic & Security Services for a heroic rescue job.) The challenges of international travel with cameras have taught me that I am doomed to haul both film and digital cameras, and all their associated gear. So be it.