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Robert Adler

Robert Adler

Medium photography

Social

LocationBelfast, Maine

A Non-Photographer Career:
I have periodically shot work-related photos, including images for various jobs during a long career in the property/casualty insurance industry – working in corporate communications,  government relations, and marketing research, and then as a consultant in nonprofit fundraising and management. I fully retired from consulting work in September 2021, with an eye towards focusing more time and attention to my personal photography.    
 
Photography: 
I took my first photograph with a pinhole camera I made with my uncle Kurt from a Savarin coffee can when I was 6 years old. We developed the film in his basement darkroom.  I shot for many years with Olympus OM-1 and OM-2 film cameras. My personal artistic photography took a back seat to my career and family responsibilities until moving to Belfast ME in 2014. I purchased a smart phone in 2014, an Olympus digital camera in 2017, and my first iPhone XS in 2018 with an eye towards using it regularly in photography.  I now do most of my shooting with an iPhone 13 Pro Max, sometimes with Moment lenses. I am also experimenting with images on metal and canvas in addition to photographic paper. 
 
I greatly appreciate the power of digital photography to help me overcome the challenges associated with needing to catalog and store for reference and use a variety of physical objects like negatives, slides, contact sheets, prints, etc.  While shooting only digitally since 2017, I anticipate devoting some serious 2022-2023 Maine winter time to going through and digitizing worthwhile film images (slides, negatives) I have shot over the years. Sadly, I do not have my first image created with a Savarin coffee can back in 1959.  
 
My Personal Photography:
My juried photos -- beginning with an image published in "American Photographer" in 1980 and including far more recent images at RiverArts Gallery in Damariscotta and at the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell -- precede my current work’s focus on revealing the often-unnoticed details in light reflecting off of objects.  I am currently seeking to reveal emotive resonance in the image by exploring texture, shape and mood.