Robert Welch

Being an inquisitive type, I have a wide range of interests. Since teenage years, I’ve been especially intrigued with cars (particularly sports cars) and photography. Both of these pursuits continue to have a place in my life. Both figure prominently in these pages.

My hometown of Rochester, New York has a long and rich photographic legacy. It’s been the hometown of Kodak, Graflex and several other photographic companies. It’s also known for the George Eastman Museum, home of one of the world’s finest collections of all things photographic. I started taking pictures as a teen. My father, who often had a camera in hand, encouraged my interest. This was back in the film days. The very first camera I purchased was a Polaroid which, like digital today, offered an instant image but, unlike digital, was pretty low on the image quality and creativity scale. Plus, the film was expensive. Then my dad got a new camera and gave me his old one, a Graflex 35mm rangefinder. It had no light meter and no zoom lens so I truly had to learn photography the hard way. From this I stepped up to a Minolta SRT-101 SLR and took thousands of photos with that over the years. As a result you will find some film images within these galleries. These days I shoot primarily digital and continue to be amazed by the quality of images and the versatility offered by this continually evolving technology.

I still live around Rochester, an area of extraordinary natural beauty with Lake Ontario, the Finger Lakes and the Adirondack Mountains not very far away. We get four distinct seasons here, which in itself inspires a diversity of photographic subject matter. Also contributing to diversity was my “day job”. For well over thirty years I enjoyed a technical career in international sales. I was often overseas for extended periods and usually spent downtime hiking around with a camera. It’s a great way to truly get to know a place and I got some exercise as a bonus. Many images on this site were captured during one of many business trips. Photos from family vacations also appear here.

A note about organization. The photo galleries are arranged by theme … landscapes, cities, and so forth. Within each gallery, the photos are arranged randomly. This is done intentionally with the idea of introducing an element of surprise and variety.

All of these photographs are offered for purchase or licensing. Please make inquiries here.

I created this website for your enjoyment so feel free to browse. Come back often to see new additions.

A note about hardware and software

It’s been suggested more than once that each photo be accompanied by info on the exposure settings, lens and other technical detail. I don’t want to get into that level of detail, preferring to let the image speak for itself. As a compromise to the curious, here is some basic info on the photo gear and software I use to deliver the finished image.

Earlier I mentioned film cameras. I still have the ca. 1975 Minolta SRT-101, as well as a Canon A1 aand several lenses for each. By far the majority of these photos were captured with digital cameras. I use a Canon 5D MkIII, a Canon 7D, a Fujifilm XT-3  and a Fujifilm X-100S. I have several lenses for the Canons, ranging from macro, to wide, to both 200 and 400mm telephoto zooms. Most of my lenses are Canon L series, professional grade. The Fujifilm X-100S is a fixed lens rangefinder so the perspective is always 35mm equivalent. This is a superb camera and as a rangefinder, it takes me back to my roots although it’s far more advanced and fun to use than the Graflex. Compared with the DSLR’s and lenses, it’s fairly compact and is the go-to camera for business trips.

Editing is done on Apple Mac’s – either iMac or MacBook Pro. The monitors of both are color-calibrated using a SpyderPro device.

I always shoot in RAW mode (no compression) so some software adjustment is always necessary. Post processing starts with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, though I tend to make more use of Lightroom. For further enhancement I may use any one of a number of plugins. Many of the photos are very minimally adjusted.