Lou Montrose
Lou Montrose was born in London, grew up in New York City, and is a long time resident of the San Diego area. He has had a notable academic career in the humanities, and is a Distinguished Professor at UC San Diego. Although largely self-taught as a photographer, his engagement as a visual artist springs from a passion for making, viewing, and studying images that began in early childhood. He has also attended photography classes and workshops through The Museum of Photographic Arts, UC San Diego, and Palomar College. In the past two years, he has won several prizes and honorable mentions at the International Photographic Exhibition of The San Diego County Fair, including Best of Show for 2007, and his work has been exhibited in the annual International Show of the Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado.
Lou enjoys working in a number of photographic genres, including landscape, cityscape, environmental portrait, street and night photography. As someone with a compelling interest in the power of photography to capture the vibrancy and diversity of human cultures, he values color as an essential expressive and communicative medium. At the same time, he remains deeply drawn to black and white photography, and embraces the challenge of creating strong black and white images through digital capture and digital inkjet printing. He finds in digital photography an especially satisfying synthesis of art and technology, one that enables him to have an artisan's control over the whole creative process, as photographer, editor, and printer. Lou shoots primarily with a Canon 5D and uses Canon "L" series lenses; he makes archival pigment prints using an HP Z3100 and an Epson 2400.