About the Artist
I was born in Detroit and spent my first 30 years east of the Mississippi before moving to the Bay Area in 1991. I consider it an accident of birth that it took so long to discover my Western self-identity, which includes a love for the region’s dry, mild weather, expansive landscapes, big skies, big mountains, and, yes, subtle changes of seasons.
I started fly fishing about 10 years ago and owe most of my education to generous members of the Grizzly Peak Fly Fishers. I can’t pass any body of water without wondering what lurks beneath and whether those creatures would succumb to a fly. My favorite California waters are the McCloud, for its majesty, the East Walker, for its big fish and abundant fish population, and the Middle Fork of the Feather, for being my “home river.”
I took up photography in 1982 when I was attending graduate school in New York and found it much more interesting to walk the streets of New York with a camera than to attend business school classes. (In case you’re wondering, I graduated, nonetheless.) When I moved to California, I was instantly attracted to the landscape, and humbly followed the footsteps of legends such as Ansel Adams by taking up large-format black-and-white landscape photography. About five years ago, I traded the chemical fumes of the dark room for the instant gratification of digital photography. Fly fishing and photography are a perfect marriage for me, because fly fishing takes me to places I respond to aesthetically and emotionally and surrounds me with interesting people in interesting settings doing something about which they’re passionate. I am particularly drawn to scenes of people fishing, because I find the subjects more relaxed and more athletic than when they’re posing with a fish and because I have more control over establishing the setting and mood.
My gear includes a Canon 5D camera, three lenses (17-40, 70-200, and 100 Macro), and polarizing and neutral-density filters. I take most of my images on a tripod, capture them in RAW format, and edit them in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. My eye is especially drawn to wideangle images and dramatic skies. I have been known to drop everything to chase a good sky (and, yes, a good hatch, too).
My Web gallery can be found at http://clickandcast.smugmug.com. It features fly-fishing images, landscapes, and other themes. You can e-mail me at marshak.r@comcast.net if you are interested in purchasing any of the images or using them in presentations or in workshops or lessons in outdoor photography or image editing.
Bob Marshak
