About

Alan Zeleznikar is a world traveler, guidebook author and landscape and cityscape photographer specializing in California and the US Southwest, Europe and Asia. Born, raised and living in Southern California, he uses the Los Angeles and San Diego areas as his launching pads into Asia, Europe and the American Desert Southwest.

His Rome Walking Tour Guidebooks are available here in his site as well as Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

His photographs are available at Alan R Zeleznikar Photography and Pbase.com


Artist's Statement

I am a photographer because I am utterly fascinated with the idea of capturing a moment in time and preserving it in some sort of controlled context. As a boy I was given a Diana camera and was immediately taken with the idea of permanently capturing a moment of time. I enjoy the immediacy of a photographic image and the portability of the photographer’s equipment. I enjoy the connection with the outside world I feel when creating a photographic image.

I am also fascinated with the act of transforming a three dimensional scene into a two dimensional representation. A photograph is free of the flow of time and is an exercise in distortion and manipulation. Controlling the distortion and presenting the result in my desired context is the essence of my photographic art.

When I create photographic images I am continually reminded that life is a series of moments flowing from one to another. When my work is going well, I am filled with a sense of suspended time and a feeling of deep satisfaction.

I begin an image by visualizing a final result and then determining how to achieve that result. The limited physical image-making parameters available to a photographer result in nearly infinite combinations; all of those parameters directly affect the resulting captured photograph. Controlling those parameters – determining the lighting, selecting a lens and controlling the camera – based on a mood or a theme I want to create helps to bound the photo-creating task and frees me to make creative decisions inside those self-imposed limits.

I know an image is complete when I can say it captures my initial vision.