Welcome to my website! My site is dedicated to the glory of nature as God made it. I hope you enjoy the pictures. Here is a short bio on me and notes about the pictures and site.

About the Photographer

George Bailey was born in Winter Park, Florida on November 29th, 1957. George is a fifth
generation Florida native. Becoming interested in art as a teenager, he started taking private
lessons in painting at the age of seventeen and has been a painter ever since. Beginning
his 24th year as an artist, George studied art at the Florida School of the Arts in Palatka,
Florida before starting his career. During this time he supported himself as a writer, photographer, printer, and computer graphic artist.

George Bailey defines his art as "realistic and traditional." He has experimented with every
medium from airbrush to computer graphics. His favorite medium is oil with photography a
close second. George's current paintings feature the Florida landscape, pastoral scenes,
animals, and portraits. He executes commissioned portraits for individual clients, and
also paints portraits of historical figures, for history buffs.

George started experimenting with computer generated art in 1983. His earliest works were
created on an Apple IIe and then moved to the Commodore Amiga in 1986. He would later
use this computer to design "TV Graphics" a series of clip art disks to be used in video
production. With the demise of Commodore, George has since moved over to the
Macintosh for his computer graphic design work. His main computer graphics work
is creating graphics and scanning photographs for use in web page design.

George has won several awards in the Nepenthe Mundi Society's Emerald City Classic
and has his computer art published in computer magazines, Go Amigo and Amiga World.

Start in Photography
George got his first 35mm camera in 1977 and has found it an indispensable tool in his
artwork, which developed into photo-realistic style paintings of antique cars. Since then,
he has become interested in the artistic aspects of photography and the use of the
camera as a tool for fine art. This has fueled his interest and love of photography so much,
it is hard to tell where the artist ends and the photographer begins.

Being raised on a small farm in Florida, George grew up surrounded by the outdoors. As a
child he played in the woods and by adulthood his walks in the outdoors led his desire to
capture the beauty of nature. This love of the outdoors inspires him in his photography. As
George says, "Nature gave me a direction in which to go in my photography. Without it I
would just be taking snapshots, with no direction in mind."

George has gone through a lot of cameras in the last 20 years. He started out with a Minolta
SRT 201. Now broken down, dented and missing parts, he still keeps it as a reminder of the
early days starting out. "I made my first money as a photographer with that camera shooting
pictures of software programs off the monitor for a local educational software catalog
company" he says. "One summer, I shot over 800 slides in just a few months. With that
kind of workout I quickly wore it out."

As part of his work he had to learn how to process his own slides for quicker turn around. A
practice he does today sparingly. "Doing your own E-6 processing by own is a great skill
to learn, says George, "I think every photographer ought to have the experience of doing
their own hand processing. It's great when you've got a deadline to beat. It puts you far
ahead of the competition."

He continued doing CRT photography for the catalogs and then branched out on his own,
starting an at-home business called Slide City. There he did a one-man production, selling,
photographing, film processing billing for clients, some as big as 3M.


About my site
Landscapes
These photographs are mainly taken on my travels. That's not to say there aren't
some good landscapes in Florida but I  love mountains! "I guess my
love of mountains comes from growing up in such flat land. Florida does have some hilly
areas, as the state was once three islands eons ago and part of the Appalachian
Foothills enter the state at Tallahassee. But for the most part I have to travel to get
to the landscapes I want to photograph.

Those travels include Alaska in 1997, Central America/Mexico in 1998 and Hocking Hills
State Park in Ohio in the summer of 1998 and fall of 1999.

Florals
One of my ongoing projects and the first major one in his nature photography work are
photographing Camellias. His Mother has over 100 bushes on the farm; many originally
planted by his Grandmother. They bloom in Florida mainly in January through February
every year. I loves the forms and colors of the blossoms. Here is an example of why I love macro lenses so much--with a macro lens, you can get real close and produce some abstract compositions. Other examples are from botanical gardens and flowers randomly found in nature. Mostly photographed with a Nikon FM2 and a 60mm macro lens, tripod mounted.

Fall
One of the problems with Florida is the seasons here barely change. I have to travel to photograph them. Most of the pictures here are from October 15/18, 1999 trip to Hocking Hills state park in Ohio. Despite dire predictions, some of the best color to be seen in years was on display there. Plenty of reds, oranges, and school bus yellows were on display. A photographers feast!  Hocking Hills, with it soaring cliffs, huge boulders, waterfalls, caves and forests make it an incredible photography site. One of the best kept secrets in nature photography sites.

Travel
Pictures from my various trips to Alaska, the Caribbean, and Central America/Mexico. Most of this section is dedicated to my pictures of the pyramids of Tikal and Mexico...although my pictures of Alaska in the Landscape section could also be here.

Atmospherics
Florida has numerous thunderstorms and that produces all kinds of striking cloud
formations and atmospheric effects. I have included my sunset pictures here as well since the atmosphere has a lot of to with early and late evening color.

Miscellaneous
All that which doesn't fit in the categories above.

Alaska
My pictures of mountains and landscapes from Alaska.

Colorado
This is a separate site featuring my pictures of my Tauck trip around the state of Colorado in the September of 2000.

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All pictures and content on this site are Copyright 2000 by George Bailey. All rights reserved.

Credits
Created with PhotoShop and Image Styler for the graphics and the htmls were done with Go Live Cyber Studio and FrontPage 2000. MS Word used for the text. Most pictures on this were scanned with a Minolta Dimage Dual Scan film scanner.