Thank you for taking the time to visit my website.  My name is Dave Petersen and I live in Blacksburg, Virginia.  
Photography allows me an opportunity to capture a moment in time, a feeling, a place or a subject that has a special meaning to me or has captured my attention.  I hope you enjoy my photography and I would like to thank you again for viewing my web page.  

Except for a few examples on this site, the majority of my images can be found at www.pbase.com/nrvphoto where you will find over 700 images that have accumulated over 87,000 views. Pbase.com  is the main display location for my images with folders from a number of my trips. The web page that you are viewing now serves  as a "store front" for my photography with pbase.com.  At some point in April 2009 I will be activating a newly designed website called petersenimages.com  along with my oldest son Paul.  This father-son website will serve as our main website. 

My subject matter:

Most of my photography until recently occured within a short drive of Blacksburg and the New River Valley.  Over the ppast couple of years I have begun traveling to selected areas in the US including a number of national parks. I have had the oppportunity to photograph the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Yellowstone National Park,  Grand Teton National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park, the San Jaun Mountains, the Dallas Divide, Big Sur , Yosemite and the Maroon Bells.  I plan to continue to expand this list as time and money allows.  Nature scenes and landscapes are my favorite subjects and serve as my main area of concentration. I think it is important to document the infinite and varied beauty found in the United States in an effort to encourage everyone to help protect these areas for future generations.  This beauty can not be replaced or taken for granted.


My methods:

My images are pretty much what I saw when the photograph was taken.  I will do some minor digital darkroom editing but this is only to help capture the mood of what I felt when I photographed the image. I also do photo restoration and photo copying and transfering to CD's (on request) along with providing images for websites. I have images with stock photography agencies and this area continues to grow.  

My background:

My educational background was in Art Education with a Masters Degree concentrating in ceramics and painting.  I never had any formal training in photography which I regret. I attended James Madison University for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees.  After having taught art at the high school level for 20 years, I became a high school administrator for twelve years before retiring from educaion in 2005. 
Over the years I found my interest in photography increasing as I used photography to help capture subjects for my paintings.  Even though I still do some painting, my main concentration and passion  is photography. 

My camera bag:

Most of what I photograph is with digital cameras.  The quality of digital photography has improved greatly and for traveling when flying, it is the easiest to transport.   I am in the process of learning how to use a  4 X 5 field camera but that is proving to be a challenge and expensive. For digital photography I use Canon cameras and Canon lenses.  I have found Canon cameras to be dependable and of excellent quality.  I have used Canon cameras since 1973.