His work is signed "E de Planque, III," but he's known to all as "Duke," or "Dukie" by those very close to him.

He came to art naturally, though not without struggle. His grandmother and her sisters were gifted artists and tried and tried to teach little Dukie to paint. Alas, he tried and tried, but he could not.

Art class in school was not much fun either; he could see in his mind's eye what he wanted to do but could not execute it on paper or in wood or in clay. The other kids were not big admirers of his artistic efforts. Sometimes they laughed.

At college, he started out to be a rocket scientist -- for real and for true -- in Aerospace Engineering but has a degree in English Literature. He made a 35 year career designing data bases and creating computer software for two major U.S corporations (both Dow components), where he honed his talent for identifying relationships between elements of the real world. During that time he discovered the camera and darkroom and immersed himself in his images.

Although he enjoyed photography, there was something missing; something that kept nagging at him. He found his answer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. at an exhibit entitled "On the Art of Capturing a Shadow - 150 Years of Photography". The show had works by all of the big names: Ansel Adams, Robert D'Oiseneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Steichen, Cunningham, Weegee, and on and on. Their works were nice but what caught his eye was a photograph by Malcolm Arbuthnot, dated about 1912, that looked to him like a pencil drawing. That was what was bothered him about photography. It was too perfect, too mechanical, and too often overshadowed the soul of the subject.

The grand masters had already staked out the grand themes, the grand landscapes, the grand seascapes. They had done so well that there was little room for improvement within the genre.

Duke shifted focus (pun unintened but appreciated) and, from his literature background, reasoned that if the best writers wrote simply and honestly about what they knew best, perhaps it would transfer to photography. He began taking pictures of things he knew well, everyday scenes in everyday places, seeking to convey the emotion that attracted him to the scene. Where the grand masters had the grand scenes, for Duke, the delight is in the details.

Then came the digital revolution. He swore he'd NEVER go digital.

Four 35mm cameras and assorted lenses now sit idle in his darkroom, as does his enlarger. He has boxed all the bottles of chemistry and stored it away. The space is now devoted to matting and framing his archival digital prints. And he misses the smell of the chemicals and magic of the image slowly coming in to view through the developer.

But he discovered that by combining photography and computer, he was able to attain qualities in his work similar to what Arbuthnot produced almost 100 years ago.

In a similar vein, where he once thought himself working in a genre without a name, he is now tagged as an "Observationist," photographing the everyday -- the people, places, and things we see a thousand times over. He is not about the bling, the glitz or the jewelry; he's about the quiet beauty, dignity, and, yes, even humor we encounter everyday in things as simple as a craftsman carving a table leg, an Iris from his garden, or a Tulip saying "Ahhh" as he looks down its throat. There is dignity and elegance in seeing a craftsman's drawknife sitting atop a pile of shavings from spindles for a Windsor Chair, or a chisel resting on a lathe.

He observes and documents life as it is (and where it is) being lived, evanescent and fleeting, sometimes tragic (the broken body of a child's doll lying in the gutter of a city street), sometimes jaunty (an Iris with a quizzical expression on it's "face"), sometimes subtle (a fluff of feather riding the outfall of a small waterfall). And now he'd like to share it with you.