Ohio photographer, Stephen Tomasko, has spent two decades emmersed in photography. Stephen graduated from Bowling Green State University with a B.A. in Art History, and the University of Delaware with an M.F.A. in 1991. He has taught at the University of Delaware, Cecil County Community College (Maryland), and Neumann College (Pennsylvania).

His work ranges from street photography to the exploration of the steel and automotive industries, to the celebration of nature in it’s most dressed-up.The series featured below is Winter Was Hard.

Now in its third year, this series of photographs of flowering trees follows in a rich tradition of photographing the landscape. For me, these images are a reaction to, and reward for surviving a cold and unrelentingly gray northern Ohio winter.

My work takes up a place within the branches, creating photographs where elements of the tree itself serve as the primary subject. While many other photographers fill countless frames with mere anatomical details of flowering plant parts, this baroque work demands careful observation, moving the eye from edge to edge, and pushing and pulling the gaze through the areas of focus and blur within the full frame images.

The prints are created using archival inkjet pigments on a luxurious matte cotton paper. Presented in such a way they remind me most of all of the work of Hokusai, the brilliant woodblock artist from Japan’s Edo period. Working with the atmosphere of the rapidly changing springtime Ohio sky, I seek to create equally rich imagery filled with the essence of the air and its fragrance, and of the fresh spring light, the touch of petals and pollen, and of our emotionally intimate experiences with our land.