Photographer, Greg Kluempers,  bought his first 35mm camera in 1970.  Shortly after that he enrolled at Florissant Valley Community College to study art.  Finding the photography classes to very enjoyable, he studied composition and used photography to creatively express himself.  At that time the classes were only working in black and white.  In 1972, he participated in his first showing with 10 other students.

     For a number of reasons, Greg did not pursue a career as a photographer. He continued to study photography and to take photos throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.  In the late 80s, he went on some trips to California and the Southwest United States where he saw many of the sights that early photographers made famous.  This inspired him to increase his photography activities.  In 1999, Greg returned to Florissant Valley at night and completed an Associate’s Degree in Photography in June, 2006.  He still has a full time job in a non-photographic field, but uses a few hours here and there and vacations to capture and print my images.

    Kluempers work explores the relationship of forms, textures and color in the everyday world.  Many of his images are extractions from an old building, a distorted reflection, an architectural detail and the juxtaposition of adjoining buildings.  He uses these to create abstract geometrical images.

      Greg has always been interested in photographing landscapes.  Besides understanding composition, part of capturing landscapes is being in the right place at the right time.  Over the last couple of years, he has attended two workshops in California with Gary Hart: Jan, 2010 Death Valley and Mt Whitney and Oct, 2009 the Eastern Sierra Mtns.  These workshops, along with vacations to Europe, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have allowed Greg to greatly expand his subject matter.

     For many years, Kluempers worked in a darkroom using vivid color 35mm and medium format film and high contrast paper. He started migrating to digital by scanning his images to file. In 2007, he went totally digital and has not looked back.  Digital photography allows Greg a more efficient workflow, and gives him a much wider ability to control results.  Besides the many processes on paper, canvas and metal printing provide different aesthetic variations over the traditional photograph on paper.  He recently bought a printer that does a very good job creating black and white images and has started showing these pieces in shows.

Greg Kluempers is an active member of Art Saint Louis, The St. Louis Artist’s Guild, The Best of Missouri Hands and the Foundry Art Centre.  Since early 2001, he has been in over 125 juried-shows, exhibits and art fairs in Missouri." 

See more photography by Greg Kluempers on his website.