Ray Carofano's hauntingly beautiful landscapes represent that unique combination of superb craftsmanship and intuitive artistic feeling that is the hallmark of all emotionally resonant photography.

Carofano acknowledges the sense of brooding mystery that imbues his work, and says he is consciously trying to evoke in the viewer the same deeply felt experiences he first had as a child roaming the woods near his home in rural Connecticut. I grew up an only child, and there were times of loneliness. I spent a lot of time by myself, playing and just looking at everything around me. The woods seemed so large and mysterious. I felt intimidated, but I also felt the beauty.

Today, sometimes when I'm alone working in a wooded area, I relive that experience, and when looking through the viewfinder I try to isolate things to get that feeling of a strange and mysterious landscape.

Primarily self-taught, Carofano got his first camera at the age of 12 and began photographing anything and everything that appeared before his lens. He eventually made his way to California and felt the need to enter the commercial world to support his family. Over a 30 year period, he has built a lucrative and respected career shooting commercial and advertising assignments. Whenever there was a spare moment, however, he concentrated on personal work.

Carofano makes the time to conduct lectures, give workshops, and exhibits widely in the U.S. and abroad. Recent exhibitions include group shows at the Long Beach and Santa Barbara Museums of Art, and a current solo exhibition at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. His work has been published in Lenswork, Camera Arts and Photo Metro.

When working in the field, Carofano photographs with a minimal amount of equipment, thereby freeing himself to respond to the environment around him in a more immediate and emotional intuitive way. It's important to me when I first see something that trips my senses to photograph it as soon as possible, explains Carofano. If I spend too much time setting up and taking readings, too much of the emotional intensity gets lost.

After much experimentation, his darkroom technique has evolved to the point where he can now fully express the sense of mystery he perceives in his relationship to the landscape. With the negative in the enlarger, he selectively filters and diffuses the image as it is being projected onto the paper. He prefers working with slightly denser, more contrasty negatives in order to compensate for the effect of the diffusion filters, and prefers multigrade papers in order to more precisely control contrast and density of selected highlight areas of the print.

"When I diffuse I lose some detail, but I like the certain atmosphere and mystical quality it gives the print," says Carofano. It's a trade-off, but it helps break up the grain and gives a dreamy infrared look. During the final processing stage, he employs a split-toning technique, using sepia and selenium toners, which helps impart an ethereal quality.

While he believes strongly that a good photograph requires a solid combination of technique and a strong sense of composition, he feels that a great photograph requires something more it needs to cause some kind of emotional interaction between the work and the viewer. Photography starts with the eyes, but my work is not just about seeing. It also has to do with instincts, feeling and intuition, says Carofano. When I work I don't plan or previsualize. I just keep moving until something happens and the eyes, instincts and feelings come together. It's all about an experience in time, and coming away with a photograph that allows the viewer to sense what I felt. It doesn't always happen, but when it does I know I have an image that works.