My goal is to show you something you’ve never seen before or to reveal the worth in something you might have otherwise overlooked.

Based on the Central Coast of California, Jim Bourne has been involved with photography for more than forty years and has been concentrating on it for over a decade. Favorite subjects include birds and other wildlife, the natural landscape, people being themselves, and musicians in concert. Recently he has been working on an urban black and white series, originally inspired by a number of buildings in Portland that have a contemporary function, but retain faint, painted traces of what they once were. Mixing juxtapositions, rhythms, and textures, the series captures the intrinsic visual impact of sights that some might view as mundane.

Jim’s travels have taken him (and his camera) to many places throughout California, the continental US and Hawaii, as well as to the Galápagos, Costa Rica, and Europe. Close to home, he has the many riches of the Monterey Bay area, San Francisco and points north, and Yosemite Valley to the east.

In addition to photography, Jim has been involved in radio for over four decades, working as a jazz broadcaster on both coasts. Jim’s love of music goes back to his earliest memories, and it can be seen in the photographs of musicians in performance, some of them dating from the latter 1960s.

Jim has exhibited his work at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz and at other local venues. One of his images appears on a CD cover (see the musicians gallery), and his work is represented on several web sites, including the bands Along Came Betty and Red Beans and Rice. He has also provided photographic services to the Santa Cruz Public Library on several occasions and has photographed weddings and various gatherings.