Hi Murth—I had a chance to glance at your resumes and you are so accomplished! I’m sure we could chat for hours, but let’s start with growing up in India.

Well, I grew up in India during British rule and the thing to do then was to be a lawyer. But in high school, I was always already tinkering with my car, taking the engine apart and putting it together, that kind of stuff and my father was saying, “What are you doing?” haha! So, I was always technically minded. Once I got my Kodak Brownie camera, I was doing that also. In a way, photography is also technical. I grew up doing both of these things.

I see you went on to have an illustrious career in engineering and have several patents, too…

 Yes, I got my Bachelor’s degree in India and then moved to the US in 1958 to get my Master’s in Electronics. Then I got a job at back there in Connecticut and I met my wife. We’ve been married the last fifty-four years now! Yeah, so… we lived in Connecticut on the East Coast—that was for almost 40 years—and all our kids were born there. I have three kids.

Anyway, I ended up as the vice president of engineering at Pitney Bowes. Those were heady days: I had about 106 people under me, engineers, draftsmen, and all that. Morale was so high. I worked on the oscillating keyboard and the driverless train… When I was first hired in the early ‘60s I even worked on the very first robot. I think what I’m most proud of is the fact that I was very involved in the barcode that you scan these days!

So that’s my really technical background. And I didn’t retire until almost 70. OF course when my wife and I retired, we had this huge house in Connecticut and all our kids had moved out and we just thought “No, we can’t retire here. It’s such an expensive area and so close to New York.” And so we started looking around for places we could retire to. One of our daughters was here in Colorado and she says to us “what do you mean you’re looking?! You’re coming to Colorado!” The funny thing was we didn’t know anything about Colorado. We thought it was this cold place where everyone just went skiing and all that. We didn’t believe her until we came here. Now we tell them, “Hey if you guys move, we’re staying!” haha!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did you get so invested in photography?

Once I retired, I started giving a lot of time to photography but I had one of those Kodak Brownie cameras early on back in high school. In fact, my dark room was night time. I didn’t have a dark room at that time, I had to wait until night and then do it, you know?

When I was in college there were some interesting things happening politically in India and the US news was very interested in reporting on it at the time. I ended up doing freelance photography work for NBC and CBS, and then later I started a camera club. Well, when I came to this country, I got into studying and photography took a back seat. Once things settled down my wife suggested I join a camera club in Connecticut and it slowly evolved from there. One day I was attending the camera club and the next I was answering questions. One thing lead to another and I started teaching photography and Photoshop classes.

And then, of course, we moved here when we retired and we started looking for stuff to get involved with and sure enough, here’s this Senior Center. So there was one lady here a couple years ago—Betty Fountain—and she was really involved in what was called SeniorNet at the time. Today, it’s the Senior Computer Tech Center. But anyway, I started teaching Photoshop with SeniorNet and then doing more photography here. At the time—this was early to mid 2000s, 2004—Photshop was coming on hot and heavy; everyone wanted to learn! Well, I did private lessons and gave a lecture at the Loveland Camera Club. Well, someone saw me present at the Loveland Camera Club and next thing I know I get a call from CSU saying they were very impressed with my presentation and would I willing to teach Photoshop for them! I’m still teaching there for one class per semester.

It sounds like the world isn’t gonna let you retire, Murth!

No, I think not! But you know, it keeps me going. Usually with these things you apply and all that and with most of my stuff I wasn’t even thinking of it, it all just happened! For example, when I was in Connecticut I was teaching all of photography and there’s a very large conference in the East Coast held at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst every year and about 1500 people attend that conference. To be invited to be a speaker there is a huge feather in your cap because it’s the biggest in this country and all levels of photographers and professionals come in. I was invited there to be a speaker three times—not too many have done that! But anyway, what happened there is and all of the big companies like Kodak and Fuji, they were all there. And when I did my third conference, Kodak came in and they said, “Would you be willing to test some film for me?” They wanted me to test film up at 10,000 feet being out in Colorado! So now I have a spot—a Kodak spot. (Not too many people know this, but film is very sensitive to ultraviolet: what happens is every 5000 feet ultraviolet doubles. We’re already double the UV here compared to sea level. So at 5000 feet, it’s double, then at 10K feet it’s double that, which is four times. So the UV is pretty high up in the mountains.)

Another one is I was invited to join the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and now there’s over 75,000 members worldwide but you know I was number 87! They call me a founding member; I’m not actually a founding member but I’m one of the first 500. Anyway, after that conference I got an email from Adobe. Well, I thought “How could they know who I am?” and I thought it was spam so I deleted it! The next day, I got an email from the NAPP founder congratulating me on being selected by Adobe to be a beta tester—ha! Well, luckily I hadn’t deleted my email trash and that’s how I got involved with Adobe.

The sad part is that each year the ‘founding members’ group of that conference gets a little bit smaller, of course.

Does that hit you in a hard way or do you feel any stigma about getting older?

No, I don’t even think about it. I play table tennis here and you should watch us play—we kill each other! We have a lot of fun and it’s good exercise. My wife and I go to Silver Sneakers to stay limber, too. It’s important to keep up with it. When I first went in I thought—“What is this? I can do better than that!” but now, what that 45 minutes does for you is makes you use all your muscles. Not very strenuous at all, but it keeps you moving so that all the muscles are used. I’m 87, so that’s what keeps me going.

So, let me ask you: going back to photography, when did you make the jump from film to digital and then to digital painting?

You know, I’m a little nostalgic about film, but with film, you go “click” and the picture is over. With digital, you go “click” and it’s just the start. And Photoshop is a very creative program because you take a photograph and do a whole bunch of things to it. You can even put a bunch of different elements together and that’s what I do now. I’ll take a tree from here, a rock from here, a mountain from there, put them all together and assemble my own landscape. You have to size them properly but assembling them together is no big deal—that’s just the mechanics of it. Anyone can learn the mechanics of it. But getting it to look right with the perspective and everything else—that’s where the artistic skills come in.

So I take photographs and assemble them in Photoshop, and then I use a program called Corel Painter to paint a digital canvas which I print out and go over with real acrylic. What happens is that then becomes the painting. My paintings are classified as mixed media with acrylic and digital under painting on canvas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where do you get your inspiration when you’re constructing these?

That’s a very interesting question because a lot of times what happens is—especially in the computer—you think you want to do something or you kind of have an idea but when you put them together all of a sudden something else happens. It looks different or something happens that says, “Oh wait a minute, what if I put it here” and suddenly it’s a completely different look. another thing that happens is you thought you were doing one thing and all of a sudden it takes you to a totally different thing: Sometimes, it’s a mess and you just throw it out. Sometimes, it’s so much better.

Where can we see your paintings?

One place you can see some is—of all places—the Boulder Recreation Center. My wife and I (she also does photography now) submit twice a year so you can see our work in rotation there. I also have artwork that is auctioned at the Yellowstone Museum in Butte, Montana and at the Missoula Art Museum.

Murth, thank you again for sharing some of your time and interests with us.