The 13 images that are part of the Oliver Award portfolio. All photographs were created with Hasselblad cameras, using Zeiss 38 Biogon, 60 Distagon and 150 Sonnar lenses and Afga Ultra color negative film. The image I selected for the cover is the fourth one from the left on the second row.

This portfolio was created for a single purpose: as a submission to the American Rock Art Research Association (ARARA) Oliver Award. The Oliver award is an international award given to a single photographer for excellence in Rock Art Photography. While it is supposed to be given once a year, in recent year the award has not been awarded for lack of finding work that meets the requirements set by ARARA.

The portfolio I submitted, and which was unanimously awarded the Oliver Award in 1998, focused on a single rock art site: Little Petroglyph Canyon in the Coso Range mountains near Ridgecrest, California. Three visits to the Coso Range were necessary to complete this portfolio, something made difficult by the fact the Coso Range is located in the midst of the China Lake Naval Weapons Station, thereby requiring clearance and special permission to access. The portfolio consists of 13 photographs. The prints were made on an Iris printer since at the time desktop printers were only available with dye inks, thereby not offering satisfying archivability. Each print is 10x10 matted to 16x20.

Photographic portfolios submitted for the Oliver Award must demonstrate a mastery of both art and science. The photographs need not only be beautiful, rock art researchers must also be able to use them for research purposes. To this end I included a CD Rom with the full size scans of each photograph. I also wrote a 20-page essay detailing the equipment and the process I used to create each image in the field, scan the film, optimize the images in Photoshop and print them. This paper served as the basis for my presentation during the 1998 ARARA conference at which the award for presented. This paper was subsequently published in the conference proceedings. The portfolio prints, were framed, displayed and sold during the conference. As I explain in this article, little additional work was required to prepare for my conference presentation, for the exhibit, for the sale, and for publication since nearly all the work was done by the time the portfolio was completed.