Mike Gabridge is a microbiologist by training, and a photographer by inclination and avocation. He was born and raised in Michigan, but has lived in numerous states (and England) in the course of multiple careers (professor, medical researcher, entrepreneur, and academic administrator). Now retired from academia, he lives in Estes Park, Colorado, where he pursues fine art nature photography full-time.
Mike’s specialty is macro and close-up work. His graphics represent a distinctive and unusual blend of scientific detail and artistic interpretation. A self-taught photographer, he primarily uses 35 mm and medium format cameras, with prints being generated on inkjet printers after scanning the film. His final images typically are large, vibrant prints of archival quality, elegant in their simplicity. His current major project involves back-lit aspen leaves arranged in artistic arrays and patterns.
He has had his stock and free-lance photography appear in over one hundred textbooks (publishers like Academic Press, MacMillan, Harper & Row, and Lippincott), magazines (including Adirondack Life, Laboratory Medicine, and Women’s Day-Australia), company brochures and annual reports, and the Boston Science Museum. The subjects for these and his stock photo work (he is currently represented by Custom Medical Stock Photography in Chicago, and Visuals Unlimited in New Hampshire) range from close-ups of flowers and leaves, to frost crystals and microbial cells. In his thirty years as a part and full-time photographer, Mike has participated in, and earned awards at, numerous regional and national art shows.
