Geoff Sanderson was born in 1930 in North Yorkshire, England. Following school he did a five-year engineering apprenticeship, during which time he took up bicycle touring and racing. It was during long-distance touring in the Northern hill country that he acquired his love of the outdoors. His cycle time-trialing sport included completing 401 miles in 24 hours. Geoff changed career in 1951 when he joined the Royal Air Force as a Physical Training Instructor, was awarded a commission in 1963, and retired as a Flight Lieutenant administration officer in 1985. Apart from various postings in UK, Geoff served in Central Africa, Egypt, Cyprus and Singapore. He sailed and raced dinghies in Zimbabwe, Egypt and Singapore, and took up the sport of fencing. He became a qualified fencing instructor and official, was appointed RAF Team Captain, and was eventually awarded RAF and Combined Services Colours. During his extensive travels abroad, Geoff had ample opportunity for taking photographs in exotic locations with a variety of cameras - starting before the days of colour film - ranging from a simple B&W 'shoot and point' to Nikon SLRs.

Geoff and his wife Jill have lived in North Yorkshire for almost 20 years within easy travelling distance of five National Parks, so spend much of their leisure time in hill-walking, photography, writing poetry, and painting.

Geoff's photography notes

I don't believe in heavy distortion and software trickery, but concentrate on making the best of what the camera records; composition in the field, selection and cropping in computer play a big part in producing a pleasing final result. I owe a great debt to Jill for teaching me about composition and - as I'm colour-blind and can't see red and green properly - for ensuring that I don't output psychedelic landscapes. Disliking towns and cities, I prefer landscape work in the countryside, and have tried to include a variety of images in the present collection.

Jerry Dreesen has been writing poetry for more than forty years. Since his retirement in 2002, he has discovered the challenging world of haiku and the art of haiga, the combination of art and haiku into one art form. Jerry spends much of his time now creating haiga watercolor images as well as creating and selling watercolor note cards. When time permits he also makes artist trading cards (ATCs) from his watercolor and pen images and draws cartoons for his own enjoyment. He continues to write free verse poetry and has been featured poet at several local poetry readings.

Jerry has created an art and poetry e-gallery that features his haiga and photo-haiku: http://www.jerrydreesen.com . He recently has become an avid blogger. His blog, http://www.jerrydreesen.blogspot.com includes his non-haiga art as well as free verse poetry.

Jerry’s watercolor haiga has been featured in Simply Haiku, Moments, Reeds, Mindfire Revisited and Haiga-On-Line as well as others.

A collection of Jerry's abstract watercolors and haiku were published in Simply Haiku, January/February 2004, v2n1.

Copyright 2005: Simply Haiku