Biography

In 1997, Craig and his wife, Kathy formed Barton Images to publish and market Craig's photographic work. Barton Images provides high quality scenic and abstract images. We hope these images will lift your spirits and be shared with your friends and associates. We find them to be good friends who have stood the test of time; we have them all through our house and enjoy them every day.

Craig D. Barton started taking large format photographs in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in 1973. He worked with and learned about light from his uncle, Harland Nasvik, who had been head still photographer at General Mills for twenty-four years. Craig’s work has been exhibited in juried shows, group, and one man shows.

Working with a stock photography house which was located in an art deco building, Barton was fascinated by the artistic potential of the building itself. Early rolls of film yielded fascinating images and Lesch Gallery in Minneapolis, which was representing Craig’s fine art photography, funded a grant to develop this genre using large format for an exhibit at the gallery. The exhibit was entitled Building Pieces. As a result of Building Pieces, the commercial lab processing the film sponsored Barton to produce landscapes. During the 1970’s, Barton traveled across the United States capturing many landscapes. . The St. Louis Art Museum has purchased some of his landscape prints. His work has appeared on the cover and in the interior of "Picture" and "Passages" magazines. See the Exhibits link for current and more recent exhibitions.

Craig began scanning images in 2001 as part of an effort to improve the quality of his prints while also reducing the cost. In 2003 he acquired a digital camera and is now also producing high-resolution completely digital images.

“I am still learning my digital camera. The better I get to know it, the better I like it. The time from concept to print is greatly improved and the control offered in Photoshop is wonderful. Watch for panoramas as I become more practiced. I do miss the corrections available with the view camera and hope to acquire a digital back for my Sinar eventually.”

Craig also teaches.

He developed a course called “Practical Composition in Art and Photography” which was offered under the auspices of the Missouri Botanical Garden (www.mobot.org) and the St. Louis Artists’ Guild (www.stlouisartistsguild.org).

“Whether you want to understand composition better for analysis and appreciation or you want tools to improve your work, this class will give you a sound basis. Learn how the human eye and brain perceive color, depth, and recognize objects. Discover aerial and linear perspective, equiluminant colors, the brain's two interpretive systems, and more. You will come away with a greater understanding of subject placement, color systems and rules-of-thumb to make better compositions in your own work of any two-dimensional medium. The presentation will be lavishly illustrated with work drawn from the instructor's over 30 years of experience as a fine art photographer.”

And he has taught Introduction to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint through the Community Education Center (under the auspices of the St. Louis School Board) at Sherman Elementary School.

Craig is an active member of the Bloomington (Indiana) Photography Club (www.bloomingtonphotoclub.org), MONEP (Missouri Nature and Environmental Photographers, www.monep.org), the St. Louis Artists’ Guild (www.stlouisartistsguild.org), and the St. Louis Web Developers’ Association (www.stlwebdev.org).

Kathleen Barton handles sales and marketing for the company. She designs blank note cards using Craig Barton's images, particularly florals and landscapes (browse the images and select any of the card sets). She locates and negotiates the exhibit space for Barton Images shows, and manages related direct mail and PR campaigns to make the public aware of the shows.