I grew up surrounded by a family of relatives and friends who loved to come together to celebrate life's special joys. From these people and my parents I learned about passion, creativity, loyalty, and the value of honoring the people, pets, places and things that have been important in our lives.

After earning an MBA from Harvard I started and operated two high-end food businesses, one a gourmet bakery cafe, the other a wholesale bakery that catered to the likes of Starbucks, Northwest Airlines, Trader Joe's and countless specialty coffee bars. From these businesses I came to realize that I loved pleasing people, had a passion for beautiful imagery, mouth-watering food, and was a perfectionist.

Then there was the day that my mom, in her 80s, pulled out a suitcase of pictures to show me. I couldn't believe that she had all these, safely put away this way (and that I didn't know it!). Pictures she had inherited from her parents and their parents, pictures she had steadily added to over her lifetime, pictures that she was now getting ready to hand over to me. Implied in this, in seemed, was that I would now add to this collection.

While I was proud of everything I had accomplished in my businesses, the time came to bring my passions and skills into a new field. I sold my bakery and enrolled in the Center for Digital Imaging Arts of Boston University, studied digital photography and graphic design and graduated with certificates in each.

My desire now is to help others have images that will stand the test of time and be worthy of putting on their walls and into their own suitcases. For earning a living, my love of people made special event and portrait photography a natural choice (e.g. B'nai Mitzvahs, weddings, galas, business events, head shots, executive portraits, etc.); it is landscape photography, though, that I turn to for moments of quiet contemplation, sheer joy, and rejuvenation.

In that direction, most of my work these past few years has been photographing Peters Hill, part of The Arnold Arboretum. Sadie and Beyla, my two sweet, adorable doggies, have patiently amused themselves for countless hours while I have walked through every part of Peters Hill with my camera, losing all sense of time. With the constant changing of weather and seasons, I have never had a shortcoming of subjects: fog in the morning, winter snows, spring blossoms on the orchard, tall grasses blowing in the breeze, early morning frost on berries just starting to melt from the sun, long morning and late afternoon shadows. I've come to feel like a fellow life traveler with the trees, shrubs, critters, birds and insects that surround me there. Hopefully my images honor them all.

www.meribond.com

meribond@rcn.com

"Legacy" Photographed January 15, 2008 at Peters Hill, Arnold Arberetum, Boston, MA

Print size: 9 x 13.5      Matted Size: 16 x 20     Landscape orientation

Value: $165