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Kraus Grafik Services

KrausGrafik is a Capital Region company providing communications, PR, design, graphic, photography,

I’m a mature, seasoned professional with a proven record of bringing excellence to the publications I’ve worked for, as well as a knowledge of how to build collaborative relationships with colleagues and the community. The creative products I’ve produced have benefited the Capital Region community every day as part of a comprehensive daily news and graphics package. I can apply the same successful

creative and communications skills for your company in crafting interesting, well-designed content, managing your creative staff or accounts, or representing your clients with the media and the community. Take a look at what I have to offer, then let’s work together to put to work for you the very best in photography, design, writing, and a variety of other creative and management skills. Specialties:
• Twenty years of management experience, 17 at a major daily newspaper.
• Extensive community relations experience producing published content.
• Expertise in project conception, and advance planning on deadline.
• Experience in magazine writing, editing, production, and publishing.
• Extensive experience in a variety of photographic formats, including digital.
• Experience in planning, photography, writing, and page design of a wide variety of publication projects.

07/16/2026

This past March I attended my fourth workshop with Muench Photo Tours, this time in Death Valley in far southeast California. For this tour I flew into Las Vegas far enough in advance to allow me to explore some regional photo opportunities before the start of the formal workshop. Some advance research turned up what I wanted–some great spots to go explore on my own that were definitely not the “usual suspects” of Hoover Dam, casinos, etc. On this second of three days on my own in the area, I drove a bit over an hour east of Las Vegas to visit Valley of Fire State Park north of Lake Mead. It turned out to be a good choice.

With less driving than the other days, I did manage to get to the park when the fee gate opened at 7 am with some morning light. But as often happens, I planned to go straight to the main park attractions that I had researched . . . BUT then got distracted by great photo opps on the way, and so most of my shooting ended up being in full-on pretty harsh midday light. But I was still impressed with what I found and with the incredible variety of striped and wind-carved rock, especially how it contrasted with the plant and animal life that still manages to thrive in this arid area. I managed to see and photograph Bighorn Sheep, lizards, and various colorful flowers that somehow manage to eke out existence in this area that usually gets only 6.5 inches of rain annually.

This beautiful state park, opened in 1934, covers nearly 46,000 acres and derives its name from the red Aztec sandstone formations that formed from shifting dunes 150 million years ago. These features often appear to be on fire when reflecting the sun's rays, and there were plenty of those on this cloudless day. It got h*a*w*t out there on this day in March, and I can only imagine what it would be like in mid-summer.

Prehistoric visitors to the area included the Anasazi, who were farmers from the nearby fertile Moapa Valley. Their visits probably involved hunting, food gathering, and religious ceremonies, although scarcity of water would have limited their stay. There are great examples of petroglyphs at several sites in the park that I was able to photograph.

Overall, it was another great day of wandering and shooting in a new, fascinating area. (Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikkor lenses including 14-24mm, 24-70mm, 70-300mm, and 105mm macro.)

07/16/2026

Several years ago, I was in the California mountains doing nature photos and drove this route from Route 89 in Hope Valley up to Blue Lake, and thought to myself, “This doesn’t look hard. I’ll have to come back and ride this.” Two days ago, I did just that and found out boy was I wrong! But I was also right!

The wrong part was the altitude. I started at 6900 feet elevation and topped out at 8300 feet. I live at about 300 feet and the difference was stark, first to the start point and then as I climbed. There were multiple climbs at over 8% and toward the top it was pedal as long as possible, then stop to catch my breath. No choice. Ouch! It’s a good thing there was a “right” part to this ride because stopping to shoot photos along the way saved me from total implosion.

But the wrongs were outdone by the rights large and small. The larger scenery was spectacular with views across the peaks of the Sierra Nevada as I looked north toward the mountains surrounding Lake Tahoe. It was a crystal-clear day with only a smattering of small clouds, and the sunshine was invigorating. I also enjoyed sharing that larger scenery with quite a few other cyclists who were riding this same road, and with almost no vehicle traffic it was great.

On the small end, the wildflowers were stunning in both color and variety. As I climbed, they got even more numerous and coated the landscape with yellow, red, and lavender until I reached Blue Lake, where the brilliant blue of the lake and sky was overwhelming, and I could see where this lake got its name. Plus, I passed several ponds close to the lake that offered even more green beauty. It was an amazing spectrum of life at this high altitude.

The other “right” on this route was the almost endless downhill as I headed back down to Hope Valley. There was a short climb to get out of the lake basin, then ten miles of wonderful windblown descent. A stop in Placerville for dinner on the way back to Sacramento completed another great day on the bike! (Photos with Panasonic Lumix ZS200D and iPhone 15 Pro.) (Route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/55987381)

07/16/2026

This past March I attended my fourth workshop with Muench Photo Tours, this time in Death Valley in far southeast California. For this tour I wanted to fly into Las Vegas far enough in advance to allow me to explore some regional photo opportunities before the start of the formal workshop. Some advance research turned up some great spots to go explore and on my first of three days on my own in the area I drove two hours northwest of Las Vegas to the iconic ghost town of Rhyolite.

Rhyolite, named for a mineral, sprang to life in early 1905 as one of several mining camps that sprang up after a prospecting discovery in the surrounding hills. During an ensuing gold rush, thousands of gold-seekers, developers, miners and service providers flocked to the Bullfrog Mining District, named for the site of the first gold strike. Many settled in Rhyolite, which lay in a sheltered desert basin near the region's biggest producer, the Montgomery-Shoshone Mine. Fueled by proceeds from the mines, the town grew like a w**d, and within two years the town boasted concrete sidewalks, electric lights, water mains, telephone and telegraph lines, daily and weekly newspapers, a monthly magazine, police and fire departments, a hospital, school, train station and railway depot, at least three banks, a stock exchange, an opera house, a public swimming pool and two formal church buildings. Whew!

But the gold gave out, and the Montgomery-Shoshone Mine closed by 1911. By this time, many out-of-work miners had moved elsewhere, and Rhyolite's population dropped well below 1,000. By 1920, it was close to zero. After 1920, Rhyolite and its ruins became a tourist attraction and a setting for motion pictures. Most of its buildings crumbled, were salvaged for building materials, or were moved to nearby Beatty or other towns, although the railway depot and the Tom Kelly bottle house –made entirely of empty glass bottles–were repaired and preserved.

The town also had the inevitable red-light district of dance halls and pr******tes who practiced their trade out of ramshackle cabins near the clubs. The most (in)famous, Sarah "Sadie" Isabelle Peterman, working under the name Mona Bell, operating a tent saloon and dance hall in town. In 1908, she was shot and killed by her boyfriend. The proper townswomen refused to allow a pr******te to be buried in the main cemetery, leading to a separate grave site on the edge of town that is heavily decorated by tourists today. Ironically, Mona isn’t even buried there. Her remains were sent back to her hometown, but her local grave plot continues to accumulate trinkets and tributes.

Today, Rhyolite's most famous "residents" are a striking collection of permanent art installations created by Belgian and international artists for the Goldwell Open Air Museum situated on the edge of town. Its artworks are a striking contrast to the town ruins nearby. “The Last Supper,” created in 1984 by Albert Szukalski, is the centerpiece of the museum, featuring ghostly, life-sized plaster figures arranged in a shroud-draped rendition of Da Vinci's famous fresco.

I spent an entire day in Rhyolite, wandering among the ruins and walking up the hill west of town to peek into one of the mines. I also visited the town’s cemetery nearby and marveled at the desolation. It’s definitely not where I would want to spend eternity! As the sun sank toward the horizon, I hightailed it out of town and back to nearby Beatty for a delicious dinner at a local BBQ joint before heading back to my hotel in Vegas. A great day! (Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikkor lenses including 14-24mm, 24-70mm, 70-300mm, and 105mm macro. Selfies with iPhone 15 Pro.)

06/11/2026

This past Tuesday some friends and I journeyed north to the heart of the New York Adirondacks, north of Saranac Lake, to ride a challenging but beautiful 30.8 mile gravel road route. The Kushaqua and Sable Highlands areas are sparsely settled and laced with old logging roads in this northern reach of the Adirondack State Park.

Eight of us started into the forest on very rough gravel roads, laced with baby-head rocks and leading into the heart of the woods. We didn’t see much wildlife, but there were black flies galore and some fur-filled, fresh-looking s**t that I assume was from a bear. There were also flocks of tiger swallowtail butterflies that would gather on moist spots in the road, and you never knew when you might suddenly be enveloped by a cloud of yellow wings fleeing your bike.

The first half of the route was very rough and included a climb of almost five miles, then as we began the second half the climb over Loon Lake Mountain loomed ahead. But after that we enjoyed over 14 miles that all trended downhill, and we eventually were riding along the shore of Mud Pond, source of the Saranac River. By this point my pauses for photo had left me dropped by everyone except Gary, who kindly stayed with me, riding along the river until we finally reached the cars to find everyone else had already left! So, we headed back into town for a celebratory beer and lunch. Another great day on the bike! (Photos with Panasonic Lumix ZS200D and iPhone 15 Pro.) (Route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/55318525)

01/08/2026

On Thursday, February 19 at 6pm at the Clifton Park/Halfmoon Library I will be rambling on for at least an hour about my photo workshop trip this past April down to Patagonia. There may be snacks and drinks . . . and maybe some images projected real big up on a screen. No beer, sorry. (It's a public library.)

01/06/2026

This past year was a wonderful time to be out riding my Lynskey Pro GR, seeing new things and meeting new friends. But it was also a time to be reminded of what an incredible way it is to reach out to see and record the beauty that surrounds us. So here are my favorite just plain beautiful images from this past year that I only saw and photographed because my bicycle took me to these places. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed being in these scenes to record them. (Photos [almost all] taken with Panasonic Lumix ZS200D and [a few] shot with my iPhone Pro 15.)

01/06/2026

BEST NATURE IMAGES OF MY 2025 . . . I didn't get out much this past year. Just too much other stuff to do, what with cycling guide duties for a new company (Discovery Bicycle Tours), merging households (still in progress!) and everything else. But when I did get out it was challenging, relaxing, and rewarding. There's was a three-week workshop in Patagonia and several days out in the Adirondacks during fall foliage (my favorite time of year!), plus a very enjoyable day in the Catskills, but that was about it. So here are my favorites from the year. I hope you will be able to view them on a screen much larger than your phone.

10/22/2025

This past April I went on my third Muench Photo Tours workshop, this one in the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile. It was yet another revelatory experience of seeing new places where the scenery, wildlife, and culture provided opportunities to make some incredible, memorable images. These photos are from our three-day back country expedition to the towering peaks at Cerro Torre.

Now it was time to get down to some serious expedition business. We hiked into the back country–and arrived in Photo Paradise.

First, we met our porters at our hotel in the small town of El Chalten very early in the morning of Day Four to give them our gear to take up to our wilderness camp. We would be staying just below the soaring heights and glacier at Cerro Torre, a spectacular peak that has a fascinating backstory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Torre).

But first we shuttled in the van to a short introductory hike at the Chorrillo del Salto, a glacier fed waterfall that offered some great landscape opportunities this early in the morning before the usual groups of image-obstructing tourists began to show up. Then we returned to town to start our longer hike the six miles to the camp, free from carrying our heavy camping gear so we could concentrate on shooting photos. We would spend the next two sunsets and sunrises exploiting the light and landscapes here to get some incredible images in this national park.

As we ascended the glacial valley the scenery became more spectacular with each mile. Eventually we reached the camp in the forest below the peak, where we each had our own individual tent and pad. But we could congregate in the dining/social tent to get our meals, plan our next hike, or just plain warm up in the autumn weather that featured frigid nights and dawns, transitioning into tolerable afternoons. The camp caretakers prepared the meals and the gallons of hot coffee that got us going before dawn. That evening we hiked up to the glacial lake below the peak to scout out our preferred spots for the next morning’s sunrise shoot.

After a cold but quiet night in camp, our headlamps lit the way in the pre-dawn darkness as we once again made the 45-minute hike up to the ridge above the glacial lake. As we waited and dawn approached the numbers of other photographers grew, mostly Asian (Chinese?) tour groups who often set up together in one spot. But we were in the spot we had scouted and got the images we wanted with some foliage in the foreground and the soaring mountains beyond. The weather was not perfect that morning with the spire of Cerro Torre hidden by the clouds. But our second morning more than made up for it with clearer skies and the almost full moon making a surreal display of the ghostly landscape as we followed the same strategy, hiking up in the dark before dawn.
The same was true of later that day at sunset–get there early and stake out your spot. Fortunately, the weather gods were on our side for this whole trip, and we had beautiful light and very little rain. Our guide Ceci told us there were generally only a handful of days every year that offered the views we had on this trip, with of the first rays of the sun gilding the tip of the Cerro Torres summit and working their way down the mountain at dawn.

(Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikkor lenses including 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-300mm plus iPhone 15 Pro.)

10/20/2025

Patagonia 2025: Perito Moreno Glacier

This past April I went on my third Muench Photo Tours workshop, this one in the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile. It was yet another revelatory experience of seeing new places where the scenery, wildlife, and culture provided opportunities to make some incredible, memorable images. These photos are from our visit to Perito Moreno Glacier.

On this first day of the “real” tour we left our hotel in El Calafate early to visit this spot at one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, Perito Moreno, located in Los Glaciares National Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Glaciares_National_Park). It proved to be a great day where we used the park’s extensive network of catwalks to get very close to the front edge of this huge glacier.

Perito Moreno is constantly calving and repeatedly advance to split the lake it flows across into two halves. Eventually runoff from the mountains raises the water the water level on the upstream half until breaks the ice dam that holds it back, and massive floods sweep downstream. The most recent spectacular collapse of an ice arch at the Perito Moreno Glacier occurred on March 10, 2016, though the glacier has also experienced other ruptures in recent years, such as in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2012.
Even as close as we were to the front edge of the glacier, we were constantly on the lookout watching the front edge of the glacier for spots where calving might happen, because by the time the sound reached us it would be too late to get a photo. Fortunately, there was a spot where a series of ice falls took place, and we got what we wanted by waiting with our eyes glued to the glacier front watching for the first signs of an ice fall.

Then we continued around the point to the park’s lodge and restaurant, where we enjoyed lunch with drinks cooled by glacier ice as we admired the scenery from the huge windows. Yes, we were truly “roughing it!” It was a rewarding first workshop day and left all of us eager for more. (Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikkor lenses including 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-300mm plus iPhone 15 Pro.)

10/20/2025

Patagonia 2025: Estancia Cristina Hike:
This past April I went on my third Muench Photo Tours workshop, this one in the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile. It was yet another revelatory experience of seeing new places where the scenery, wildlife, and culture provided opportunities to make some incredible, memorable images. These photos are from a pre-tour hike I did with fellow guest Dana Humphrey.

On this last day before the actual workshop commenced, I signed up along with Dana to go on a hike out of a ranch called Estancia Cristina (https://estanciacristina.com/ ) that resulted in a walk through some of the most spectacular scenery, far and near, that I’ve ever had the opportunity to photograph.

This first involved a 90-minute boat ride past mountains, glaciers, and icebergs to arrive at the ranch. That scenery was spectacular enough on its own, but then we hopped in a 4x4 for the dusty, bumpy ride up the mountain to the Upsala Glacier overlook where we started our hike. As it turned out, we were the only two to sign up for the 8-mile hike! Everyone else just rode to the overlook, gawked at the view from there, then headed back down the mountain in the trucks. So, we were able to go at our own pace and had our own guide all to ourselves. Perfect for a couple of photographers. Our only limitation was to get back to the lodge in time to catch the return boat to our starting point.

As we hiked down the mountain it turned into a photographer’s and geologist’s dream, with constantly changing light, spectacular landscapes and exposed fossils of squid, ammonites, and other creatures–all set against a backdrop of the soaring Andes peaks, glaciers, and various formations of igneous and sedimentary rock. The colors and light constantly varied and occasionally we would catch a glimpse of a condor soaring past, visible but far too high to get decent photos of them. We stopped to eat our lunch in a desolate, rocky spot that easily could have been on Mars except for the occasional condor soaring by high above us. Then we continued hiking until we descended below the tree line and the landscape began to include the uniformly orange autumn foliage and dry grasses.

Finally, we reached the glacial stream bridge and old water wheel that marked the end of our hike. Ahead was the main lodge and its individual guest cabins. We gratefully sank onto the sheepskin fur benches inside the lodge and enjoyed a drink while we waited for the boat ride back to civilization, grabbing a last chance to get more photos along the way in the last afternoon light. It was a fantastic day, and we hadn’t even started the “real” workshop yet! (Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikkor lenses including 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-300mm plus iPhone 15 Pro.)

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