Biographical notes: Born 1951 in Birmingham, Alabama. Frank Emory began painting at the age of eleven and studied art at  the University of Montevallo until his mentor, John Spicer, was tragically killed in an auto accident. He continues painting today but photography is his triumph.  He began photographing the Alabama landscape in 1985. The diverse landscape of Alabama inspired him and the lack of the spectacular challenged him as he sought to capture Alabama's beauty on film.  He has pushed the quality of print making of 35mm format to its limits. In the mid 1990's, unimpressed with commercially available prints, he undertook the challenge  of dye transfer printing.  For more than 50 years dye transfer had no rivals as the finest quality printing ever created by man.  It took years to master, was labor intensive and expensive. After four years of effort to master the process, Kodak abruptly discontinued it. Only a handful of dye transfer prints were completed by Frank, but some are remarkable.  In response to an exhibition of dye transfer prints at Lyda Rose Gallery, 1997,  Birmingham News art critic,  James Nelson wrote,  "...Emory's photographs of nature are stunning in their clarity, intensity and vivacity.... breathtaking beauty."   The few prints Frank created hold a place in our state’s photographic history as the only dye transfers ever created of Alabama's natural beauty.. Today, in the digital world, Emory works with Photoshop and QuarkExpress. He creates his own archival injet prints, as well as press proofs, on an Epson wide format printer.  In preparing his book, The Natural Beauty Of Alabama,  he undertook every facet from gathering the images, to learning the prepress intricacies of offset printing to meet his exacting eye and traveled to Korea for the press check. One of Frank's primary objectives today is to reveal to fellow Alabamians how beautiful our state really is.