Travel nominee

The Mission San Jose, a still active church in San Antonio Missions National Historical Park

Larry Bean is a Landscape Architect living in Billings Montana. A lifelong student and admirer of fine art black and white photography, he has recently become interested in how ancient Asian garden design principles have influenced composition in modern day black and white fine art photography. The Asian method of composition is known as Notan. Translated from Japanese as light/dark harmony, Notan can be traced back to the gardens of Zen Buddhist monks a thousand years ago and to Taoist monks a thousand years before that. Notan is thought to help an artist to illustrate emotion. Larry frequently incorporates notan in his photographic compositions.