As with many artists, Rick Ferncase is fascinated by the light—by its play, its influence, its ability to shade meaning and comment on the scene at hand. First as a painter, later as specialist in black-and-white infrared photography and then as a filmmaker, Ferncase has pursued his interest in the intersection of light and artistic expression. His first 16mm film, Triskelion, examined the inner and outer world of three artists who search for meaning in a desolate landscape; it received an Academy Award nomination for best experimental short.

Ferncase created several award-winning experimental and documentary films in the 1970s, and now works in wide range of media, from panoramic photography to interactive QuickTime  He has written books on motion picture lighting (Basic Lighting Worktext for Film and Video), the American independent film movement (Outsider Features: American Independent Films of the 1980s), and most recently a volume on interactive media entitled QuickTime for Filmmakers.