After a friend's suggestion, in 1977, Bedford applied to an art conservation program in Cooperstown, New York. With his background in both the arts and sciences, he was accepted into the program, and there, as part of the conservation training, he learned photography. Mesmerized by the distinctive soft-focus warm-tone look of later 19th century photography, he was inspired to make stylistically similar photographs of often humorous subjects: light passing through monumental broccoli stalks, or small kewpie dolls that at first glance look like 19th-century topographical photographs of carved Egyptian monoliths. His interest in early photography is an outgrowth of his passion for objects and processes dating from about 1880 to 1920: “that exciting period: late Victorian, reform Victorian, the beginnings of Modernism, Arts and Crafts, English Arts and Crafts, Wiener Werkstätte, early Art Deco, Pre-Raphaelite….”