Douglas Biklen's photographs have a quality of realism, but emphasize geometry and color. His subjects are recognizable, but also abstract. They tend to emphasize two or three big blocks of color.

Biklen works mainly in medium format on color transparency film to produce highly saturated colors. His works are all taken in natural light, often in the early morning and late afternoon for their warm tones, yet sometimes a subject works best if caught in the subtle, even, cool light of a cloudy day.

Among the most abstract of his works is the series called "surface scenes." These photographs evoke landscape scenery but do not reproduce it.

So where do the surface scenes come from, these scenes that look like painted and discolored surfaces? For several years now, Biklen has photographed the hulls of sailboats in dry dock, in various states of repair and repainting. The space just above and below the waterline, especially if recorded during the refurbishing process, is remindful of scenes found in nature. Sometimes, the colors or texture are unusual, but this only adds to the intrigue of the work, for example red mountains across a rough sea or birch trees set in an orange mist.