* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
To achieve my results, I either drive or bike to various locations and explore on foot, armed with only my camera and sometimes a tripod for the low light situations. Nothing is ever pre-arranged. No lighting setup. No props. No actors. When I find myself exploring and traversing areas unknown and new to me, armed only with my camera and a curious perspective, time slips away and I see things the way I feel they were always meant to be seen. I capture them. I take them afterwords and play with them. I get lost in them. To me it is an intimate process of projecting myself and my perspective onto the world, and the images that I produce are a very personal reflection of myself.
I always try my best to get everything right before I snap the shutter, but if I feel there is something I can do in the post (coloration, adjust lighting, etc.) I have no problem doing it. Ansel Adams is quoted as saying dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships. I couldn’t agree more and treat the use of Photoshop the same way (since it is, essentially, a digital dark room). Photography snobs with their rule of thirds and immediately dismissive view of any aesthetically chosen post work as “ruining” an image are essentially slapping him and many others in the face. In my opinion the only sort of photographic ‘morals’ that should exist for anyone who takes pictures should be for photo-journalists. And one I am not, so I choose to see the world as well as I can imagine it!
