January 1st, 2025
So it’s been a while since my last post, this time I thought that I would explain why I shoot the way that I do and what I’m trying to achieve with my images.
Every time I take a photograph, I still experience the same feelings of freedom and excitement that I had when I first picked up a camera at thirteen, because even at this stage of my life – the process of photography, of visual communication… still feels magical.
To me photography has always contained an element of magic. Since the very first time I realized that I could catch that one moment when light and time came together perfectly and then freeze it, for forever. Later, that feeling was reinforced in the darkroom when I saw that I could take that image and manipulate it even further. To make it become what I imagined it should be, not necessarily what it actually was, therefore changing reality by controlling those “slices of time”(such power, huh? “With great power comes great responsibility”- Voltaire).
For me, this was, and is, the modern version of alchemy. Being able to use the camera to control light and time and transforming it into something just as precious, but more fixed and tangible, and yet… just as mystical (pre-digital we actually were “transforming” time and light into “silver”, since silver halides were used in the photographic emulsion that was contained in both the film and paper base).
As a “modern day alchemist”, or rather a photographer, my goal is to visually convey the very essence or feeling of the subject that encouraged me to take the image in the first place. To that end, I will start with an idea and then work toward recreating that idea as an image. Ansel Adams, the father of the Zone System, did just that to achieve his signature look. Other times, I start with something that inspires me and then distill it down so that it fits into my conception of it. Either way, I pre-visualize the end result that I want to achieve so that my interpretation communicates MY point of view. The act of successfully translating a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional image that’s more than just a “flat representation” requires more than just “clicking the shutter”, it’s success depends on how well I grasp the meaning of what I’m trying to convey and my ability to produce it.
To that end, I’m no longer concerned with showing the world as it is but rather as I “feel” it to be, it doesn’t matter if the image depicts reality or not (Jerry Uelsmann was an early inspiration). It becomes my “reality”. I try to capture the experience of the forces or feelings surrounding the subject and then to evoke that emotion later when the final image is being shown.
If I succeed, then it is Magic… at least as close as I can get to it.
DCF