Sometimes when editing a photograph I realize it could use an element of time. In this piece, I wanted to represent “waves” in multiple ways. The image of ocean waves is obvious. Then I selected out circles and rotated them to make another wave, and lastly the slow changing of color creating a perceptual wave for the viewing experience.
I have been feeling like I don’t have enough time, or energy, or maybe focus to make new work at the moment. Instead, I have been digging through old images to see what I have forgotten. Tonight I had the idea to split a beach scene into layers. I looked for good images to represent the sand, ocean, and sky. I then picked three that I felt worked, cropped, and processed in black and white. The final product is a triptych that, together, has a strange balance to it.
My art photography was recently published in Frames Magazine, a fairly new yet already prestigious international quarterly printed photography book… Seven images from my Self-Portraits series (2017) were selected, along with a few short writings of mine about creativity, inspiration, and devotion to art making. I spent 18 months making strange pictures of myself in a basement studio, had a solo exhibition of the final work, and now I am so happy to see it being printed in FRAMES.
Most importantly, I am incredibly humbled to be in the same volume as some really remarkable image makers. Ami Vitale (featured on the cover) is a National Geographic photographer, writer, and filmmaker and a Nikon Ambassador. Nick Brandt, whose work I have adored for years, uses his camera to point out mankind’s negative impact on animals and the environment, and also co-founded a foundation to help protect over a million acres of land. Clément Chéroux, the Chief Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, gives an interview, along with works by Poulomi Basu, Bob Weil, Justyna Neryng, and Yi Sun.
This morning was a LITERAL dumpster fire. Seriously. Of course it gave me a good laugh at first, but this is the second large fire right outside my window in the past week. Kind of feels like a bad omen… My reaction shows I am a decent person: I saw the fire and ran outside to see if someone called 911. They did, so I immediately grabbed my telephoto lens, put it on my camera, and ran out. You can’t pass up the opportunity to photograph a dumpster fire!