trends, concepts, and inspirations

    My choice rolls don't really say much about me as a photographer. Most of them are random things I come across in my day to day life; attempts to make the mundane seem magical. That's the beauty of photography. You can take something someone never notices and turn it into something they'll never forget to see from that day forward. I like to experiment with different processes and apertures. Taking the same picture on different settings to see what I can find in the different areas of focus, highlights, and shadows. One thing can look ten million different ways. It's almost frustrating. I've photographed a lot of strangers. Thankfully, due to having photographed at a few events, I've surpassed the stage where I fear that a stranger will think ill of me when I take their photograph
    When I was photographing my first few choice rolls I was interested in reinventing the candid moments of the strangers I noticed, making their memories mine. Looking back over the contact sheets I can see exactly why I chose each shot. I'm really interested in the psychology behind the people that we notice the most in our lives. Whether it is our attention or their demeanor that attracts our consciousness to them, especially if it's just in passing. I love thinking back to the strangers I've only seen once in my life that have stuck with me forever, to force myself into new environments, and get lost by myself. When I can't go somewhere new I try my hand in portraiture, highlighting the aspects of my subjects' appearances that I find the most prominent or appealing, ultimately attempting to give them an idea of why I find them beautiful and worthy of recording. I believe the concept most often behind my work is the idea that everything has an infinite beauty attached to it, it's just the perspective that needs to be manipulated in order for that part of the person, place, or thing to become obvious.
    Looking from past to present in my work I can definitely see that I am struggling to find new subjects. I hate returning to the same thing over and over and over again. I could blame this lack of inspiration on not really knowing anyone here, but that's just lazy. Instead I've been getting closer and closer and closer to everything in my life that I find familiar in one way or another. I'm becoming attracted to the slight variations in the tones of shadows and have desperately tried to capture them, failing to remember that we're photographing in black and white and most of the time the subtle changes in light are harder to capture with this medium. However, I've experimented with different colored lighting with the black and white, and have fallen in love with the detail a blue light can bring out in people's skin.
     For my final project I think I want to shoot two or three rolls with the goal of capturing tension and strong contrast. I need to experiment more with shutter speeds. All of my portraits and subject rolls imitate a feeling of serenity and release, yet all of the photographs I've been attracted to in the past have been bold, dark, and overpowering. I'd like to challenge myself to organize a bigger project, something that includes actors, a specific setting, props, and reawaken the meticulous perfectionist part of my personality.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Edward Curtis

Sally Mann

Ansel Adams