My Lighting Technique
NO COMPUTER MANIPULATION.
I often favor the use of a technique some folks call light painting to express the beauty I see in a subject. With the darkness of night as the canvas, I shine light or paint favored areas of the scene during the camera exposure. The length of exposure can range from 20 seconds to upwards of 6 or more hours, sometimes the entire evening. Nearly all of the images are created using a large format film camera, which allows me to focus and study a particular subject and its surrounding environment. I am often physically involved in the process, in front of the camera, though unseen, but still part of the story.
My photographic images are an exploration of a subject or a scene revealed at once in grand scale and finely detailed minutiae. As much as I am inspired by my surroundings, I also search for subjects with both a focused idea and an open mind to envision what moment in time may be captured. My search is a journey that is sparked by inspiration, fueled by curiosity, and then driven by the discovery of the muse, the object of the photographic story.
Hopefully, the resulting images are striking, often haunting representations of nature or cityscapes simultaneously in flux and silence. These images invite the viewer to see the beauty of the object through my eyes and yet compels the viewer to begin their own journey through that captured moment.