Exploring Charleston, SC During Golden Hour - Taken by My Lovely Wife - 2018
It is hard to pinpoint a specific moment in my life where my interest in photography evolved from. At a young age, I recall memories of being enamored with my father’s SLR cameras, when not in use, stored in a case covered with stickers of far off lands. My mother would document all of our birthdays and travels with a 35mm point and shoot or a disposable underwater camera. My earliest images were derived from similar lo-fi devices. I still own the panoramic camera I brought with me on my first true intentional trip to Australia over 20 years ago.
College introduced a more considered approach to making images. Some resulted from hours spent in the darkroom. Others were from a crash course in the rapidly evolving realm of digital photography. Working on my own after college, I rented studio space from a professional photographer who provided me access to his gear and darkroom. Working hours were spent designing websites and writing their code, free time was utilized developing negatives and making prints. Shortly after my time in his space, I spent three months living in Florence, Italy, creating my largest collection of photographic work up until that point.
Looking back at my self initiated study abroad, now over a decade ago, my bags were filled with Kodak TMAX 400 film and a Nikon FM2. Now they contain a Pelican case the size of a checkbook filled with SD cards of which can contain more images from a few weeks of wandering than exist from the previous 30 years of my life. Regardless of the method for creation or the tool used, photography has been a thread connecting past to future and a way for me to create narrative through a visual medium.
I’ve always felt the need to document my life, particularly my travels, so perhaps that is where my interest in photography comes from. A simple desire to remember a story that will never be again and also to express what others do so through other forms of communication. Regardless, I’ve created this space to contain these mile markers of my life influenced by everything that has brought me to the present, because in all honesty, I’ve never figured out where else they should exist. My hope for curating my imagery in a public setting is that in doing so I realize the next step in my photographic journey.
Thank you for taking the time to view my work.