Statement

 
My father was a hobbyist photographer and our family’s documentarian.  He was always on the lookout for that Kodak moment, or as he put it “the picture perfect setting to take the perfect picture.”  It seems that I was genetically predisposed to photography, as I inherited his love of the field as well as his penchant for the ‘perfect picture’.   I began with traditional Black and White photography, but I wanted to combine old and new techniques to make the images more of my own vision.   I did this by hand coloring the images to make them ‘more’ real as well as surreal.  When I transitioned from traditional to digital photography, I found that I had many more tools to use to make my images my own personal vision.
 
While in college, I majored in Psychology.  It was here that my photographic style became clearer to me.  I developed an interest in the concept of Selective Perception.  Simply put, selective perception means that a person sees what they want to see and disregards what they don’t want to see, which helps to explain why people are drawn to certain works of art, to a particular home, or to a particular person.  This psychological ‘editing’ is most often done without the person even knowing it, eliciting that “I don’t know why, but I like it” feeling.  In my photographs, I began to distill the information in each frame down to the essence of that scene.  Now, I make extensive use of Photoshop computer manipulation tools to remove some aspects and enhance others.  Through my own selective perception, I hope to enhance the viewer’s emotional reaction to it.