I don’t actually think of photography as a means to record events or capture images. I feel that it is a vocabulary with which to express visual thoughts that, when done with feeling and integrity, become visual poetry. One doesn’t get there by brute force, one must develop a fluidity of craft that enables one’s feelings to begin to reveal themselves in the images of whatever happens to be before us. In this sense, I feel that foreign lands present a greater challenge because they come with their own baggage, their own exotic qualities which have to be absorbed by the photographer in order for an image to contain some of the photographer’s atmosphere or personality. I do not believe in imposing one’s personality on a subject in any formal compositional way! Our own feelings will come through only once we have developed our own personal relationship with a subject. And so, to work within our own environment is to work within a world that we have a natural relationship with and feelings for. It is the translation of those feelings into images that I believe photography to be all about.
Here are the trees I live with.
