Jade Vixen

We are bombarded with visual images. The potential for any particular image being memorable is being diluted with everything else. Where we once just saw photographs in magazines and books and snapshots (perhaps a gallery), we now see them constantly on the internet. For photographers, this is a blessing and a curse. More people than ever can see our work— but unless it's absolutely iconic, it probably is not being remembered all that well. It is more important than it ever was to have a certain look to your work, for it is more likely that your general body of work is being remembered, rather than a few select images. Perhaps one image, again, but only if it is something that really stands out. This is quite sobering. I've always thought that is important that one creates their art more for themselves than for others to see— for since it has always been a difficult endeavor to remain relevant, it seems harder than ever in a culture that overwhelms us with optical stimuli.

Nicole

This is a rather old film shot of mine, still a favorite, from the mid-1990's.

Lucy & Nathalia

Full disclosure: I’ve always been a cropper. Having started with film and spending years developing black and white photos, cropping in the darkroom always felt natural. To me, it also felt necessary to accomplish what I wanted to. This despite being vehemently told otherwise by others— they said that cropping was a cop-out for not being able to get it right in the camera, and it was a form of lying. Of course, that's B.S. All photographs are lies, all photographs are crops. My definition of a photograph is to add edges to the world which has no edges. But, none the less, I had guilt about cropping. I realize now that a “perfect” rectangle or square— pulled back so you see the edges of the negative in the exposed print (to “prove” you haven’t cropped) is basically a parlor trick. Over time I've seen the work of many photographers who don't crop beside the camera— and I honestly feel that while they may sometimes get an image that looks pure and wonderful, usually their compositions in the majority of their work are kind of (if not very much so) seriously lacking. So, yeah, I crop. Not always, sometimes just a little, and sometimes a lot. Sue me. All these years later, I look back with no regrets about it.

Lucy & Nathalia

It is nice to get a glimpse of a lady bathing
you scrubbed your flower face and cleansed your lovely body
while this old monk sat and watched
feeling more blessed than even the emperor of China.

Ikkyū  一休宗純  Zen Buddhist monk, 1394-1481

Sonia & Jenn

This was actually just a smoke break that caught my eye, which I took a quick snap of— the studio lights happened to still be on. That's a nice benefit of using continuous lighting. It turned out to be the best shot of a shoot that was already finished. Those kinds of things can really make your day.

Sarah

I've always tried to maintain a strong lock onto the eyes. Normally, there is a natural rhythm of looking at people and looking away. When it feels right, we can hold our gaze a little longer, relishing a simple moment of human connection. We are naturally drawn into images by eye contact. There is nothing like that feeling of a tie bound by an invisible thread, as in sharing a unique moment with them. It’s very hard to articulate and explain in words that feeling that connects you to a subject, either in the viewfinder or on the printed page. When that connection is there, though, it's obvious— and doesn’t need words to explain it; we feel it.

Twinky

This is one of my favorite images, perhaps because it has a unique oddness to it. It's not something that someone else could imitate very easily. In fact, I don't think that I could replicate it again myself if I wanted to. It was the serendipity of the right model doing the right thing— while by chance, I got the right angle with just the right lighting. It certainly was not something that I consciously designed or thought of beforehand. It was a happy accident.