Mirror Through Lens

Coming from a psychology background, portraiture has always fascinated me... The funny thing is that it's so far beyond the intricate lighting set-ups and soft boxes (those clearly are important and fun to experiment with), rather, it is the unique way each individual reacts to being in front of a camera.

I have found that portrait shoots are not about directing, but creating the right atmosphere that allows the specific individual involved to feel as comfortable as possible. It is only then that the "model" will show something truly special and personal. And what makes portraits continually a challenge and a learning experience is the vast difference in what each unique individual needs for this "opening up" to happen...






Portraits were in the beginning, and still are, some of the most difficult shoots for me to do... I began shooting portraits by getting friends to pose for me with hardly adequate light kits to having a number of freelance portrait jobs for families and couples, and even a shoot with hired actors... And I used to think that sports action shots and wildlife photography were difficult - but trying to capture something as personal as I hope to seek in my portraits, is a continual challenge...

Who Would Have Guessed A Trip To The Zoo Would Be So Intense...

After my short summer of working on magnified eye shots and trying to figure out the world of digital photo, I had to quickly figure out what my thesis project was going to be... Feeling pretty strongly that if I continued with my sports photography, that it would be a cop-out, and wanting to be respected as more than just a jock photographer, I decided a trip to the zoo would give a refreshing change of subjects...

Turns out, this trip to Southwick's Zoo in Mendon, MA, would not only be a necessary escape from the stresses of senior year, but the home of the individuals that I would spend the next year shooting for my photography senior thesis...

Athletes to Irises

Blogs make me super uncomfortable, for the record... haha I never know what to write... But I figured I'll give some sort of background on my photo journey, and it may give some structure/basis to my more recent work once it is up... Hmm... Wonder if that made any sense...

Anyway, the majority of my college career was spent in a darkroom and sleep deprived with tiny brushes trying to keep my hand steady while spot toning...

I began by shooting athletes - first mainly action shots, and later moved onto portraits as well... Below are a few scans of some of the best ones.. I believe these were taken in the winter/spring of 2005...







As you can see, swimmers were the most available subjects for me to shoot, since I was on the swim team throughout college... I also shot the boy's lacrosse team during their home games, but I am yet to finish developing all my rolls (ha! yes, from 5 years ago), and haven't had the chance to scan the ones that have been finished... So, for sports this is all you get for now...

It wasn't until the summer of '06 that I finally made the switch to digital and began trying to embrace the world of color... Trying to branch away from my jock photographer status, my first digital project was, for lack of a better title, an eye study...



Jessica Clements


Stewart Clements


Brett Baker


Cassandra Crawford


Kelley Crawford

I pulled off this photo experiment in a pretty awesomely make-shift way... Using my lovely new Canon 5D, I had to TAPE two "close-up" filters on top of each other onto my 50mm lens, in order to get the zoom that I invisioned without a macro lens... I sat my subjects on a couch with a large soft box, and shot at a high speed to catch the eye inbetween blinks... My very patient and now half blind subjects did a great job humoring me with different expressions and many shots. It was a real cool experience of constructing a photo shoot with seemingly inadequate equipment... Each final photo has been pretty closely cropped and enlarged to keep the focus on the eye rather than the face, and the high resolution of my awesome 5D made this possible.

Interestingly enough, the project turned into a very different study of the eye than I had expected going into it... I began just trying to find a way to photograph the unique and intricate patterns of multiple people's irises, eye lashes, and pupils... It was just a coincidence that I shot a brother and sister, and my two parents along with myself... It was especially interesting to see the strange similarities between the people sharing bloodlines, and yet see how each one held onto their own unique characteristics...

In the future, I would like to expand this project and shoot families in a much more extensive manner... I think it would be amazing to be able to show a full family tree of iris patterns and eyebrow shapes from babies to parents, aunts and uncles to grandparents and great grandparents... I can only imagine the subtle, intricate patterns a grandchild might share with their great grandparent... Whenever I do find the time to continue with this project, I imagine them being printed on a very large scale as well... not sure how big, but big.

And So It Begins....

And I have finally joined the rest of the art community in the lovely world of blogs...


I hate to say I'm pretty seriously lacking inspiration and creativity at the moment... so this is going to be all you're gonna get for now... haha but I wanted to post some of my older work and then try and find ways to update this blog as much as possible to keep my most recent jobs and projects up to date...