During the six years of formal training at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, I was trained rigorously in the many disciplines across the fine art spectrum as a photographer. While it became clear very quickly that I had an affinity for portraiture, and have developed a strong portfolio in that discipline, each school year brought with it new challenges: still life, location photography, the techniques of color and light, and photojournalism, along with landscape photography and the art of storytelling. Once I graduated my BFA in 2000 I was at a baseline of success in each of these various fields, and brought my portfolio into the world.

Over the last seven years I have applied myself in each of these disciplines to my life as a photographic artist and each of them has contributed greatly to my success photographing weddings. At the culmination of my work to this day comes one added benefit: I have, after many years of perfecting my craft, come to the ultimate point of it all: the power to transcend craft. I call it heart. I call it soul. I call it vision. An artist may conquer many disciplines in his lifetime, but I have come to a point in my life that I can now see beyond craftsmanship. It has become as an afterthought in my creative process. And in photographing anything in life, a photographer must become part of what he is looking at without becoming all of it. There is a decided separateness in seeing the essence of the thing he is looking at and becoming part of it. The ability to trust to that instinct (for it has become just that) in the midst of real life requires a great faith in the gifts from the higher power.

The result of all this high talk is the final product itself. Light, technique, agenda, personality must always become secondary to the whim of the muse so that the pictures become transcendent. That is the truest test. To see what is available to every eye and delve deeper than the casual glance or to remain open and receptive even in the midst of frenetic activity. To return with something that hasn’t been taken, but made, witnessed, absorbed. I want to see into the feelings, the heart, and all the secret moments that make up the human experience. I want to make icons to love, build visual monuments to humanity, bear witness to everything that is so wondrously human about all of us with every click of the shutter, however conscious or unconscious those moments may be. My pictures will become everything I have become, all the years of hard work, the endless training and preparation, the faith and the trust, so that I may, in turn, offer all these gifts to you.

Making pictures is not just my living. It is my life. I could not live without it, and could not live without giving them to you.