Everyone in New York City walks faster than I do. Grandmothers shoot past me like they’re on wheels and anyone forced to move at my pace inevitably becomes exasperated. 

Why I can’t keep up? The answer might not be in my legs but in my eyes. The most innocent, ordinary things—this building, that sign, the construction equipment piled up near that building—hold my attention and slow my stride. Especially the faces. It’s hardest to let go of the faces.

I’m alternately excited, depressed, inspired. And I want to take everything—all this stuff and people and feelings—and cram it all into my photographs. Maybe that accounts for my approach to subject matter—somewhere between diverse and scattershot, depending on how big a fan you are.

Complex? Contradictory? Absolutely. But not chaotic. There’s an order to most things and revealing that underlying order—that harmony, even—is one of the most important things a photographer can do.

Thematically, too, what seems at first to be a random collection reveals clear threads and trails that run throughout my work. One is the portrait. I believe that nothing conveys emotion and reportage like the human face. Every portrait has the potential to communicate psychology like a novel by Proust. When a portrait shows its subject alive in her environment—in love, at work—the novel becomes even richer.

My all-too-brief art education includes a seminar with Shelby Lee Adams, the master of the environmental portrait. He taught me that lights and a studio aren’t necessary to make a good portrait. In fact, they can actually be impediments. As long as your in control that one can make an an orderly picture in a chaotic world.

The second current that runs through my work is seen most clearly in the “Transformations” section. These are familiar objects that have metamorphosed into something unknown. 

My interest in transformations started one night when I noticed that a window in my living room was admitting a riot of light from sources that I had always taken for granted—streetlights, passing cars, nearby apartments. The window was acting like a projector and the movie was playing all over the back wall and the ceiling. 

I lay down on my back and started taking pictures. From that day forward, I kept my eyes open for other transformations. Luckily for my portfolio, the world doesn’t like stasis. Everything from the curtains in my bedroom to the Empire State Building changes in unexpected ways. Edward Weston made a career out of showing everyday objects transformed into something unfamiliar. Weston, somehow, could do it at will. I’m still working on it.

My work stretches far beyond the two categories mentioned above to include evangelicals at prayer, athletes on a playground, and the beauty of a decaying building. All united by my love for the visual world. So the next time we’re out walking, I’m sorry if I slow you down but, like the song says, you can’t hurry love.