In 1996, at the end of my second summer as a student at the Santa Fe Workshops, I sensed the need to define in writing my understanding of my personal photographic style and vision.

I believd that there was a direct connection between the spiritual path I was on and the work I was doing as a photographic artist. I believed that how I had developed my style had at its core capturing the life lessons, pains, disappointments, successes and joys that matured my subjects. I was really looking for the essence of the subject’s life experiences. By getting to know my subjects as people, rather than as a photo prop, I hoped to bring into focus with the camera the transcendent spiritual wisdom and grace they have attained through their life choices and attitudes.

I didn’t see my style as being ethereal; rather, I was striving for photographs that clearly revealed the subject’s personal moments, and tried to do so with a high level of personal integrity. I hoped that from my work the viewer would understand both my soul as the photographer and the soul of the subject.

I realized that I was looking for the beauty and strength that was within the subject. I saw my style as “uplifting”; showing the triumph of the human spirit over the burden of the subject’s necessary, and often painful human learning experiences.

There is in my style a distinct voyeuristic element, for I tried to capture the personal and private moments of the subject. For this to happen, I literally had to know something about my subject. I was not able to simply take a model—like a mannequin—and pose them abstractly. I needed to be able to find something of the subject’s real being, and with the click of the shutter I tried to record the special moments in time for them as they really were. I looked for those intimate and quiet moments in which the model revealed and I, in turn, captured their private thoughts and mood. To be able to do this I know I asks a lot of a model, but as we developed a rapport they were willing to join me in what must, of necessity, be our collaborative effort.

It was and is as if, when I am working with a model, she is singing the Carly Simon’s song: “Take me as I am; for the woman that I am.” Yes, that is the person that I am always looking for in my pictures—the real woman who is before me. And I am trying to record and glorify her as she is, and in being what she is. I try to reflect them as they want to appear—which is not always as they see themselves. Many women are very insecure about their appearance, and what I do is capture their beauty in a way that even they cannot deny.

My pictures do not have to tell the subject’s whole life story; in fact I try only to record a short story—one that is only partly told. In that way the person who is looking at the images will see generally what is going on, and they, in turn, can then complete the story of the image for themselves out of their personal understanding of what the photograph reveals as they react to it on both an intellectual and emotional level.

What this overall understanding revealed to me is that photo exemplars (pictures I have collected over time) are fine guides to what is good photography, but they often are poor guides for my use in posing a particular model. Using an exemplars may produce a pleasing photograph, but the pictures that result may lack the brilliance that comes from the inner fire of the person who is modeling.

Mine has always been a quest for images that stir the imagination and emotions.