Double Green Jade Roses - Limited Edition 4 of 30 Photograph

I love color. And I love stories. One is the gift of God, the other the gift of man. I pursue both down different paths. I've spent forty years as a professional cinematographer in New York, Los Angeles, and on projects around the world telling stories with the camera. I've considered myself a storyteller all those years. Now I am fascinated with the attempt to construct drama with a new set of tools: color, texture, and form alone. I have been creating images by shooting objects through water, which changes their shapes, details, and relationships to each other. And creates a mystery I have never seen before. When I begin a session with these elements I genuinely have no idea where they will take me. On the far side of the water plane I shoot through is a world controlled by changes of a few millimeters or the placement of a new light source. Gradually, as I work with the elements I've chosen for a session, lines, shapes, depth and textures emerge and I follow them, shooting hundreds of frames to get to the final, waiting image. My flowers are like my children. Each has its own personality and imperfections. Some beg for attention, others are secure in their beauty. Many were shot through an antique piece of glass, breaking the image into fragments. I suppose these are the first steps I made on this path toward shooting through a water lens, changing the look and feel of commonplace objects into things that hadn't been seen this way before. I also shoot scenes with actors and models in which I try to evoke a memory or emotion in the viewer that connects us. My landscapes are all about memory. They bring a sense of melancholy and longing to me.