I got “into” photography in 2012 while collaborating with Christopher Duncan Saalbach-walsh. Before that, I had always considered photography “easy” and wrote most photos off as snapshots. But having a real photographer as my guide helped me to understand the value of still frames as its own artistic medium, how you could paint with light using an open shutter, or incorporate colored lights, clamp lights, strobes, shitty cameras, expensive cameras, film or digital, all kinds of fun apparatus to add a level of image control that I’d never realized before. I still don’t feel like a “photographer” even though I own 4 cameras and make most of my living off of photography work. But I feel a new appreciation and understanding for the art that I never had in college.

It’s interesting when you learn a new language for something, and gain a better understanding of it, then you can look back at all your experiences with the subject and see them in a new light. Appreciate something for its whole worth, and its history and not just its aesthetic appeal.