I take pictures because they enable me to express myself – but more importantly, to fully process and connect to my surroundings.

Usually, I am incredibly deficient in both.

I go through life, I see things every day – but I am a horrible processor – nothing ever appears that interesting or captivating to me in real time. Perhaps that is my “dark cloud”?

Only after something is set and framed, and accurately captured and colored am I satisfied – an artifact I can see, store, and collect to revisit later; something real I created of something else.

It is almost like I am experiencing a life out of order, non-chronologically. I go through the motions of daily life and am present, but I do not get to decide when and how much of it comes through. Mostly it is muted – sometimes it is so incredibly bright.

I used to think it was “my subconsciousness” playing tricks on me – hiding some dark and mysterious secret from my past – my senses shutting down in order not to feel the emptiness of not connecting.

Now I see it’s something else entirely – nothing that happened to me – it is me at my deepest core. It is in my fabric – coded into my dna.