It’s important to know how to manually control every aspect of a DSLR camera if someone is going to call themselves a photographer. In full manual control, you are in charge of every aspect of the image, start to finish - shutter speed, focus, color balance, ISO, aperture, everything. To be able to manage all of these factors simultaneously is vital to being a photographer and requires time and dedication. However, anyone can eventually learn all of these tools with time as these are all learned techniques. But that was never really my end goal in pursuing photography even as a teenager. I knew that if I wanted to make something that was truly my own, I would have to become an expert of these rules so I could intelligently bend or even discard them later on to fit the desires of my own inner, creative voice.

I have found and discovered my own creative voice through several different forms of photography including the use of lenticular technology (particularly in my series Luminous Visions) and combining text with my images (such as in The Return to Earth (NYC) and The Poetics of Being). Lately I’ve been wanting to go back to the basics - instant film.

I find instant film to be a mind opening creative process, it is a kind of mental process of surrender - surrendering to the unknown, collaborating with the unknown, because anything can happen with instant film. For this reason I recently decided to buy the discontinued Fujifilm SQ 6 that allows me to take square format double exposures. The double exposure function is what really sparked my curiosity. We all know instant film as this inherently nostalgic, retro format of image making. Instant film is not a medium people think of when considering ‘fine art’ and that is part of why I like it so much, anyone can shoot on instant film without any photographic training at all. With this kind of film, it becomes less about the technique and more about the act of seeing itself. In this way, the film almost becomes a remnant of that moment of seeing while also becoming a new experience in itself. I have had so much fun playing with instant film and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.