ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY
2013-
I've always been fascinated by detail at the smallest levels, both natural and man-made. People talk about the whole of a thing being greater than the sum of its parts, but in order to have that, you have to have the parts in the first place. The "look" or style of a thing is as much about the presence or interaction of those details as it is any mode of higher-level design.
In my teenage years, I gained a reputation among my family for routinely falling behind on hikes, tours, and whatnot. I simply couldn't help the fact that a rock or plant or texture on a random thing was constantly catching my eye. Of course, photgraphing small things is difficult, and a great many of those shots ended up with weird lighting, bad focus, or just simply weren't that interesting looking at them later. But every once in a while, I had the opportunity to capture something truly special.
Hawaii (2013-2015)
I lived with my family on the outskirts of Honolulu for six years, although I didn't start saving these sorts of photos until the tail end of that period. There wasn't much in our neighborhood worth photographing, so most of what I collected during that time was from various places that we visited, everywhere from hiking trails on mountain ridges to fancy hotels in the more touristy parts of the island. Hawaii (and Honolulu in particular) really isn't the perfect paradise it's made out to be, but there's plenty of beauty if you know where to look.
A rusty metal band wrapped around a palm tree, meant to keep critters from climbing its trunk. (2013)
A dead piece of wood with its bark stripped away, revealing the tunnels insects had cut beneath its surface. (2013)
A succulent, broad-leaved tropical plant. No clue what its name is. (2014)
Hotel room balconies in Honolulu's famous Waikiki district. (2014, color graded)
A wooden puzzle meant to form an octahedron, but with all its interlocking pieces disassembled and laid out flat. (2014)
Moss-covered rocks near a seawall. (2014, color graded)
An aggressively textured rock formed from low-temperature lava. (2014)
A clogged storm drain, turned into a foothold for new life. (2015, color graded)
A moss-covered rock found on a hiking trail. (2015)
WWII-era hangar door at the Pacific Aviation Museum in Pearl Harbor. (2015)
Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts (2015-2020)
My family returned to the mainland US shortly after I graduated high school. With college and my first job, I had many new ways to see the world, and entering adulthood only sharpened my eye for the world around me, causing this period to yield many of my absolute favorite works.
Many of these were taken at or near home, with the snow and ice of coastal Maine doing some incredibly unique things that were very fun to photograph. Over the years, my family and I embarked on multiple vacations throughout the New England region, and almost everywhere we went I found something cool to study. 2020 was our final big trip, and even if it weren't for the pandemic, my growing responsibilities of full-time work and interest in other pursuits left a lot less time to explore the physical world around me.
Channels carved by the water in the firm sand of Wells Beach, ME. (2015, color graded)
A brick sidewalk somewhere in Boston, MA. (2016)
Condensation on the underside of the plastic wrap covering a bowl of chili. (2016, color graded)
Irregular buildup of ice on a skylight window. (2016)
A makeshift four-square court scratched into our dirt driveway. (2016)
Perhaps the most ominously ethereal cloud I've ever seen. (2016, color graded)
A irregularly-drilled storm drain on the streets of Boston, MA. (2017)
Macro photograph of a shag carpet. (2017)
Ice crystals formed overnight in cold, humid air. (2017)
A work lamp in a plastic cage. Taken for a college course, part of a series of explorations on a single concept. (2017)
Pipes for a machine of some sort (perhaps a steam engine) at the Mystic Seaport, CT. (2017)
Dry snow fell through the space in between the slats of a wooden deck. (2017, color graded)
Bokeh shot of the view across Short Sands Beach in York, ME. (2017)
The flow of a stream disturbed by a shallow rock in the White Mountains, NH. (2017, color graded)
Crystalline shapes and cleavage-formed sheets found in bedrock near the Maine seashore. (2018, color graded)
Textured surface of a plastic speed bump in a parking lot. (2018)
A strange formation of ice over a wooden surface. (2019)
Impressions of a truck tire left in snow and ice. (2019)
Bubbles forming at the bottom of a pot of water on the cusp of boiling. (2019)
A lichen-encrusted rock on Mount Desert Island, ME. (2020)
Travel, adventure, and new horizons (2014-)
While assembling this collection, I decided to catalogue photos taken far away from home separately. I find it kind of curious how these ended up with a different feel than the others. While essentially all of these photographs came from unplanned moments of random opportunity, only away from familiar things did I really find inspiration in mechanical or man-made aspects. Of course, some of that was simply due to the fact that we were traveling to interesting destinations by design, but there's a lot of truth to the sayings that the more familiar you are with something, the less special it becomes. These days, I rarely travel, and as my goals change so does my attention. But every so often, I still see something so cool I can't help but to stop and grab a photo.
The ceiling of an airport lobby in Florida. Probably Tampa, but I don't remember for sure. (2014)
Girders of a bridge in California, somewhere west of Oakland. (2014)
A large agave-like bush, with spikes at the end of its leaves so sharp they could draw blood. (2014)
The inside of an F-1 rocket engine's nozzle, seen at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. (2014)
A skylight near the top of a lighthouse in Key West, FL. (2015)
A walking path leading the way to Siesta Beach, FL. (2015)
An old millstone, on display in the Smoky Mountains, TN. (2015)
Arcing seats of a public amphitheatre in Washington, DC. (2017)
Golden hour sunlight caught by the shallow pool of a fountain in Washington, DC. (2017)
A particularly heavy-duty grate covering a storm drain in Sarasota, FL. (2017)
Algae deposit left behind by receding water on Siesta Beach, FL. (2017)
A fragment of Spanish moss hanging from a tree branch. (2017)
Ceiling of the lighthouse cupola at Cape Henry, VA. (2023)
Floating in midair? No, these screws were carefully stood up on a clear pane of glass. (2024)
The heavily-weathered top of a post at a scenic overlook in West Virginia. This was more interesting than the view, unfortunately. (2025)
Moss growing on a tree in central Florida. (2026)
Dried-up, uncooked scrambled eggs in a glass dish, seen from underneath. (2026, color graded)
Obviously, not every single photo I've taken was at a distance of mere inches. Check out my wider-scope observations:
