Mastering Chaos, Relinquishing Control

What is sacrificed in exerting ultimate control of an environment?

My photographic approach is a metaphor for my inner world: the urge to control my surroundings–often in a perfectionistic quest to find the most beauty and positivity–is a double-edged sword. It allows me to bring a specific vision to life with precise accuracy, but it also comes at the cost of losing life’s serendipitous quirks. My strict stylistic standards often demand an impeccably clean and controlled criteria of a photo. To be among my most revered personal images, the quintessential World on Pause photograph must be tamed in all its beautiful order. It must be a safe photo; it must be in a familiar environment that I know I cannot get wrong.

In my photography as in my life, relinquishing the need to so specifically control an outcome can allow for the surprise of the unexpected magic that would otherwise go unappreciated. The urge to create the safe photo; the controlled photo; the habitual and regulated and ultra-supervised photo, shows a pristine, yet ultimately suppressed moment. My response to this inclination is to embrace a sense of time, movement, and narrative within this body of work. You will find a respect for my traditional style, yet it is accompanied with photographs in which I expose myself to a looser world–a world where motion, duration, and stories are embraced. Mind you, it is still a magical, beautiful, and dreamy world–but it is one that shows a greater appreciation for the range of life’s inevitable, unhinged nuances.

I hope I learn from what photography has taught me: to embrace a less controlled environment in life, with or without the camera. What is to not be sacrificed, however, is the degree of vivid, unabashed richness through which I see the world. Let chaos be chaos–a mystical, colorful, bold, and dreamy chaos. It is as deserving of love and admiration as the beauty I seek.