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Stats:

  • Location: Charlottesville, VA
  • Tenure: 4 years
  • Projects: Still photographer for indie film “Zora’s Dream”(coming
    soon). Artwork and photos for Author, Native Son’s upcoming book, “Psalm of David”.
    Also working on a couple series of photos to be shown in galleries
    Modeling
  • Websites: www.artistree.deviantart.com/gallery and www.myspace.com/artistree

1. What is your mission statement as an artist?
My mission statement is to get people to see things that would normally get overlooked. We spend our entire lives only looking at our own eye level. We never stop to look above our own heads, we never look at what’s below our feet, everything is just straight ahead. I think we miss so much of life because of our limited perspective.

2. What subjects do you enjoy capturing?

I enjoy taking pictures of people just being people. I like those moments where I have someone in the studio and they’re nervous and they’re unsure about how to pose, but when you give them direction, there’s that brief moment between poses when they’re actually being themselves. That’s when I like to take the picture, when I feel like I can see who they really are.

3. If you could capture your dream writer and dream songwriter in one photograph, who would they be??

I would love to photograph Alice Walker and Jill Scott.

4 . What do you think is the future of the relationship between photography and books.

I think there will always be a relationship between photography and books. We’re very visual people. We naturally try to put images to words. The relationship between people and books is a different story. I cant say when the last I saw someone reading a book was!

5. Being an artist can be a discouraging journey. Describe a moment, where you said it’s all worth it?
There was a long period of time where I was trying to figure what I wanted to do as an artist. I had been drawing since I was a kid, but I didn’t always LOVE it. I just knew that I was good at it.

It was hard coming to grips with the fact that I wasn’t happy just drawing anymore. I was trying to force it. At that time I hadn’t even touched a camera. I started shooting photography a few years ago and just fell in love with it. The moment that made me say it was all worth it, was a few months ago.

I was actually shooting a concert, and I was on stage, right behind this huge speaker, watching an artist perform that I’d loved since I was young. They were on stage KILLIN’ it. I just started jumping up and down, screaming, and shooting photos, and at that moment I said to myself, ” DAMN, who would have thought, that I’d have a chance to do this, shoot photos of musicians and artists that I love, listening to the music that I love, and being able to look back at the photos and say I was there”.
That was the craziest feeling. I want my photos to be proof of my existence.

6. What is the Key to becoming a better photographer?

For me, Lasik eye surgery….wearing glasses and contacts are a pain in the butt.

Artist’s Work

VIEW WORK: click each image for animated enlargement ▼

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