Inspirations - The World's Mine Oyster

"Why, then, the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open"
William Shakespeare

Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, so may be the camera. Whenever I point my camera at something and frame it in my viewfinder, I am trying to touch it, and feel it touch me...to capture its essence or an aspect of its essence, but also to imbue it with my essence. This is true of all my images, but never more so than when I find myself or place myself in another country or culture, and see another world through my twisted lens.

 We'll Always Have Paris, 2010

Travelling is not only a journey of discovery, but also of self-discovery, and in this it becomes a metaphor for the journey which is life itself. To experience a world outside our own, away from the mundanity of normality...to place ourselves deliberately in the unknown, and within that to be ourselves unknown, is to create a freedom which may be simultaneously powerful, seductive, and intoxicating.

And through that freedom, we may gain new vision and new perspective, both literally and figuratively. Iconic scenes, monuments and landmarks become more vital and significant when experienced directly instead of vicariously...and the intensity of experience which comes from discovering or immersing oneself in something or somewhere genuinely and completely alien, is such that we are often changed utterly and irrevocably through it. 

 Sugarloaf 2, 2011

The challenge, then, is to capture and record this intensity and iconography in a form or concept which creates a vicarious experience with a power of its own, which makes the record and enhancement of a journey taken into a journey itself for those who cannot and will not travel the same path. Through this connection and inspiration of memory and imagination, and in a physical or a mental sense, the image may become a starting point, a waymarker, or a destination.