A few days ago, I was doing a presentation and during the Q and A session that follows every one of my talks, I had an exchange with another photographer that was quite critical of my art. The premise was that my work was not quite photography or art because all I was doing was ignoring the rules of photography and waving my camera around until something interesting happened.

In all fairness to his position, there is often an element of serendipity to my work that I embrace when it happens. But there is much more to getting to that final image after serendipity occurs than most people realize. What needs to be understood is that I am not just plopping some found objects on top of a light source, and then randomly moving the camera around until I get an acceptable result.

In the beginning of many of my sessions, there is an element of experimentation in the process that can produce interesting random results. In almost all cases, this is just the start of giving birth to one of my images. What many traditional photographers do not understand is that my work is not constrained by forced acceptance of scene elements and lighting as they are presented at any given moment in time where all image-making decisions are controlled by camera settings and position.

Unlike mainstream photography, the final images I produce are the culmination of a long dance between scene element arrangement, light manipulation, camera movement sequence, movement timing, and camera settings. It is not uncommon for the final image I present to social media and exhibitions to be the result of hundreds of variations on these elements followed by considerable time in post-processing and quite a bit of documentation so I can repeat the process in the future. And all of this is dwarfed by the time spent researching how different materials respond to various light sources in my studio.

Personally, I view my work as falling into two categories: experimental and planned. I spend about half of my time in each of these endeavors to produce my work. The experimental work is necessary to refine and document the infinite number of possibilities in the dance between scene organization, lighting, camera movement, and camera settings. When an experiment works, the process then progresses to one of replication so that I can make notes and repeat the process in future planned images that are often inspired by current events.

My recent image titled '31-Atlas' is a perfect example of where the documentation of past experimentation guided me into precisely the image I wanted to achieve. With knowledge of how diffuse backlighting complimented with a reversed ring light against plastic bags and parchment paper interacts with a retraction camera movement, this was an easy image to produce. Thus, it is a great example of an image that was straight-forward in production thanks to prior experimentation. So is it a comet, or an alien spacecraft? One of the big questions of the day as I write this blog post.

'Hidden In Barbie Land' is another image that was made upon returning home after seeing the Barbie Land movie that took place in the fictitiously perfect setting of a completely ordered and beautifully colored world. Having previously experienced the hidden side of Disney World where I encountered three princesses having a smoke break next to a dumpster, this compelled me to create what my mind imagined to be the unseen parts of Barbie Land that the producers purposely hid from public view to perpetuate the thinking that Barbie Land was a perfectly ordered place.

Based on past experiments with rotational camera movements, lighting to produce both shadows and entangled areas, and post-processing compositing, this image is almost exactly what I saw in my mind's eye. There was no accidental photography involved. It was completely planed from gained knowledge of scene element placement, lighting, and camera movement

I hope this abbreviated explanation of how my art is made helps to dispel some of the thinking that ICM photography is purely a chance endeavor. For those wishing to explore the subject further, please refer to my book on the subject that is available through Amazon.