Ben's Notes

I daydream a lot. I spin a lot of plates and stay in motion. Embarrassingly I'm never quite sure where I was yesterday or where I'll be tomorrow. I occasionally snap to attention to notice a spontaneous composition coming to life before my eyes. My camera is never far away. Well, I have a lot of cameras, mostly film ones - a few old beat up Leica rangefinders with no meter. A couple of Rolleiflex cameras and recently a small Sony digital point and shoot which snuck up and made its home in my front left pocket this year - the way I was adopted by various stray cats a few times.

I made the transition from part time photographer to obsessive freak when my kids were born in 1999 and I wanted artful archival prints that would last generations, that would speak of their childhood more eloquently than digital folders full of snapshots. Since then my interest in photographs has expanded to equal that of music and I find one art form always informs and inspires the other.

I generally photograph quiet moments at a distance. Maybe they're not just quiet, but silent. I tend to photograph things on the upbeat rather than the downbeat. In that way, it's possible that my music captures notes and my photographs capture the rests. I put the camera away in presence of celebrity because I feel like a jackass disturbing people like that. Since my day job has always involved being watched and noticed, I feel like I disturb moments by stepping into them and thus this style of distant quiet. Images always speak for themselves and I prefer talking about process and materials, partially because I'm a dork.

- Ben