I think the little photo contest Tumblr & (SF based!) Photojojo are doing is pretty cool, so here is my submission for today’s “cinematic” theme.

My work is obviously heavily influenced by movies. I am a huge fan of photographers like Greg Crewdson, who also use the hyper-real world of cinema as source material. I watch films religiously, and am probably the worst person to watch them with because I constantly pause and save reference images when I see lighting I like. I have a massive collection of movie screenshots going back years and years that I look at for inspiration.

What interests me about photography is the limited narrative possibilities. Unlike film, there is no beginning, middle, end. You can’t have a conflict with a neat resolution, you only have one frame. Some people would go as far as saying that narrative is impossible in photography, which I kind of agree with. You can just suggest a story, so narrative in photography becomes more about what you leave to the viewer to infer than what you actually put in the image.

Anyways, I did this image for my portfolio a few years ago in Savannah when I first started to become interested in these issues. It has since been used to illustrate an editorial on car-jackings in South Africa, and a story on paranoia for a mental health trade journal.