Bland. Lifeless. Empty.

Three words I often use to describe how I perceive the v alues and priorities of our world. As I have gone through high school, I have be gun to realize that modern society emphasizes conformity and shuns creativity. I have seen far too many people obsessing over the material success our world val ues, while failing to find meaning outside of this narrow scope. It is this numb ness that inspires me to make photographs. My current dream as an artist is to b e able to show others that quality of life cannot be measured by mere numbers an d statistics; I seek to provoke thought from those who view my work. Photography s true power lies not in its ability to perfectly reflect reality, but in the viewer s tendency to associate it with reality. Because the photograph is most often used as a means of portraying a real situation or event, the medium h as gained a connotation that it is inherently realistic. While the traditional m edia of painting, drawing and sculpture can be realistic, they are more often se en as being representative or abstract, simply because of their media s limitation s. In photography, these limitations do not exist. The photographic process can alter time, space, and all of the other seemingly constant factors of life, at w him, allowing me the ability to manipulate every element of every work I create. One aspect of photography in which I have become increasingly interested over th e past few months is portraiture. After being forced to sit through a mediocre s enior portrait session, I realized that a photograph can be far more than a lite ral representation of its subject; it can be a window into the subject s personali ty and character. When I make portraits, my first priority is to capture the ess ence of my subjects; I strive to distill their individual flairs into visual ele ments, and to give the viewer an opportunity to establish their own personal con nection with the subject. Instead of shielding myself and my lens from my subjec t, I try to make the subject aware of my presence, and to translate this awarene ss into a connection between the viewer and the subject. One of the most difficult questions I have been asked is Where do you see yoursel f 10 years from now? My answer to this changes from day to day, as I continue to have new experiences. Today, 14 January 2014, my response is that I plan to work in the media industry. Although commercial photography may seem to contradict m y fundamental loathing and regret for conformity, I believe otherwise. To me, it seems that there can be a balance in advertising and editorial photography, bet ween convincing the viewer to blindly purchase a given product and allowing the viewer himself to ponder and consciously justify his choice. This is my ultimate goal and challenge as a photographer: to create images that are concrete and ex plicit enough to be easily understandable, yet still have implicit elements that provoke thought.