More Than a Rock

34Breadth and Depth

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way.

—Claude Monet

My work requires an intimate familiarity with my subject matter—the kind of familiarity that can only be accomplished over prolonged periods of time. Because of that, I will probably never be a travel photographer. By the nature of their work, travel photographers make relatively short forays to a variety of places and portray their fleeting impressions in their images from the perspective of an outsider. In contrast, I never feel confident telling the story of a place (more accurately, my story in a place) unless I, myself, am a part of that story. Likewise, I hesitate ...