Charles Crabb

I am drawn to a moment’s compositional aspects of line, texture, tone, lighting, and context, more so than a photographic opportunity’s documentary aspect. I try to render moments to reveal the way that I see them and feel about them.

While we emphasize tonal characteristics that attract our artistic subconscious when we interpret a moment, we don’t precisely capture what we feel about a scene. But the photo lives to be interpreted by others. When I create a photograph, I understand that others will analyze what it is, and find new meanings in it.

In photography, it is both technique and technology that produce the image. I am careful to understand the camera’s influence on capturing an image and to understand the camera’s limitations; I try to use camera settings to reveal how the image affects me, but the conversation about the story and meaning of the image transcends the involvement with the technology that is used to capture it. Then, using developing tools cautiously, I try to uncover tonal aspects of an image that bring out undiscovered aspects of its form; the image becomes a personal design of an encounter with a particular moment that must be rendered.

As developing tools become more powerful, photographers can develop meaning into their works more effectively, and, inventively. I used developing tools to continue the conversation that I had when capturing the image with the camera. Oftentimes this process can lead to the abstract, but it is all generated by me, with my artistic process.

My photos reflect my environment; they form a record of the scenes where I live and travel that I feel will tell us a little more about how we visually relate to our surroundings