I STARTED PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1993 but it wasn't until 8 years ago that it became a daily habit. I like working alone, I like being outside, I like exploring, I like thinking with both sides of the brain, and I like to see the tangible results of that process. Photography lets me do all of this, but of course the main reason I photograph is that I love it and it is what I am.

My photographic philosophy borrows from Winogrand and Siskind. Winogrand said he photographed things "to see what they looked like photographed." I find that happening to me constantly. I'll come to a subject and observe it, but somehow the interaction does not seem complete until I've photographed it, mostly out of pure curiosity about what it might look like as a photograph. I photograph a lot of moving objects, low-light subjects, and use infared film sometimes, all for the reason that my eye cannot show me what will be in the photo and the only way to find out is to release the shutter and it's usually a surprise and I like surprises. Life with surprises: good. Life without surprises: bad.

It was Siskind who best articulated the idea that a photograph could be something new and unique, an object existing in and of itself apart from the subject depicted. I couldn't agree more. My favorite photographs have almost nothing to do with where or when or what the original scene was. They transform the scene into a flat composition with its own magical order. Shooting black-and-white helps enforce the divorce from reality.

    GUIDING PRINCIPLES:

1. Camera in hand always unless asleep in bed

2. Film is cheap

3. Reality is stronger than imagination

4. Form subjugates essence, yet requires it

5. Bystanders will quickly forget you, but a good photo lasts forever

6. Light should illuminate the subject matter but not be the subject matter.

6a. Don't fight light. You will always lose

7. Use right brain when shooting, left brain when looking over contact sheets. Paraphrased, this becomes...

8. Shoot first, ask questions later

Not that I am an advocate of total abstraction. I want to know what the subject matter is on some level. Otherwise I might as well be an expressionist painter or something and I have no interest in that, so there's something in photography's integral connection to reality that attracts me. Yet I do not want the subject to interfere with the identity of the photograph. I want form to subjugate essence. The only counter-example I can think of is portraiture, in which the goal of the photograph is to reveal something about the subject, but I don't do many portraits so personally this is a nonfactor.

Additionally, Blake's capable eye captured several shots out on Portland area disc golf courses that we utilized for several ad campaigns in Disc Golf World and disc golf mag.