The physical essence of a photograph is that instant when light, traveling through a lens, strikes the film or sensor in the camera.  Everything which takes place before that instant is preparation; the instant itself is inspiration, everything after, is presentation.  A photographer is a person who gets to choose when, where and therefore which such instants occur.  The difference in photographers is in how they capture and reveal those instants.  Even among the most prolific photographers, these instants, when put end to end, amount to only a few minutes of actual exposure per year.  Within that context, I’m just trying to get in a few good hours of photography before I die.

I have personal heroes in photography, Ansel Adams, William Henry Jackson, Elliott Porter, Laura Gilpin, Ernst Haas, David Meunch and Alfred Eisenstadt, to name a few.  I draw much of my artistic inspiration from various aspects of their work and personal inspiration from their life stories.  I have learned that the best artists have had to struggle and have developed their character before their art.

I have often been asked to describe my "style".  My personal photographic style as an evolving approach which has, over the years, radiated outward from an “introspective pictorialist” point of view.  While I am responsible for pinning that label on myself, I think I can define it as the absorption, contemplation and communication of the visual elements before me in a manner which reveals both my creativity as a photographer and the essential character of the subject.  That’s a lot of ten-dollar words to say that I think of photography is the “art of reality”. 

I work, in photography, with tools and techniques which allow me to capture a unique and personal interpretation of what exists in the real world as light, form, texture, color and mass.  I balance the reality of these things (as they have to exist to be photographed) with my vision of them.  What results from this process is my personal artistic vision.

~φ~ Fred Stevens