A camera is every kind of artist's best friend. I may not be a photographer, but I still like having my camera handy. I've found that taking photos is an excellent way for me to train myself to notice details as well as practice designing compositions, both skills that I need for painting.

My father gave me my first camera when I was sixteen years old, a Pentax ME with a complete set of lenses. I promptly named the camera George and, for a few years, George and I were inseparable. Last year, I gave in to the changing world and bought George Junior, a digital SLR. My new camera has reinvigorated my photo-taking self, and I’m reminded of how important a camera can be for keeping my eye sharp.

It helps me to see the details I might otherwise overlook, and, too, it teaches me to create a composition quickly, at the click of a shutter! I take many photos of one subject in many different ways and, with some amount of trial and error, I determine the best composition for the final image. I can apply these formal discoveries to my paintings.

I'm a forest-hiker and beach-walker, and that's where I usually find my eye-sharpening subjects.

Plants are fairly still, allowing me to try multiple compositions without movement and facial expressions being factors in the image.

I can pay more attention to the background when framing these photos.

At the same time, plants and other finds made on a walk are not in-studio set-ups. Instead, they are doing their thing and I get to figure out how to react to them with my camera. They give me a problem to solve: infinitely more instructive than me giving myself a problem to solve.

Several people together allow me a similar kind of freedom. When I am photographing and interviewing one person alone, I’m concentrating on at least two things at once--manipulating both the camera and the atmosphere. I have to take pictures and, at the same time, help the subjects forget (as much as possible!) that the camera exists.
If there’s more than one person, the subjects can interact, and, at the very least, they can just be--like flowers and plants--allowing me to react to them with my camera.

Here I was photographing two of my favorite subjects, Megh and this dashing fellow, Jesse.

I mean to make a You Bag for Jesse so I needed some current images of him.

Megh was kind enough to keep him talking while I snapped away, and the synergy of the three of us plus camera came up with some pretty outrageous and lovely moments.