Awakening, photography
-Michael, we'd love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today, both personally and as an artist.
I'd been interested in photography for years and had taken beginner classes in high school and college, learning the use of film and darkroom processing, but I didn't have access to these after college so my photography was limited to vacation photos. Then in 2015 I did a workshop in France with Jock Sturges and at the end of the week he said "I've never seen a photographer come so far in so short a time." Once I got home I knew I couldn't let go of what might be a true talent, so I started asking friends to sit for me and they said "No...but I have children." So I started making collections of black and white family photos for my friends and that led to doing underwater for fun, but I realized quickly that in black and white the underwater work was something special as few people were doing it and fewer still in black and white. Few also were working with children and children make the best subjects because they haven't learned to hide their inner light yet.
Scattered Dreams, photography
-Your collection has a beautiful sense of atmosphere; how do you work with light to bring that to life?
I like to work simply with just my camera, my subject, and whatever light I have available. I wouldn't say I've become a master of natural light, but I do have to work with what I have and through trial and error I've found what seems to work best for me.
Time's Arrow, photography
-When creating your underwater scenes, how much of your process is guided by intuition versus planning?
My best underwater work comes from pure chance. I direct as little as possible and tend to shoot a lot and then find the images that speak to me after the fact.
The Guardian, photography
-How do you determine which aspects of the journey between light and dark, conscious and subconscious, are most visually captivating to explore in your work?
If I had to try and explain what I look for in the underwater work beyond just a feeling when I'm looking through the raw images is that I want something tranquil, or purely chaotic. My best pieces are the ones that invite the viewer to sit with them and just drift or the ones that have so much movement one feels compelled to keep looking to try and make sense of it.
Forgiveness, photography
-What's the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
My formal website is www.myq-art.com and my fun casual site is www.mrpvisionaries.com. Both are under re-construction as of the time of this writing. The best support, since I'm a bit old-school, is if there's an image you love buy a print!
Statement
"Dreamtime" is my ongoing 2017-present collection of dreamlike underwater images that are meant to evoke feelings of sublime peace (that fine line where the conscious and subconscious meet), and the creative chaotic (where energy is released that fine line is broken and the potential becomes kinetic) are meant to take the viewer from the surface of the conscious into the subconscious and back again, a descent into dark and reemergence into the light, much like a spiritual journey into the valley and back to the mountaintop. This is a journey we sometimes take at night, but always take during the waking hours as well, just in the physical vs. the subconscious plane.
Into Dreamtime, photography
Bio
Searching the Subconscious, photography
Mike grew up in Pennsylvania and in 2005 moved to Arizona where he’s rarely cold and doesn’t have to shovel snow. He graduated from Bucknell University with a major in English and a minor in Chemistry and still wonders what to do with them.
He currently works as a nuclear medicine technologist mainly so he has someone to talk to. This lets him photograph on the side without having to live on ramen and sleep on friends’ couches, though he quite likes ramen and has slept on some very comfortable couches. The rest of his time is devoted to various cats. They don’t like ramen, but they do like couches.
Mike was baptized in 2019 and wonders if he still has that “new soul” smell. His ultimate dream would be to visit Mars (and ideally make the trip back too). In the meantime he keeps making pictures. Children are his favorite subjects because he doesn’t have to direct them, they haven’t had the creativity stomped out of them, and they don’t have phones so they can’t ask him if the pictures are ready yet.
Mike’s approach to photography is minimalist, which if you’ve seen his comic book collection seems like a complete lie. He prefers to work with the subject, his camera, and whatever light is available. It also means he doesn’t have to lug around a lot of extra equipment, which just sounds like work.