I was a bit surprised when I showed this photograph to my wife this morning and she said that she had seen it already. After all, I just took it yesterday afternoon, and developed and scanned it last night after she had already gone to bed. But she is convinced that I have taken this picture before.

Now, I know that I haven’t taken this exact photograph before, but she brings up a good point. I spend an awful lot of time walking the streets of Brooklyn looking for interesting sidewalk scenes. This one caught my eye, like many of the scenes I photograph, because of some interesting geometric details: the vertical line of the window and the door on the left, the twin satellite dishes, the checkmark made by the sign and its shadow and the door that floats just above it. This is one of the reasons I love the view camera—it forces you to take your time and allows you to be very precise in arranging the scene. It’s not just about the lines and shapes and tones that make up the picture; there is something a bit melancholy here in the sagging roof and drooping wires and dirty stucco that says something about this neighborhood and its place in the world.

One of the things I often do in my pictures is empathize with inanimate objects. It has to do with how I see the landscape, and how I put together a picture. I won’t take a picture unless I can find some kind of connection, some kind of personality in the objects I am photographing. To me, this is a photograph full of possibilities, and I could take a hundred more like this and find something new in each one. To most people, though, it’s probably just a picture of the side of a building. One of many I have taken, which probably isn’t all that different than the work of a lot of other photographers.

I guess I am trying to bridge the gap between how I see my own work and what the rest of the world sees. When one of my professors tells me that I am printing too dark, I bristle. It’s one thing if that were a technical issue, but as an artistic decision I feel that it’s necessary to stand by my work, even if it isn’t a decision that makes everyone happy.

Which brings me to my final question: how much of your art is driven by personal, creative goals, and how much do you let the others influence what you do?