On a photographic level, my first visual influences were painters rather than photographers: Picasso, Rubens, El Greco, O’Keeffe, Escher, Goya, Caravaggio and Ver Meer, The Masters. They each used light and texture in a new way. Influential photographers were Adams, Muybridge, Lang, Strand, Brassai, Mapplethorpe, Man Ray and especially Bresson. As artists of the past have done, I took a pen name over 15 years ago. I chose, Styrous.
When I photograph something or someone, I see a complete picture or painting through my viewfinder. I compose and structure at the moment of the shot. I do not crop or computer-alter my images later. The printed photograph is what I saw at the time the image was taken, always with the light available at that moment. Sometimes I have failures but often the result is more like a painting than a photograph; those are the successes and are wonderful to me.
