I took up photography when I moved back to Arizona in 2002. I was born and raised in Phoenix, but had left it in 1991 and only returned because of a job. Being back in Arizona I discovered it was far different than I remembered it and set about to trying to capture it as best I could with a little point and shoot that was pushing 10 years old.
In early 2006 I graduated to a digital SLR. Immediately, I understood the freedom of digital: one day on my fifteen minute drive home from work I took around a hundred photos. I just drove and took photos paying no attention to where the camera was aimed. Nearly all of the photos were crap but it cost me nothing to do this and all I had to do was erase the photos. The couple of good photos that I got I never would've taken had I planned it.
My intention originally was to be very realistic in my photography. Even seemingly random drive-by photos were realistic. This changed as a result of Flickr (www.flickr.com). I had posted a photo in both color and black and white and no one cared. I liked the photo and didn't understand why no one else did. So I posted a third version, this one with a orange tint to it and that photo became the most popular one. From then on I freely manipulated photos. I began viewing them as art not a captured bits of reality.
I starting adding photos of textures to the point that it almost became a witch's brew of photos. Swarms of jellyfish, rusted walls, a blank television screen, sand from White Sands, and my driveway all become textures and that are blended with photos.
Presented here are a mix of the real and the unreall; photos with no manipulation and photos heavilly manipulated.
Eric Vondy
