I use photography to explore and express emotions I don’t know how to put into words. I feel a human connection with people when they tell me they appreciate one of my photos.

The emotions arise more from the composition than from the subject material, in my experience — the rhythms and intervals between shapes, the harmonies and dissonances between colors, the patterns of light and shadow, the way that lines connect with each other and with the edges and corners of the image.

It’s common for people not to recognize objects in my photos. I like it that way because it causes viewers to experience first simply light and color, line and shape — and to find rawer feeling and meaning in those, on a sensory level, without the mental filters of assumptions about a thing in the world that is “captured” by the photo.

I’m drawn sometimes to geometric formality, especially in architecture, tools, and cropped typography or signage; sometimes to organic patterns in material ranging from foods and fabrics to plants and landscapes; sometimes to the layered play of light in reflections; sometimes simply to the shadow patterns cast by something out of frame.

When I edit my photos after taking them, I use only the digital equivalents of common darkroom techniques — slightly cropping the image, for example, or adjusting elements like contrast or black point — to convey what I saw rather than relying on the biases built into the camera. I don’t apply filters.

A few of the photographers whose work inspires me most are Saul Leiter, Franco Fontana, Ernst Haas, and Eugène Atget. I’m also inspired by painters, especially Mondrian, Degas, Rothko, Turner, Agnes Martin, and Barnett Newman.

Most of my shots are the result of noticing something in the moment when I’m not specifically searching for something to photograph. When this happens, the act of looking and composing gets me out of my head, temporarily suspending my inner monologue. The silence feels good.