The book "A Winter's Meditation" is a companion piece for my video installation of the same title. The source material for each piece is photographs of snow and ice, most of which were taken in Eastern Massachusetts during the winter of 2007 - 8.

If you purchase the book,, you can obtain a free DVD of the video piece by emailing me at emile@foryourhead.com

My photography has been heavily influenced by music, more as process than as form. I don't think about musical form when I make images, but I nearly always apply musical processes and concepts in my work. I often think of my photographic process as a metaphorical kind of visual jazz. The cameras and lenses are my instruments, and the scenes that I am photographing are the structure on which the improvisation is based.

All of the images in the book appear both in their original form, and as variations created by processing the originals using Photoshop. There is, again, a musical analogy, as each original image acts as the theme of a composition, and the processed images are variations on this theme. I tend to work quickly and intuitively, trying to make the process like a real-time improvisation in which the musicians need to react quickly to the changing possibilities of the piece.

My photography is also very influenced by the work of Minor White, who was a master at making the ordinary seem magical. I carry a camera with me most of the time, and am always looking for combinations of light, framing, and subject that allow me to create images which express something beyond the ordinary meaning of the subject.

Minor White referred to this as photographing "Things for what else they are", and this phrase runs through my head like a mantra while I am shooting.