These remind of the life drawing classes I use to take at Redux. I always wished I could draw like this, smoothing the charcoal, making even gradients and transforming real life onto paper to keep it that way forever. It might take me a lifetime to learn how to do that, so in the meantime, I take photos.

But still, these are only half way done. The ultimate challenge is creating flawless, continuous tone prints of these images. So often we allow our photos to live solely online, quickly washed away into the detritus by the next day’s wave of information and images. But getting them off the screen and onto paper is one of the most beautiful moments in photography.