1. What inspires you to take photos of what you do?
Emotion and intangible aesthetic values, and the need to retain my sanity. If I'm doing a self portrait, usually it's inspired by some sort of personal emotional circumstance. Unfortunately it's usually something heavily negative, but can range from a general bad day at work (rare these days), a negative interaction with someone who is or was close, or just general insecurities. The act of creating the piece is the my catharsis - it helps me work through whatever the circumstance may be, and the finished work is a sort of memory byte, snapshot, or aesthetic scar.

2. How do you choose your subject matter?
Most of my subject matter chooses me, as it's mostly emotionally based. A feeling, mood, or situation will create some kind of internal metaphor - a concept in my mind that is not made of words or pictures. In an effort to bring this to reality, I go with my gut feeling as to what an image should include; a gun, an urban setting, a glaring eye. It's not something I can tangibly describe. That's for the more expressive stuff anyhow. If it's outdoors, and I'm on a road trip or it's a action shot, I look for the unusual or what others might find as uninteresting: like, "what wouldn't somebody shoot if they were here?".

3. Who do you look up to within the art world?
So many... for photography, many of the usual suspects; Jan Saudek, Duane Michals, Joel Peter Witkin, Robert Parke Harrison, Misha Gordon, Helmut Newton, Robert Frank... They are my core favorites for conceptual work (yes, I realize that Helmut was a fashion photographer, but much of his work was quite conceptual). They are very inspirational to me. But I really look up to the underdogs, the underexposed artists who do it more for love than profit or art world status. People that can express the most harsh personal realities, that create in order to survive and cope. I can identify and look up to artists like this much easier than say a commercial portrait or sports photographer. Like the town I live in now, it's over saturated with tourist/landscape photography - not to take anything away from it, but there's an underground art community that continues to produce art, knowing there is no public venue to display, and little chance to 'get over' by trying to sell their work here. Yet, they continue express and create some mind blowing work. Those are the people I really look up to. Although, "getting over" by selling a lot my work wouldn't hurt my feelings at all!

4. Your bio says that you got into photography as a result of being immersed in the graffiti culture. Can you shed some light on that?
Graf is at best temporary. Once you leave your piece on the wall and you return home, it may as well be gone, because it's either going to get gone over by another writer, or by the city when they buff it. One's only memory will be just that, whatever you can retain in your minds eye, or a photograph. For the longest time, I used cheap point and shoot 35mm cameras to document things as we went along. And they worked decent enough for standard snapshots, recording the art for the family album (and if they got left behind during a chase or something, they were cheap/easy to replace). After a while, I wanted to document more than just the art on the wall, I wanted to record the experiences, and I wanted to be able to control the visual circumstance a little better. Little did I foresee that photography would be intoxicating enough to draw me away from graf altogether. Maybe I was subconsciously burnt out on the graf scene, or I was looking for a more malleable way to express myself - but the year I got my first Canon AE-1 was also my last year painting on the street. I miss it, keep up on it a little bit, and still occasionally draw a piece here and there...

5. How does the graffiti community look at the rest of the art world? I know a lot of writers are very well-respected within progressive "high art" circles.
I don't know that I'm brave enough to speak for the entire graffiti community - it's been a while since I've been involved, but I can give point of view. When I got in to graf, it was all about fame. Getting your name up, and being recognized for your style by other writers. Problem was, in many places graffiti was springing up, there were no "other writers". I had a grand idea of creating a mini New York style subculture in my own town, and in a way, I suppose it sort of worked. But I also think that was a major turning point for graffiti - that is, when it left New York, it changed. It wasn't just the Burroughs anymore, not just the subways and benches. The original cats created a magic that could exist where it did, when it did. I still know a lot of writers sort of scoff at the gallery scene, the mindset is along the lines of if it ain't on the street, it ain't graf, period. Others play a "this for that" game, meaning if they do a legal piece, or mural, or installation, they have to do X amount of pieces on the street to keep themselves "legit". I think the others, the ones that get over into the "art world", don't separate graf from art - it's all creation, it's all art however you micromanage it. When you have the burn inside and you have to create, it doesn't matter if it's on a wall, train, canvass, postal sticker, or T-shirt. You get it out however you have to. If it runs in a gallery, or on TV commercial, or a t-shirt, hell, it's all fame right? The reality of it is that graffiti is no longer "just" a subculture, it's been swallowed up (and even accepted) by ART. I think graf is a far cry from where it started in the last century - not that it's a bad thing - the world has moved on, and taken graffiti along with it.

6. Do you shoot film or digital? Do you develop your own pictures? How do you treat your shots in post-production in Photoshop?
I shoot 98% digital. Since about 2002, when I traded in my Elan II e for a 6 megapixel Fuji Finepix 6900z. It was quite a switch and sacrifice. Going from an SLR to glorified point 'n shoot presented a whole new set of challenges in capturing an image. But, the convenience for image processing was enough to keep in digital indefinitely. Before that, I did develop and print (in a darkroom) all my own film, save for color. Ilford HP 5 and Fuji Neopan were my favorite films. Never got into mixing fancy developers; good old D-76 was good enough. Now I'm shooting with a nearly 3 year old Digital Rebel, but also shoot film through an EOS 650 and a Pentax K-1000 (still shooting the HP 5).

Post production treatment, heh, I have a pretty heavy hand and most times cannot leave well enough alone. Most of the time, I have an image in my head at the time of exposure, and I'll do whatever it takes in post to get it to come out. Obviously, manipulation is not an issue to me - the final image is what it's all about. I am good friends with channel mixer, multiple layers, gradient masks and cross processing curves. As well, I have no problem creating selective focus blurs, over dramatizing skies, or removing/adding elements. For a while, I tried to constrain myself to what I "thought" was achievable in darkroom work only, but really, most tools in Photoshop are based upon real life photographic techniques. And when you see work by artists like Misha Gordon, Jerry Ulsemann, Robert Park Harrison, you begin to see that digital did not make the impossible possible - it just made it accessible. So now, I've sort of freed myself from that virtual constraint, and anything goes. I can appreciate the purist approach, technical perfection and all that, but really, we begin manipulating reality the instant we peep through the viewfinder. With digital, all is fair game as far as I'm concerned.

7. What constitutes a "good shot" for you?
A good shot is when I can set up a photograph, with our without props, lighting, depth of field, etc., and recreate almost exactly what I have in my mind. Sometimes, I have to fight an image in post processing to get it where I want, but once in a blue moon I nail it with the raw exposure. This is not necessarily from a lack of ability to set up a photo correctly, but more of a lack in clarity of my own vision. One day, I'll see conceptualize something and it's crystal clear to me what I have to do in order to make the photo, on another day, the concept - while solid - is visually fuzzy in my head, and it takes several attempts to get either the photo correct, or I spend a lot of time in post where I'm tweaking to almost no end to wrap it up.

8. How could a beginning photographer add depth and emotion to his or her photos?
Don't be afraid to take chances, whether it's "breaking the rules" that we're all inundated with when starting out, or maybe photographing something that's been shot ad nauseum. Each and every view can be unique. When I road trip with my friend from Albuquerque, we often shoot the same scenes, and get very different results - both from capture and post processing. Be honest, or rather, don't be afraid to be honest if it's a conceptual piece; If you feel something - make the photo then and there, don't put it off until you're feeling worse, better, or more creative - get the emotion as it happens instead of trying to re-create it later. Crying? Fine, capture it right then. Pissed, photograph it now, while your blood vessels are still cranking from your increased heart rate. Melancholy? You might not be so relaxed later on trying to recreate the mood. It's difficult to do at first, you sort of have to force yourself - but after a while, it becomes a vehicle to create as well as a way to vent whatever it is... include an element even if you think it might be found to be taboo or controversial, don't assign the values of the art world to your creation - assign your values to the world of art.

9. What sorts of clients have you shot for?
Unfortunately, I do not have a giant client list, not sure my gritty style is something people are after in a work for hire sort of way. Sort of working my way into the local music scene shooting concerts for local bands, headshots (in my own particular idiom), but no big names that anybody would recognize. I did shoot a cover for Dirt Rag mountain bike magazine last April, that's probably the only name people might be familiar with. Hoping to change all this over the course of this year though. I'd like to move into emotive portraiture, like how Hazard sees you or something, heh.

10. For you, what pushes the bounds of your work?
Learning new techniques, or different tools. Being exposed to the work of others. Sometimes I get complacent or stuck in a rut, and then I'll come across something like HDR, or a Photoshop brush, and that's all I needed to push something over my own personal boundary. Knowledge - not in a scholastic sense, but just in general - new discoveries or self realizations, or just figuring out how something works in a social sense. Emotion; depending on the severity or intensity of a feeling, it may cause me to explore new ground or push limits.

11. Do you have any professional schooling in your field? If so, for how long? What did you learn (barring the obvious)?
I've taken one class - Alternative Process. I took in during the first year I had my camera. It was second level photography course at the local college and you could only get in by either taking the first class, or by teacher recommendation. I wasn't even a student at the college but was able to audit the class after speaking with the Prof. The class was about letting go of the rules, throwing them to the floor, and stamping them out like a cigarette butt. Anything went in that class, and it was actually fun to watch people cringe as the prof instructed to intentionally scratch their negatives, or put saran wrap over their paper during exposure under the enlarger. I learned there are so many ways to skin a photograph, not limit yourself by following the rules you learned the first six months you got your camera, that the only limitations with photography are the ones you place upon yourself, and that damn, it's a lot of hard work. I learned there was an expressive world beyond graf (a large step for me, because at one point I could not imagine what I would do if I didn't paint). And I learned, maybe most importantly, that as much as art imitates itself, as much as art gets repetitive (as in "it's all been done before") that originality is still possible. It is possible to create a new "style" that has not been done before. For the longest time I believed the opposite, and that's why I think I was involved with graf for so long, even though it was in a way an imitation. I figured graf was the last major movement in art, the last original one anyhow. The class taught me that it does matter what movement is new or old, it's the expression that counts, and no one art form is better or more authentic than another.

12. Do you have a preference to display your images in black and white or color?
Overall, no I don't. That is, I don't favor one over the other as a personal style. For some images, color only distracts from the other visual or emotional elements, and for others, the color totally brings them to reality. Usually, I'll know when I conceptualize the piece in my head if it's going to be black and white or color, but once in a while, the color elements are something I did not expect (since I didn't' plan on seeing color in the first place) and it will work so much better with the color keying in certain aspects, or providing some sort of aesthetic background.

13. Some of your portraits feature a really gritty, almost dirty quality to them. How do you achieve this?
Different ways; sometimes it's as simple as pushing the HDR button too far, other times, it involves a lot of Photoshop layers and textures. At first, I relied heavily upon custom brushes, but lately I've taken to creating my own - making my own photographs of textures or just painting them as a separate Photoshop file that I can use later. But the actual process, there's not just one way. Usually it involves a lot of layer masks and blend mode manipulation.

14. Quite a few of your recent portraits are of the same male figure, is this you? Why choose yourself instead of another person as the model?
The portrait work I've been doing is all self portraiture, it's all regarding my own emotions and circumstance; there's not another person I could photograph that would work - I can't imagine having a stand in for myself - but, now that you mention it, maybe that's a keen idea after all! I've never been real comfortable asking other people to model for me - except for my ex's. Most of the time, since I'm such a narcissist, the visions in my head will only picture myself. I'm not against photographing others, not at all. I've just not really had a reason. This is something I working to change over the course of this year as well.

15. On your website you state you like to bike; do you like to take the camera with you?
My poor camera, bless it's little digital heart. It goes with me everywhere, yes, even on the bike, even in the driving wind, rain and snow. I'm not a camera snob by longshot, but I have to give it up to Canon, my digital Rebel is one tough little camera. It's been packed in a loose messenger bag along with tools, tubes, shoes, shirts, books... it's been knocked against trees, bushes, splashed with mud, and I've fell on it several times after some untimely ejections from the bike. It's over 50,000 frames and still going. I'll be sad when it expires for sure.

16. What other hobbies do you enjoy?
I have a pretty simple life, which involves pretty much photography/art, riding, and... not much else. I live in one of the best places in the world to mountain bike - and it took a long haul over time and effort to get here, so I'm going to enjoy as much as possible for the time being, until the next "phase" of my life takes over, and I end up relocating again.

I'm not sure you can call coffee a hobby, but good coffee and chilling with friends also makes the list. People watching and road tripping various areas of the southwest complete the list.

17. Have you tried out the current HDR trend, or do you wish to steer clear of it?
Yes. I'll try anything with post processing. I try not to overdo it, but I use more for portraits and odd things rather than landscape stuff (which seems to be what it's all about). I've seen some pretty amazing results from other people using it, but wouldn't want it to become a trademark of my style over time.

18. Where can people view more of your works? Do you offer prints?
My website, jerryhazard.com - STILL under construction but 90% finished by the time this is being read. My main internet presence is at DeviantArt though. I joined in like 2002 or something: jerryhazard.deviantart . I have a print gallery via that site for "machine prints". I'm now doing my own printing as well, via large format archival inkjet and Epson archival inks and papers. Contact me via email for details. I've all but quit Flickr, just have a large series of self portraits there, but I don't submit anything new.

19. Any thoughts on the online art community as a whole?
It's keen to watch the rise of the art world on line. It's got a long way to go, but I think the last few years have been pretty exciting in terms of the new artists clawing their way to the top, as well as the different venues available for artists. As much as I'd like, it's still not a replacement or even competition for the real world, but I'm not sure that it should be either. There's still nothing like seeing an exhibition in person. But via the internet, I've been exposed to amazing work, and inspired by such brilliant artists that I would not have seen otherwise. Overall, I think it's a good thing. I'd like it be a little easier to generate revenue/sales, but this will come with time I'm sure. Before, I mentioned that the last real movement in art was graffiti, but really, the last great movement in art is the internet, and it's still moving and growing. I dig it. Lots.

20. How did you find Phirebrush, and what brings you back to continue submitting?
I found Phirebrush through DeviantArt, but can't exactly remember what or who's link it was. I come back because I know a lot people come here to look that might not make it to my DA site, or my personal site,. I submit because I dig the other work that I'm lucky enough to display next to, and the work here is always inspirational, I dig the general layout and system that Phirebrush has created - there's tons of places on web to upload art, but Phirebrush has created a unique atmosphere, and there's a certain bad-assness to it that I don't find anywhere else. I a lot of it is the design of the site, but more of it is the content. The mean caliber of work here is higher than in most other communities, and that has a lot to do with it. Just a keen place, what can I say?