So when your artwork influences you commercial work--is it a good thing--i hope so. I find myself sometimes looking at a photograph and thinking--this has something, but is it what I want. Then I begin to do my normal editing and toning and sometimes it comes together and sometimes its something I think if I re-do it this way maybe it will work--but often it never quite does the same thing you want it to do a second time. Recently I've been making images where I mark up the surface. In drawing and painting mark making is the artists hand creating an energy on the flat surface--through marks and color the images assemble. I the photographic image they don't so much assemble the image as they create a layer of activity--adding another element over the surface to create some sort of movement. Eye movement over a picture is what we try to obtain. We don't want our viewers to be stuck in one part of a photograph, we want them to experience the whole thing either consciously or sub-consciously. So I sorta stumbled upon making these marks on a portrait a couple days ago and it has opened up a whole new can of worms for me--perhaps a better way of saying it is that has opened up possibility for new directions these works can take. I hadn't thought of combining my personal work with my client work but it seems to make sense--especially with these images geared toward the graffiti and hip-hop culture. Marks are everywhere--on walls, on cars, on bodies---so why not on senior portraits. Check out our senior portraits and senior portrait specials on our website. SayerMotter photo manipulation by Richard Sayer.