My name is Eric Snyder. I began photography in High School, learning some darkroom and shooting for my yearbook, but it wasn't until my last few years of college that I began to take it seriously. I bought a Nikon N50 and with it, I planned to take over the world. As a painter I was very politically charged, using the human form as metaphor to make my statement.
Once I picked up the camera, I transitioned with the same mindset. Shooting nudes to boldly make socio-political statements and continue as my "Mirror on America". As I added the computer into the mix (which took the logical place of my experiments with sandwiching negs on the enlarger), the process became less "organic" while the work became more so. Still making a statement when a statement is needed to be made, my artWork took a turn into the more spiritual. My inspiration grew from the United States to the world, drawing from world religions and legends and folklore and heroes. Pieces of Zeus hung next to pieces of Jesus hung next to pieces of Bachhus hung next to pieces of George Washington. And none of them to express my likes or dislikes of the heroes/gods or the people who followed them; purely a reflection of the existence and the story behind said hero/god.
Over time, my work went in an even more "Nature direction". Making what I called "Portscapes", which were horizontal portraits as you would typically take as a photographer shooting a headshot with a landscape scene weaving around/through the figure. This work was the bi-product of two factors.
The first being the fact that I had graduated from college and needed to make money from my photography to afford all the cool "toys" out there to go with my camera so I began shooting portraits (glam shots, senior pictures, fashion shots for models' portfolios, engagement pictures, pets, you name it) as well as weddings and events. This changed my low light black and white artsy capturing of the human form into something more concerned with temperature of light and lack of shadow and capturing the PERSON... not just the form. I think some cultures are right and there truly IS a piece of each model's soul in my work.
The second factor came from the shift from socio-political to world religion. With the more spiritual places needed, I was shooting vast landscapes and beautiful old buildings and truly artsy "outdoors" shots. I had never been a landscape painter, but my computer photography required the landscapes, so I began enjoying shooting them, even macro nature of flowers and spiderwebs and the like.
The two changes caused for some interesting studies in surrealism. Some gorgeous portraits in fantasy settings. I soon spent more time in front of a computer and less time in front of the backdrop and began shooting less and less models as my web businesses began to flourish. I began to think of the world as a painter again and with that, my landscapes became more of portraits as I cropped in closer and closer and shot more and more macro, until the rusty metal run off tunnel jutting from the mossy ground pouring rainwater onto the slick and shiny rocks became a study of rust a la one of those "can you guess what this is?" children's mind games. And my studies of the human form returned to being more artsy. I began to savor the shadows once more and shot the entire body as well as cropping in on various parts.
And a very cool thing happened this year when I found the time to begin creating once more. The human forms became more PART of the nature element instead of just being IN an environment. My work became abstract studies of nature and form and texture and less about the nature element OR the human element, but how they came together like a puzzle. More of an emulsion than a suspension, they were no longer oil and water, but varying pigments of paint which I mixed and blended.
My new work is more like painting than anything I have done without a brush.