Michael
Babiak

This website lets me share something I love — photography — with friends and family. It also gave me an excuse to build something with AI, which turned out to be pretty magical.

I've been taking photographs for a long time, but digital photography was a revelation — the freedom to experiment, to take chances, to learn by doing.

Over the last ten or fifteen years I've taken courses at Stanford where Neal Menschel introduced me to a bunch of concepts and to photographers whose work I instantly loved: Sebastião Salgado, Jay Maisel, Steve McCurry, Joel Meyerowitz. A Richard Avedon portrait exhibition — In the American West — was enthralling; the directness of those images, the way his subjects seemed completely exposed, made me want to be better.

I've also been painting for a couple of decades. The two activities pull in different directions.

Photography takes me outward — into the world, into other people's lives. I shoot while traveling, and while I love a good landscape or street scene, what I'm really after is the unguarded, unposed moment with a person: someone lost in thought, a quality of light that won't last, the accidental geometry of a street. After each trip I make an album — my version of the journey, which doesn't always match my wife's preferred account.

Painting draws me inward. I'm drawn to structure and color, but what I love is the moment when I'm in the zone, in a flow state — when something freer and less planned takes over. Finding that moment is exhilarating.