First and foremost this was a test of my new toy, my Tele-Rolleiflex. I wanted to see what it could do in terms of depth-of-field compression and the look of out-of-focus areas. Then I noticed something in the photo itself – the repetition of a gesture. There are three hands holding cellphones in this scene, all in the middle of the same activity.

This inspired the title for this piece – The Cacophony of the Modern World – because it’s somewhat ironic. There is an entire civilization living vicariously through their smartphones, wandering through beautiful spring days staring and pecking at screens not much bigger than a business card, never stopping to look up, never engaging the people around them, staggering zombie-style through life. Except for cars and machinery, the world is becoming eerily silent.