Making that final commitment is really hard. Because once you decide to move forward, it becomes a whole process which is really hard to stop.

I do think that dread is about a certain kind of expectation. And the fact that a picture can never resolve itself the way a movie can - maybe that's a specific kind of dread that becomes associated with a picture.

The whole reason I make these pictures is for those moments of clarity. For that single moment, everything seems to make sense in my world. And I think we all look for that in our lives, because our lives are generally filled with chaos and confusion and disorder and complication.

My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear.

My mom just recently reminded me that I used to build these little miniature worlds outside at our country house and populate it with little figures.That whole thing [shooting is] about trying to create a world - there's something very connected to childhood and reverie and daydreaming and fantasy.

It's about finding meaning through light. I'm always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange.

In "Twilight," the narratives are more literal, and the event is much more spectacular. The pictures in "Beneath the Roses" are much more psychological and grounded in reality.