This is a Varyon X, and this is The Candid Frame.

A few months ago when I heard the story of today's guest, walking across the streets of

Los Angeles making portraits of strangers, I knew that I had to have him on the show.

That was confirmed even more as I began exploring his body of work, which is an interesting

combination of both commercial entertainment work and socially conscious photojournalism.

Making a living is always a big concern for the freelance photographer, but it's really

refreshing to see a young photographer who recognizes the importance of social value in storytelling.

Well, Matthew, welcome to my deck into the candid frame.

Thanks for having you.

I appreciate you coming up on my way. I got turned on to your

work as a result of a student in my class. You showed me this walkabout project that you did.

And I saw that and I said, oh, I got to beat this guy. Just the idea of you, you can tell us a little

bit about the project, but when I saw that,

it was something that really kind of spoke to me in terms of the inventiveness that some photographers,

I think, really tap into in their personal projects.

And there's a lot about your work that I want to talk to you about.

But let's start there, because I think that's particularly interesting. I think it's actually a good place to start because I was one of

the first personal projects that I took on when I was still a photo assistant, you know, post-college

and working with a lot of different photographers and then realized that I needed to start producing

some of my own work, but wanted to find a way to find a story that would be interesting to me, but that could show a unique style, but that would be able to do in a couple of days without a lot of resources.

And so, you know, basically, I've been really interested in documentary photography, but I've been working with a lot of commercial photographers that did a lot of lighting.

So I wanted to find a way to combine those two things.

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