Mathew Spolin began his fascination with photography at a young age, learning darkroom techniques while working in the basement of a satellite image company outside of Washington, DC. Since then, photography and technology have always been intertwined in Mathew's work.




Moving to San Francisco a decade ago to create computer software for a biotechnology company, Mathew's work involved lots of travel, and a camera soon became a consistent traveling companion. Through the encouragement of friends and family, Mathew began publishing his images on the internet. A community...

Mathew Spolin began his fascination with photography at a young age, learning darkroom techniques while working in the basement of a satellite image company outside of Washington, DC. Since then, photography and technology have always been intertwined in Mathew's work.




Moving to San Francisco a decade ago to create computer software for a biotechnology company, Mathew's work involved lots of travel, and a camera soon became a consistent traveling companion. Through the encouragement of friends and family, Mathew began publishing his images on the internet. A community of people gave motivating feedback from many different places around the world. Gradually, the camera equipment became larger and more sophisticated.




"I'm fascinated by cities, particularly New York. Cities are a constructed landscape that exist closer to a human timescale than the natural world does. Through my work I try to capture how they appear permanent and yet are constantly changing. When people see my work, I'd like them to consider their own relationship to the environment in which they live.




Working with digital equipment, I try to remember that the state of the art still can't capture the same range of light as film chemistry. To make up for this, I combine multiple exposures to produce a greater dynamic range that's closer to what the eye is capable of seeing. To achieve the moody, surreal feel of these photos, I used several computer graphics techniques, including tone mapping, which tries to represent the full light intensities of the scene by reproducing as many image details as possible, maximizing the image's contrast."




In the last several years, Mathew's work has appeared in books, magazines, and annual reports.