The paintings of Edward Hopper became an explicit influence when I moved from film to digital photography around 2013.

My NYC apartment had splendid views of the water tower-lined Hudson, and as I grappled with the new technology, I made those vistas my subject. It was a wonderful circumstance for learning, working with changing weather and light at all hours and in all seasons.

Soon I turned my attention to the lives going on inside the buildings I was photographing, developing an ongoing project, “Night Windows,” named in a nod to Hopper’s painting of a woman glimpsed through a window. The series comprises images of my neighbors and their homes viewed after dark from my apartment, often with a moody sky, storm or fog as backdrop.

The pictures put many in mind of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” but for me it was Hopper who fit. In “Night Windows,” the woman he looks In on is bending away from him, unaware of his gaze. Her clothing is scanty, but his depiction is delicate. I strove for something similar. I love not the shocking, but the everyday.

Being a photographer rather than a painter, I was dependent on serendipity. I had to see my subject move into view, in good light, ideally when the surrounding atmosphere was also striking. Images accumulated slowly.

I concluded “Night Windows” when I left Manhattan in 2023. Hopper’s influence persists, however, reflected in the geometry of my compositions, my preoccupation with the color and quality of light, my juxtaposition of interior and exterior spaces, my quest for the felt presence of others, and my enduring love of photographing into and out of windows.