I decided to make Ann Arbor the subject of this collection because of the impression that it has made upon me since moving here in September of 2009. I was also greatly influenced by Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project, which I studied in my photography class at the University of Michigan. I wanted to emulate Smith's ambition to capture a particular city’s unique personality with the same passion that he had in the art of photography. Smith took thousands of photos and spent three years in Pittsburgh to complete his project; I captured just under nine hundred photos and spent a month putting together my own portrait of Ann Arbor, Michigan.