Producer/director Ron Howard and Project Imaginat10n have announced that Columbia resident Dylan Singleton, a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park, has had a photo selected by James Murphy, lead singer for the no longer performing band LCD Soundsystem, as inspiration for a film project.

Project Imaginat10n is a partnership of Howard and Canon U.S.A.  in which photographs inspire the creation of short films by first time filmmakers. Five different directors will make their own shorts based on user-submitted photographs: actors Eva Longoria and Jamie Foxx, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, designer and Marchesa co-founder Georgina Chapman, and Murphy.

Singleton’s winning photograph, “Heart,” was taken of Columbia’s empty Hobbit’s Glen swimming pool at night.  The photo was one of 31 winners out of 300 finalists and approximately 10,000 entries.  The 2012 Project Imaginat10n films will begin production in 2013 and will debut at the Canon Project Imaginat10n Film Festival next year.   This is the second year of the project. 

“I am so passionate about the integrity and user-generated process of Project Imaginat10n where our celebrity directors can be inspired by photographers from all across the county,” said Howard.  “As we selected the photographs, I was blown away by the beauty, perspective and intrique they conveyed, and was thrilled that so many people wanted to once again take part in this exciting artistic experiment.”

Singleton, a sociology major, is a teaching assistant in the Sociology Department and in the College Park Arts Scholars program.   He recently returned from a semester abroad at Keele University in Stoke On Trent, England.  Singleton has studied privately with Tenney Mason, former Chief Photographer for Patuxent Publishing Corp.

Born in Columbia, Singleton graduated from Wilde Lake High School.  His photos can be seen at www.flikr.com/geniuscalvin.