Straight Ahead

For this collection of photos I wanted to take a juxtaposed approach to my previous post. In the lat series I took the challenge to avoid capturing the facial expressions of my subjects. I focused more so on capturing their surroundings and body language of others to tell the complete story.

The pictures below are all portraits of people looking head-on. I think they each have a different cadence. I wanted to make sure they were comfortable before shooting so I sat down with each of them before starting the shoot. Some of the photos I was commissioned to take and others I asked to take of them.

My strategy was to remain shooting in manual throughout each shoot. I feel that this gives me the ultimate amount of control and forces me to learn my camera much quicker. I had to find new ways create light and not rely on the usual flash.

I was inspired by photographer, mentor and friend Daniel Schaefer. His style embodies the ultimate use of surrounding light and simple editing. He manages to take what is in the atmosphere and tell the story of the person in his photo. They come across as almost effortless, and that is exactly how I want this portrait series to feel.

I can see how you feel…

Photography lends itself to many forms. It is a realm of self expression for hobbyists as well as the livelihood of so many professionals. For myself, it is somewhere in between a long lost love, a new found released, and a future career.

I decided to begin this blog experiment with a collection of photos taken at a poetry slam over the weekend. I wanted to capture the emotions of my subjects or their state of mind. The challenge was to do so without reveling their face or only reveling it partially. This seems to be almost a backwards approach to photography. However, I see it as the ultimate challenge. Many photographers focus in on facial expressions to tell the story in each scene. With this method I had to rely on timing and a small amount of luck to get something that would convey a strong enough emotion.

I feel this experiment was success. I love that I was able to find such willing participants for one. Another challenge I ran into was the editing to make them seem more adhesive as a group. I want to present each post as an individual body of work that can be merged over time to tell what my skill set can really do.

I was inspired by photographer Mikael Theimer‘s project that captured his camera shy girlfriend in several scenes. She never let him take a photo of her face but he still always managed to show how she felt. This skill is crucial if you are to be a photojournalist. I know I will not always be in to most opportune position to get a person to look at me during an event. But I still want to be able to convey the message that I need to.