Let's take a break from the gear and talk about...photographs.

 

Michelle in the studio. 

I like this photo because it's calm and her stare is direct. Just on the verge of being questioning.

When I scanned the negative I was intending to crop out the black frame lines, the arrow and the small part of an adjacent frame. But as I looked at the raw image I felt like the added details conveyed the idea that this was captured in a continuing stream of images instead of being a "one off." 

It's fun to remember that I was so hands on with the negatives and generally marked small arrows in the space between frames to remind myself that my first thoughts on seeing the contact sheets were:

Print This One.

This is a photograph of my friend Michelle. Over the twenty some years that we've known each other she's been one of the muses who have kept me interested in photography. While I have cast her in a number of print advertisements most of the photos I show of Michelle here come from the informal and relatively unplanned photo shoots we've done over the years just for fun. 

I might be toying around with a new way to light portraits and I'll call and see if she's available for a session in the near future. She's always interested not in photography, per se, but in how the psychology of a portrait sitting works. By working with each other in a close collaboration I think we both came to the same conclusion a long time ago. A good portrait session is really a conversation with someone you'd like to get to know a lot better. Someone different enough from you to bring a perspective about some things that you'd just never thought of before. 

It's also a chance to be beautiful in a safe space and to admire and document beauty in a reciprocally safe space. I know that many people think there is often an awkward, almost predatory angle to photographing beautiful people but it's something I wouldn't dream of allowing in my studio. The lifeguard for the studio is my sweet wife who is generally around on the days and evenings we photograph. Our house is 12 steps from the studio and it more or less mandates complete transparency in my work. Not that I would have it any other way. Honest intention means so much less anxiety.

Michelle and B. have known each other for years and get along well. We've started nearly every shoot with Michelle arriving at the house first, spending some time catching up with B. then selecting an outfit and heading out to the studio. It's a very comfortable, almost family-like relationship. 

It's that transparency and familiarity that make the space we photograph in feel very safe and comfortable. We can literally and metaphorically let our hair down...

When we start to photograph the camera work usually occurs in between conversations about life, loss, happiness, dreams and the feeling of being connected. Austin is a small town and we both know dozens and dozens of the same people. We continually cross reference people I think Michelle should know and she connects me with people who she thinks need to be photographed. 

We've more or less grown from youthful exuberance into calmer adulthood together and we've got the photographs to show the progression of time and experience. 

I hate doing "quick" photo sessions. I like to sink into session slowly and build images step by step. The course of the conversation will bring up a happy thought or a thoughtful look and that will engender an expression I find interesting. A look I want to share. I take note of the expression and the body language and try to capture it if I can. Sometimes I'll show Michelle an image I liked by showing her the screen on the back of the camera and we'll work to get back to that expression if we've lost it. 

Sometimes the lighting works and sometimes my experiments go awry. It really doesn't matter if it works or not because every "failure" is a learning point. An intersection that pushes me away from something that doesn't work and pulls me toward different lighting designs that work better. But always  in the service of making the person in front of the camera look as beautiful and interesting as I can. 

It seemed somehow easier in the film days. A shared black and white Polaroid was a real, physical manifestation of the evolution of the work. The pauses to load a new roll of film were like a natural cadence for the shoot. The ever growing pile of spent film was an indicator of the time and energy spent. A marker of the arc of the session. 

I wonder how other people approach portrait shoots. It would be interesting to know...