This is from a recent shoot in Virginia Beach. We shot around sunset and got some beautiful light. Emory, pictured here was a great sport taking quite a beating in the waves. Each time a wave came in I had to hold the camera above my head and jump up. Crazy! The camera did get a little wet despite my efforts. There are better photos we did on land but I’m posting this one because I risked my camera for it. Next time, I will have a case for the camera. All images are model released and available for licensing.
Memorial Day provided for some fun photo opportunities. On our way to a show we drove through Yorktown and stumbled upon some Civil War reenactors. This man was very friendly so I asked him to pose for me. Then the next day, we spent some time with our favorite beach family. We’ve known them a long time. Alison, at right was the flower girl in our wedding six years ago. Now she is as tall as my wife!
I’m toning photos for a new portfolio. It’s going to be almost all personal, slice-of-life work. I’m going for really honest and authentic. Not overly perfect and over-produced. Lots of natural light and some humor. Here is one photo. I love the little crumbs around his mouth. This is from a shoot I arranged, but I photographed the boy after he ate real food. No food styling around the mouth in this photo!
These are portraits of Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton (left) and Hubby Jenkins playing backstage at the 2010 Black Banjo Gathering. These guys are great musicians and so fun to be around. Neither one has a CD out, but you can listen to them on myspace. I photographed a few other musicians including the wonderful Carolina Chocolate Drops who put on a high-energy show. If you are not familiar with them, this video is a good introduction. You can click the image to see it larger.
I met Jarrell at a party here in Norfolk. In addition to having great style, he was super easy to talk to and I thought it would be fun to photograph him. This was my favorite from our shoot. For anyone interested, Jarrell also does some clothing design when not studying at ODU.
Yesterday after a shoot, I walked onto the beach near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. I was testing out my old 5×7 wood field camera (read about it 2 posts down). I had one film holder which holds two sheets of film. I shot one photo of the bridge and another of a nice couple that was curious about the camera. They did this spontaneous piggy-back thing. I’ll do a few more tests before I decide to try some color film. Only Kodak still makes 5×7 color film and it costs $4.00/sheet + developing. This is Efke 100 film which costs $.70/sheet and I can develop it myself. It’s not cheap, but I like that I have to slow down and that I only get a couple shots. It’s the opposite of digital SLR which is fast and unlimited.
I discovered a new trick today. You’ve probably seen those big light boxes on which doctors view x-rays. Well this office, had a huge panel of 6 of these light boxes on the wall. I turned them on to discover they make a nice side light and they are color balanced with the overhead fluorescent lights. No need for strobes or gels! After I got this tight portrait of Dr. Britt (right), we did one more photo outside the entrance to Eastern Virginia Medical School. It was a pretty dreary day, but the cloud cover was light enough to create a nice soft light. The assignment was for Health Leaders magazine through Getty Images.
“…it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.” -from Barack Obama’s Inauguration speech
These 11 photos are my little tribute to the Americans that Obama conjured, or at least the ones that came out on that very cold day. Having covered the 2005 Inauguration of President Bush from a secure and isolated perch on the Capitol with many other photographers, I wanted this time to be close to the people. I had the idea that I wanted to shoot portraits of young children for whom a black president might feel normal and members of a much older generation, many of whom could never imagine the election of Barack Obama. Due to time constraints and massive crowds, the pictures turned into a vignette of the experience around the Washington Monument. I did not do this consciously but I noticed that most of my subjects are not wearing Obama merchandise. Perhaps relfecting my own hope for a unified America…or maybe I was just trying to get past cliches. I shot 23 frames on an old Yashica Mat-124G TLR from about 9am to 10am. By 10am, the area was shoulder to shoulder and I was afraid I would not find my way back to my wife and friends. View the video below to see the amount of people I had to wade through to find them. I also thought it would be interesting to contrast my 2009 photos with my 2005 photos.
The day after the Nov 2 election German magazine Der Spiegel hired me to photograph a nice Virginia man who normally votes Republican but voted Democrat in this election. He works for a home renovation company that has this great wood paneled meeting room with a tiny American flag tucked into a ceiling tile. Unfortunately, I don’t think the magazine ever published the story. Germans probably would have gotten a kick out of this little sign of American patriotism.
