friends: August 2008 Archives

Last weekend, I did my first solo photo shoot, with Shannon. She was a wonderful model. I had a great time. And the photos came out better than I ever expected. Click for highlights.

Was digging through my photo archive last night to find a batch of images. Looking for some that either hadn't been posted before, or variations on ones that got posted. I came across this one of Shannon from the 2006 photo shoot.

I recently read some articles on nikola tamindzic and his photography. It caught my attention when he started talking about working with models. He said you interact with these people. You ask them to do things, and keep watching. You 'feel around' and find the edge of their comfort zone. And that's where the good photographs are. But that you had a certain responsibility, too. Because if you put your model in such a vulnerable position, you owe it to them to take the picture, and give them back something worth their risk.

I've never been excited about staged photo shoots. I mean, I've done a few. Even have some planned. But they don't usually hold the thrill for me of event photography. Capturing the moment. But using the process nikola describes almost makes the staged shoot into an event.

And while it wasn't intentional at the time — because I was largely clueless and still am — this photo comes pretty close to that.