may 6, 2022
look, I'll level with you - I am not a street photographer except in the most literal sense; when I do street photography, I shoot perfectly empty streets, devoid of life. I don't enjoy trying to get candids and I don't enjoy photographing a crowd. When I shoot portraits of people, the success of the final product comes down to whether our personalities match and I can get them to feel genuine, relaxed, like there's no lens in their face.
for a while I thought this made me a lesser artist. The only other photographer in my family who taught me anything as I grew up was my grandfather, who shot photos for the US Military during the Korean War and ran a portrait studio afterwards, and he insisted on Truth (or perfect studio lighting and The Correct Way To Light A Subject, Seriously). Despite my best efforts, those are both areas of photography I've struggled with.
The photo above is of a friend of mine - also a fantastic photographer - who came to visit me in Reno, NV back when I lived there. For two days we traveled the desert chasing photos and mountains; when we got back home, we did the same up and down the neo-noir neon-lit streets of the city. We discovered the environments together and we modeled for each other the whole time, swapping back and forth from shooter to subject every time we needed a person to make a scene pop.
This trip - this shoot - this perfectly-posed shot - changed my perspective entirely on the role of truth in a photograph. Being a photographer feels like being an archivist of reality sometimes, but we aren't. The moments still vanish, the scene fades, the people go home, the world shifts, and we have a 20mb file or 35 mm negative to represent what one person saw at one time in one place through one field of view. I, ultimately, am that one person, and I can decide what I saw, how I felt, what I want everyone who holds my photos to feel. It's a simple concept realized very late in life, but nothing's been the same since I had a muse for a day.
