For the Love of Portraits
I often tell my clients that if they want to get home at a decent time, schedule their session just before sunset. Sure, capturing the gorgeous light of golden hour has a little bit to do with it, but the fact is that I would go on taking their pictures for hours and hours and days and days if I could. Scheduling just before sunset gives them, for the most part, a solid escape plan—once there’s no more light, there’s no more photos, and they are no longer held hostage by an obsessed human with a camera.
I think my first portrait was of my beloved brown and gold teddy bear when I was about seven years old, taken with a polaroid camera. My other stuffies were soon added to the grouping, and each was posed and adjusted to fit what would be pleasing to my eye.
Not long after came the infamous trip to Washington D.C. and the stacks of images my mother brought home from the Fotomat Shack. Pigeons. Every one. No monuments or historical artifacts or statues. Just pigeons.
Later in life, I pointed my lens toward actual human faces, and I’ve been smitten ever since.
There’s just something about documenting the still image of a person. When I traveled to Nicaragua with my friend Andy as a documentary photographer for his medical and dental humanitarian outreach, I really found myself falling for portraiture. The beautiful and rugged and worn and stoic and smiling faces of the Nicaraguan people were stunning subjects for my new 50mm Canon lens. In one particular image, the face of a woman named Ursula, blinded as a result of parasitic infection, had such an impact on me that it’s still one of my favorite images to this day. I returned from that trip and asked every person I could convince to let me take their portrait. It was a fun and fascinating project I plan to repeat in short order.
I’ve been working to be intentional about that, about showing the images I love in order to connect with clients who love those vibes, too. I have a style I like to shoot. I like low light and rich, deep, natural color. I want to see wrinkles. I want to see humanness. I don’t love forced smiles. I’d rather have an image of someone not smiling at all, which is how we most often see the people we love anyway, right? I have a certain look and feel I’m going for, and I want to draw in clients who want that look, too.
Marissa is perfectly and naturally beautiful. She’s personable, easygoing, and a lover of nature, just like me. Some photographers will insist that photo sessions aren’t about the photographer at all, but I disagree. I think they absolutely are, because if I can’t connect with my clients on a very basic level—if we can’t talk and laugh and share with each other about simple and deep things while we’re together—it makes it very difficult for me to make an image that I love, and that’s the only thing I want to be out here doing.
We hiked the Gorge Metropark and I learned a lot about Marissa.
Her favorite book is All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.
Her favorite musicians are Alice in Chains, Mötley Crüe, and Nirvana.
Her favorite movie is Stand by Me.
Her heroes are her brother, Will, her mom, Jessica, and her dad, Keith.
Marissa loves school, fishing, hiking, and hanging out with friends, and after graduation, she plans to go to college and pursue civil engineering.
I’m so grateful that I can connect with people like Marissa and her mom, Jessica. I’m so grateful that I can pursue portraits in earnest, getting to know amazing humans along the way. My hope is that I can begin to add more portraits to my portfolio in the coming years. It’s truly something I love.