The Portrait

In his daybooks, Edward Weston wrote with some degree of fondness of the times when people would come to his studio and browse his collection of ‘heads’. What he was referring to of course, were portraits. It seems remarkable now, but in the early days of photography, photographers often sold their portraits of people as works of art.

While I don’t consider myself to be a portrait photographer, I do enjoy creating them given the opportunity – and figure sessions provide ample opportunities to capture wonderful and intimate portraits. I thought I’d share some of my recent favorites.

More New Work From West Hall...

 Recently, I’ve written about how I felt this blog had become somewhat less about photography and more about writing. I resolved to make the change to shorter, more concise entries, and to include more than one image. After all, this is a blog about photography. I’m happy to see I’m doing just that.

Still, some things should be said; minor details and samplings of life, opinion, and thought. Unfortunately, it’s not much different than it has been: my day job continues to dominate my time; I’m very much behind in my post production work; and I shot another very successful session at the West Hall Street location with models Sarah and Michelle after quite a busy week on the road. It was the first time either had modeled with another model and the results, after a cursory scan, look promising.
 
With this week’s entry, I’m introducing a new series of images. Interestingly enough, these look very much like they were shot in a studio setting. They weren't. This is more of that amazing and versatile West Hall window light. I’ve not thought of a name for these yet; for now they’re simply ‘untitled.’

Enjoy.

The Late Summer Doldrums...

Again, not too much to report. Life moves on, and the day job is keeping me hopping. The editing is lagging and I’m trimming the shoot schedule somewhat. This isn’t as bad as it sounds; working capital and cash flow are powerfully seductive things to the self employed.

Still, I feel a bit stuck; akin to a boat hove to and adrift in the doldrums, heat, humidity, and thunderstorms all around. Summer in Savannah.

More from the West Hall Street location.

In the Summertime...

Once again, I’ve not too much to report photographically. Edits and post work continue on the early summer’s work, and more sessions are in the planning stages for later this month and early September.

I can report that I appear to have developed a successful, workable, and practical image organization system. As with most things, time will tell. So far though, so good.

This past Sunday I did a short session in my home with Michelle R. My approach to the session was one of trial and error, and the results are directly in line with that mindset. We toyed with the idea of some outdoor shots; however, it was burning hot. With the air temperature in the high 90's and humidity in the 60 or 70 percentile, the heat index factor - think of it as sort of a 'reverse wind-chill' - was near 112 degrees. No thanks.

We did create a small number of usable images; unfortunately that was the exception and not the rule. I’ll post one or two with a future entry.

Here are more from that fabulous space on West Hall Street.

More From "The Sessions on West Hall"

Editing and new session planning continues as time and life permits. I’m still very excited about this new work and am very eager to get it out where it can be seen

For some time now, I’ve wanted to get the work onto the walls of art galleries outside of Savannah. I believe one way of doing that is to enter my work into juried competitions. It’s not something I’ve done too often; I think in the past 12 years I’ve entered two. However, after a recent telephone conversation with friend Dave Rudin, it occurred to me it may be the best way to start the process.

Until now, this is not something with which I’ve had much interest. I don’t know exactly what’s out there in the way of juried exhibition opportunities, or how to find them. If anyone can share or recommend resources for calls for entries, it would be much appreciated.

I do maintain portfolios on various photography and art oriented sites, such as Community Zoe, Photo.Net, and the well known Model Mayhem. While these are good places for other artists and photographers to see my work and offer the occasional comment, I don’t think they’re sites gallery directors frequent when looking for new artists to show. Serious market research would seem to be in my future.

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My image organizational system isn’t performing as I’d hoped; time for a bit more investigation into the subject. My image workflow, meaning the steps I take in getting from the RAW digital file or negative scan to the final image isn’t the issue. Organizing my images, and keeping them organized, is. What worked with film isn’t translating so well to digital.

With that in mind, I’m going to slow the editing down a bit and concentrate on getting a very solid file organization system in place.

Stay tuned.