In setting up this website I’ve had to go through THOUSANDS of images from all the years I’ve been shooting professionally. And by professionally I mean when kind friends agreed to pay me $50 back in 2009 to let me take their family pics to help “build my portfolio.” Bless them, I look back now and laugh at my over confidence. To be fair, I was far from terrible. But so much room to grow. I’m my own worst critic on top of it of course.
What do I put on my home page? What do I put in my portfolios? How on earth do I narrow down my favorites from the 35,000+ images I’ve produced for my clients so far? It’s damn hard, that’s for sure.
While scrolling through different categories I find that selecting my favorite portraits is the easiest of the bunch. I take plenty of perfectly fine classical portraits that will stand the test of time but every now and then there’s an image that just sticks with me. The fact that I have more and more of those images in the last year or two is proof that I’m where I need to be (i.e. setting up this proper website and going officially grown up level pro). Covid has sucked but one little silver lining is it’s afforded me the time to really critique my own work and tweak how I shoot and pose and light my subjects and that little bit has felt like turning a huge corner on the amount of portfolio worthy shots I take.
So if picking out portraits is the easiest, what’s the hardest? Hands down events. Hoo-boy. As I look through the events I’ve shot, I feel like every event’s images should come with a caveat:
- This event was shot in a low ceilinged former speakeasy with hardly any lights
- For this wedding the groom absolutely hates getting his picture taken and refused to smile (but I heard later he thought I made the whole process a lot less painful).
- Due to lateness we ended up cramming outdoor pics into a very narrow window of opportunity before the ominous clouds rolled in with a rain storm.
- This event was shot in a weird little restaurant with tons of fairy lights that wouldn’t turn on.
- This family chose to spend their budget to hire me to document the special occasion and therefore had minimal left to decorate a very plain worship building fellowship hall.
- The guest of honor was flat out drunk by the end of the reception.
- The kids were celebrating at the reception in the upper room of a restaurant after a game of laser tag and therefore were all wearing black.
- It was 97 degrees out and we were all schvitzing like mad and the bride had an ice pack down her dress.
- We were supposed to have an outdoor party without masks but the rain drove everyone indoors with masks. What can you do?
It’s hard to find just a handful of images that both represent an event and stand alone without the story behind it. When you see the image of the groom stoic in every pic and wonder, “Eek, how on earth could this photographer not get this guy to relax?” it’s because he literally couldn’t. Similarly, I have a few clients with special needs kids and for the most part you won’t be able to pick them out of the crowd. Those slightly crooked smiles or twinkly eyes mean so much to me knowing I’m able to encourage and squeeze out just enough expression of joy and then catch it at the right moment. But those pics aren’t necessarily “portfolio worthy” in the conventional sense but mean almost as much to me as the ones that are.
Anyway, back to the grind. Expect some pics to start popping up here soon!