100 Strangers

I have begun participating in a group on flickr that seeks to photograph 100 different strangers (per photographer) as a learning experience. A lot of the participants seem to be quite shy about approaching a complete stranger and asking to photograph them. For some reason, this does not seem to be a problem for me.

Perhaps it is because of my time spent in Japan, where strangers often approach each other for photographs. Perhaps it is because I have worked as a nurse, where I deal with complete strangers on a rather intimate, albeit professional basis each day. Perhaps my ease comes from a long history of reading people. I don't know why, I just don't seem to have a problem with the approach. Heck, all they can say is no.

In reality, I think that I can simply pick out the willing. They advertise the fact that they want to be seen like a peacock. It's the people who are the most unusual that not only make the most interesting photographs, but also are the most willing to allow an unknown photographer to document their appearance. People like Mr. Fontana, pictured here, are much more difficult to convince.

L.J. "Boots" Hinton

"They knew they would die, but they would die together. It was a love story that shamed Romeo and Juliet," declares L.J. "Boots" Hinton. A retired lawman, the 75 year old Hinton is now the proprietor of the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, Louisiana. Boots Hinton knows the stories of the notorious lover criminals all too well. He is the son of Deputy Sheriff Ted Hinton, a participant in the May 23, 1934 ambush outside of Gibsland.

Known locally as the "Marshal of Main Street", Boots constantly peers out his plate glass window, ever monitoring the goings on in the sleepy Southern town. The town will soon awake from it's slumber, however. This photo was taken a few days before the 75th anniversary of the bloody ambush. Gibsland holds a festival each year to commemorate the event. Boots is expecting the 75th anniversary to be especially busy. All the while he sat for his portrait in the natural light of his office, his Bluetooth kept him busy. His desk phone kept ringing. Calls were coming in from all over the United States, and as far away as Europe.

Portraiture on the Fly

Over the years, I have made a practice of studying people and their interactions. Years ago when me and my swabbie buddies would hit the bamboo bars and honky tonks around the far east, they had tractor beams to the pretty girls. I was always the sailor who would get a beer and settle into a dark corner to watch the people and let the prettiest girl come to me.

I have used this self taught mental data base to quickly process information that has kept me safe, but it is also something that is now coming out in my photography. I am fast discovering that that I am a portraitist. People have always fascinated me. Now I am simply recording it.

I am gaining the audacity to simply walk up to people and ask if I can photograph them. I make it a point to dress conservatively and have my camera ready. If they look confused, I quickly explain that I am an amateur photographer, and just why I would like to photograph them, whether it is their hair, their shirt, or their poise. I haven't been refused yet.

I have usually studied the potential subject at a distance to assess their willingness and the light they happen to be standing in. I have the Nikon set to 4 fps, and if they agree to be photographed, I line them up and squeeze off a few shots. Then, I thank them and let them get back to what they were doing. If they want to converse a bit, I talk about what ever they want, and possibly continue to get a few shots. If they are willing, I get their name and give them my own. I suppose I will have to get some business cards made up now. I haven't had the moxie to ask a stranger for a repeat session in the future, but I have a feeling I will soon.

It is fairly easy to spot those people willing to be photographed. The young ones are the ones who make themselves stand out. The older ones are the people with a life lived etched on their faces. These people want to be photographed, remembered, and celebrated, but they want to be respected as well. Sometimes, I think the key is making the person comfortable and confident that they will be respected in the image.

The best places to find willing subjects is where people feel uninhibited. Festivals are excellent opportunities, as are concerts and museums, gallery openings, and live theaters (if you can get a camera inside). People tend to go to these places to be seen, they dress appropriately, are prepared, and perhaps liquored up a bit. Ultimately, they become a bit bored. The chance opportunity to be photographed intrigues them. I have even had people approach me to have their picture taken when they see me taking photographs. That was surprising indeed.

Black & White

I like black and white photography. Monochromatic photography teaches the eye to see. Shooting film in black and white teaches the photographer to see contrasts, and and manipulate the camera settings to make the most of them. The end result is more graphic impact when the camera man does switch to color.

There is something about black and white that provides an immediacy and a truthfulness to a photograph that color can't seem to match. It is odd that a monochromatic image can achieve a greater sense of reality than color can provide. Perhaps it is because black and white has been a staple of photojournalism for so long. Whatever the reason, B&W is appealing to me.

Another advantage that I have found with digital photography is the ability to shoot in color and later convert to black and white. That was impossible with film. Through the magic of a good digital processing program, anything that can be adjusted in the darkroom can be adjusted on a monitor. I'm finding the ability to switch my images from color to monochrome to be particularly gratifying.

Today I went to visit a couple of old friends and had a portrait session with each. It was good to see them doing well. As for the gun section, Duff and I shot a bit of lead as well. Duff still out shoots me, but then, he grew up buying 22 bullets and using them to supplement a diet of greens and peas with small game.

Perhaps tomorrow I will write about shooting lead. The plan is to take Little Darling to the range. Today, I shot an old Colt Woodsman as an afterthought, to enjoy some time with a friend. Sometimes I wonder how long that will remain a possibility. Today, my focus was on shooting a Nikon, and getting back to black and white.

Southern Gothic

I have a fascination with street photography. I tend to associate candid photography on the streets with New York City, and have shied away from it. It is becoming easier for me to ask strangers for a photograph. I will simply ask politely, but other times point to my camera and wait for an affirmative nod. I'm not opposed to the surreptitious photo, but it doesn't seem right for me. I have found that the motor drive is a great tool. The second or third photo is often the best, as the subject relaxes, thinking the encounter is completed.

Another aspect that I have deliberately avoided in my photography is the peculiar convergence of social tensions that make up the region in which I live. That is a mistake, I think. Just as religiosity, sweltering heat and guns are an indelible part of life in the South, so are the social tensions of racism, self-righteousness, and the well known but unspoken etiquette that allows a peaceful co-existence of many dichotomies.

The often slightly flamboyant characters that emerge from the simmering gumbo of the South are unique. A few weeks ago I was lamenting that I am not able to travel to far off places to take photos as I did in the Far East years ago. Yet, there is an exotic spice that surrounds me. I don't think I will reject the photos that show this imagery any longer. If the sunburned biker has a tattoo of a Confederate flag on his bicep, so be it. If the Red Hat Society is sipping mint juleps with too much bourbon, who cares? It's time to accept the quirky oddities that make up the life around me.

"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic," declared Flannery O'Connor years ago. I suppose that's true. Trying to filter out the "Southerness" from my photography is choking the life from it. Southern writers, from William Faulkner to Lewis Grizzard, have embraced the Southern Gothic theme in their work. I'm not going to embrace it, but I am no longer going to run from it. The complexity of the region and its people is fertile ground for intriguing photography.

Yesterday, while attending an antique automobile show, I came across a pair of musicians playing Christian Bluegrass beside their pick-up truck and photographed them. The older string bass player appeared to be a good old boy patterned after Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit. He couldn't be closer if he tried. The guitar player wore a T shirt with a religious message. Being obscured by his instrument, the message appeared to be of a neo-nazi bent. His fleeting glance towards my camera was reminiscent of Jeffery Dahmer. Now, the bass player could be a Methodist minister, and the guitar player could be the president of the National Honor Society, but the unity of the colors, hair styles and the separateness of the individuals who were making music together made for a photograph that should not be discarded.

There is a swashbuckling exuberance of life spent in the South. Perhaps it springs from too much time spent in the unrelenting heat and humidity. Perhaps it exists because more sane people have left for temperate climes. Whatever the reason, I will not discard the Southern Gothic genre from my photography any longer.

Vietnam Vet

Nikon D-200 85mm ƒ1.8

Rainy Day Shooting

It was a rainy day, so we were looking for a dry place to shoot a few photographs. My son was in town, and I was wanting to get some shots of him. He would be my primary model. He had his Canon digital camera along for the ride too.

After a bit of discussion, we decided to go to an old parking garage to shoot. The neutral tones of the concrete would be great for reflecting available light, and the hard geometric structure would form a distinctive background for a strong male portrait. The parking garage we chose had huge open air areas with diffused directional sunlight streaming in.

The upper decks of the parking garage were empty, so we had a huge studio with natural light in which to work. What I was not expecting was the color available. Because the skies were so dark, the incandescent lights of the parking garage been triggered. When I white balanced the camera for the incandescent lights, the exterior became a deep glowing aquamarine color.

The effect was an illumination that reminds me of television screens and high powered, high tech executives. The pinks, lavenders and oranges were as unpredictable as they were stunning. Thankfully, I was shooting digital images. I ran through a lot of bytes. Luck played as big a roles as knowledge in my experimentation. Had I been shooting film, I would have floundered, or not had the quantity of shots necessary to cherry pick the good ones.

Probably my favorite photo of my son from the day's shooting is the one on the right. My son was still wearing a coat and tie from the Easter service at church. It was nice to have him dressed up for a photo. The lighting on his face is good, the bokeh is interesting, but not distracting, and the little serendipitous red blob on the margin holds the entire photo in balance.

Little Darling got into the act as well, using my son's Canon EOS. She had such a good time on the other side of the lens that I am considering upgrading her to a DSLR camera. If nothing else, having her shoot as well educates her as a model. While its difficult to take a bad photograph of her, having her know what the photographer is trying to capture through the lens can only make her better.

I took most of my shots with my 85mm prime auto focus lens with the 1.8 aperture cranked wide open. This lens has become a favorite of mine. On a DX camera it translates to a 105mm lens, but the real bonus is the backgrounds it gives. The 85 mm lens allows me to keep some distance, and since it has a large aperture, the depth of field is narrow enough to throw most backgrounds out of focus, while the auto focus keeps the subject sharp.

As the afternoon continued, I found that the interaction between my models produced some of the most interesting results. I swapped over to an 18-70mm zoom and opened the glass up to ƒ3.5, again wide open. I keep the ISO of the D-200 set to +1. The environmental studies that resulted surprised me.

I had not realized just how blue the light pouring into the garage was, nor did I realize how orange the artificial lights were. The complimentary combination of the two light sources led me to play with composition even more, integrating the light sources themselves into the balance.

For all of the intriguing nuances of the light though, adjustments had to be made and otherwise good photographs were discarded because of horrible lighting. A superb portrait of my son was in the folder to be culled because his face was a glowing red orange. I decided to convert the image to black and white, and then I rebalanced the tonality to allow the grey sky to become white. Voila! The orange light had the effect of a orange filter on black and white film.

I am looking forward to using the parking garage for portraiture again. I want to see how morning light, as well as afternoon light and a sunset illuminate subjects in it's dark recesses. I think I may have found one of my favorite locations to shoot photographs of people.