Tag: documentary
I was clicking away some pinata-punishing photos at a birthday party for a friend when I heard a disturbing sound from my camera. Thinking the shutter may have folded, I figured I was holding a fancy paperweight anyway, so I tried shooting again: the viewfinder went black. Interesting. I shot again: the viewfinder went half black. I realized my mirror had issues; not the shutter.
I attended a wedding this past Saturday, and I had a couple thoughts. Now, keep in mind, this wedding was in Thailand, so this is not completely applicable to all weddings…as if it could be even if it were in the United States, because weddings are all so wildly different these days.
My thoughts were not just about wedding photography, as in the professional hired to photograph the event, but also all the photography which takes place in a wedding. Really, I took a couple snapshots which could say quite a bit in and of themselves.
Schoepf’s Barbeque here in Belton, Texas blesses my home with a double dose of love. Not only does that wonderful aromatic fume drift by my house when the winds are favorable, but most weekends, I have the pleasure of falling to sleep to the thumping of the distant bass drum, some indistinct bass guitar, and cheering crowds at the end of every song. I guess that would be annoying to some, but I enjoy it.
This is a little take-away from a wedding I helped shoot recently. The focus of wedding photography, fittingly, is the bride and groom, but there is so much more going on: relationships, history, feuds, and innumerable others stories in progress. As soon as I ran across this photo back at home when reviewing the whole set, I loved it.
Pumping diesel for heavy machinery, sporting a hardhat and safety goggles, using a unique but most likely purposeful grip, and even providing shipping containers for a background: this is the kind of photo I throroughly enjoy finding. I see them a lot more than I have a chance to capture them.
I never could have dreamed this day would come. The only thing that would top an indian (of the American variety) walking into my day in full regalia would be moving out to the reservation and going native myself. I had seen the “Native American Dance” performance slated on the schedule for our school, but for all I know, some dude in blue jeans and a dollar store head dress was going to strut in with his cultural spiel. Just because I would beat myself if it did turn out well and I was not ready, I had to scout a potential portrait location.
An elementary school cafetorium is not exactly the most inspiring backdrop for an American Indian portrait shoot, so I took a little walk behind the school as soon as I arrived that morning. Just two weeks before, I had been day dreaming in that very grassy field, which was much more tall and Great-Plains-wavy then, what it would have been like hundreds of years ago, pre white dudes. The gentle, brown sea sparked the beginning of a (most likley ill-fated) novel idea. Long story short: there is no better, close place for the potential shoot.
Then, into my cafetorium walks Tallbear. I swooned. I recovered, helped hook up the sound system, took a few shots with some tastefully 80s colored backgrounds, pondered the possibility of wrangling them into an impromptu portrait shoot, then swooned again.
“Name a space shuttle.” Silence. I did not really think it was that hard of a question, but when questioning elementary-aged children at a city summer camp on space trivia (we had just been visited by a representative from Space-X which tests their rockets here locally), I finally realized these children have grown up post-Columbia. The have been few shuttles going up and the excitement has been waning for many years. So, these kids know very little. So, when thinking up the week’s project, I decided to do a mini documentary film on the Columbia disaster to help create some shuttle-related memories for them.