The Portrait Painter.

c. David Grim (taken 4/5/08)

It's a bit ironic now when I think about it, that I used to try to shy away from taken photos that could be described as "portraits" and/or "abstracts". I felt the former were generally cliche and obvious, and the latter didn't seem to make much sense in the photographic medium.

Boy, how things have changed. This shot was taken shortly after I bought my current camera. I had struggled with a DSLR for about a year, and was highly dissatisfied with my output. I just wasn't meant to be a very technical photographer, and lugging that thing around in its unwieldy bag filled with equipment was certainly dampening my enthusiasm.

So when I got the new model, I was excited to learn it could do some odd and wonderful things. Plus, I could simply stash it in my pocket and go. It meant that I was a lot more spontaneously playful in my image-making, and as a result I started to see possibilities in themes that I had previously avoided. This is the result of one such session. Obviously I was having a lot of fun that evening.