Apprehension.

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

Here's another example of what I was talking about in the previous post about portraits. Perhaps the subject would recognize herself, but it doesn't really matter if the viewer does or does not. The point here is the emotional resonance.

I don't remember if this was posed, or if she even realized I was taking here photo at the time. I was making it a habit of dragging my camera with me everywhere I went. So my friends didn't even notice the presence of a recording device. It became part of the unnoticed background of every situation, and I believe that leads to the best circumstances for framing portraits.

Not to say that anything would be taken away from this particular shot if she were conscious of what I was doing. It's still capable of conveying a palpable human emotion. It's hard for me to look at this without wondering what she's thinking about. And there is something almost unbearably touching about the finger in her mouth.

Prometheus Descending.

c. David Grim (taken 5/11/08)

I thought I'd continue the trend of posting "people shots" for a bit. This past weekend I used some spare time to organize the images on my external hard drive. I have hundreds of them, and I've had difficulty sitting down to sort through them.

On one hand, it's tempting to shoot living things because you catch them in poses and attitudes that simply can't be replicated. Inanimate objects may have more universal appeal, but you really have to go out of your way to find subject matter that hasn't been photographed by thousands of other folks. Still, there has to be something compelling in the picture because many viewers are disinclined to care about humans they don't know personally.

The thing that draws me to direct my camera toward people is that the technique I've been employing results in an odd depersonalization. While identifying features tend to get lost, the emotionality of expression seems to be exaggerated in a very interesting way. Individuals become more archetypal.

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.