I feel like I’m being pulled toward making sets of images that have more of a narrative to them. Individually, the images are significant and can hold their own on a wall but when stitched together they create a visual story.
Which is a bit funny and unusual if you know my history and how I began taking photos in the first place.
I started all those years ago with so many ideas and elaborate costumes and complex hair and makeup and people I knew that I coerced into posing and all this planning and preparation…to take ONE IMAGE.
An entire world of an idea in one image.
What an idiot. What a genius. I don’t know, the jury is still out.
Eventually I got sucked into the tidal wave that is boudoir photography and suddenly I was taking a lot of images of each look in varying poses and angles in order to sell more art in album form. I really cut my teeth with boudoir, and I still adore (and excel at) photographing it.
Lately I’ve been doing a mix of boudoir and stylized photoshoots. I’m slowly making things a reality that have lived in my head for years. (Sometimes. Most of the time it’s less dream-building and more technique building, but both are valuable.) I’m growing a bit as a photographer too, and I think it’s beginning to show.
My work is getting the teensiest bit…better.
Which is not happening by chance. I’m actually working at it.
One of the things I want to explore and hone in on in my work going forward is the storytelling aspect. The feeling of being there in the image when you look at it. This is done by combining many small things all together, from wardrobe to posing to movement to editing…all (hopefully) coalescing into a tome of a visual feast. There’s no real formulae, you have to figure it out on your own over time.
I’m not there yet, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be, which is really exciting. For one, detail shots don’t come naturally to me, and I feel that’s an integral part to shaping a visual story. I have a fun journey ahead.
This shoot with Nico is my attempt at starting to fiddle with the idea of narrative.
Consider it a sketch.
Of a boy in the woods and the water.
Boredom and contentment and moodiness and energy all rolled into corduroy and suspenders.
