Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Impromptu Portrait Session - an Add-On to my Magnum Workshop Experience

I had the good (great) fortune of meeting this gentleman at the very end of my Magnum workshop in Provincetown, Massachussetts. I met him by being open to opportunities, and by approaching him with an honest request to make a few images.
 
David is a figure of some prominence around here, and was planning to have a photographer visit him next week to shoot portraits for a magazine article. However, he gave me the opportunity to come into his writing studio and shoot a few of my own. Here are the best four shots I got from my ten minutes or so with him.
 
All of these were shot on my Leica M9 with 50mm f1.4 Summilux. I would have liked to use my 35mm lens, as the writing studio was quite cozy and I was challenged to get far enough away to make the picture I wanted. But, I only had the 50mm lens with me, and made the best of it.
 
One of the things I learned (re-learned?) in this workshop is the importance of being out there, being ready for opportunities to make images, and even creating opportunities when necessary. I worked for five days on a project, having a very difficult time getting to even the rather meager number of 5-8 images needed for our presentation to the workshop and to the public at the Fine Arts Work Center here in Provincetown. The experience of meeting David was exactly what I was looking for all week.
 
I ended up using only a single image of David in my presentation (not one of the images shown here), but feel that the experience of meeting him significantly added to my workshop experience.
 
DMC-365.blogspot.com
 

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