Remember when I put up a password-protected post a few weeks ago? I had spent an afternoon running around Tulsa to shoot some photos for my friend Brad, who was being featured in a Christian Science Journal article. The photo editor had asked him to send a picture or two of Tulsa, so we scrambled all over the city, looking for just the right angle of downtown, before returning to his office and finding the perfect shot right outside the window.
I took several pictures of the sort Brad thought the editors would want, and then I coaxed him into a quick environmental portrait, which he assured me was not what they were looking for.
The Journal came out this week. This is the photo they ran:
I’d really love to get a portrait where you can see more of Brad’s face, but based on his description of the article and similar features I’d seen the magazine do with other CS teachers in the past, I decided I probably needed to focus less on Brad himself and more on the city and his connection to it. I was pretty sure this was going to be The Shot as soon as I saw it. The fact that the editor agreed is kind of reassuring: I consider it a validation of my page-design instincts, which haven’t had much exercise in the past couple of years.
Here are a few of the other images I shot that afternoon:
I think any of these would have worked just fine, but I’m glad they chose the one with Brad in it. At some point, I’d really like to photograph him with the Holga. The Rebel does nice work, but the Holga is my portrait camera; it seems to have a knack for picking up whatever it is I love about the person I’m photographing. There’s something about the soft focus and the vignetting that manages to capture a subject’s identity better than the crisp, controlled shots I get with the Rebel.
I haven’t read the entire article yet, but I glanced over it briefly yesterday, and it looks pretty good. It’s not online yet, but I’m hoping it will be posted sooner or later so I can link to it.
— Emily
Red Fork Hippie 