(Helena)
She is one of my favorite people to photograph. It's because she is young and beautiful and has a naturally pleasant demeanor. Those qualities do very well in photography, though they are not requirements. I have known her since she was a girl. The little sister of two close friends who became a close friend herself. She just reached out to me because she and her husband are celebrating their 10th anniversary and she wanted higher res images of some of the pics I've taken of them along the way. I sent her hundreds of candid shots. The one below was of special interest to her, pre-children, when their love was in its initial bloom.
If my own life's trajectory had been entirely up to me then I would now be famous for photographing women I know and would have become rich and famous in the process. Not as rich and famous as the women I photograph, but you get the idea.
I was chatting through text with a friend yesterday, one who works as a professional photographer in Orlando. He just got a repeat assignment to do the Daytona 500, so he had rented a telephoto lens and was sending me pics that he had taken from the previous year. I was envious of that life, though I suspect that along the way he has lost some of his passion for photography by working in the field. There is a trade-off for so many things. If you truly love music, then avoid its industry, etc. When other people are going to pay you to take images then you must discover what they wish to see.
What's the fucking fun in that?
I coulda' been a sun flare....
I want to take a road trip in which the sole purpose would be photography. Everywhere I go it is always a secondary activity, and the results tend to capture that. I travel and happen to have cameras with me. I almost exclusively shoot Rachel, Rhys, and Barkley. Now, Akira also, I must assume. But it has been three decades since I have taken a trip with the intention of only taking photographs, and even then I was the driver. It was my friend that was doing all the photography. I want to see if I can develop a certain kind of eye for rural roads and landscapes. Looking at pictures is easy, making them is endless. You can look at these images for minutes or hours and many of them seem entirely unscripted, as if the photographer barely cared when he was pressing the shutter and with where the camera was pointed. Then, go out and try to imitate it. I have no idea why I would aspire to doing something that must seem to others as if it is evidently no special skill at all. But everybody gets to look at things, so there is always so much more to be seen that what can ever possibly be readily apparent to all.
Instagram proves that same point much better than the above paragraph could ever hope to.
Looks like Rhys and I will drive into the city today to meet up with a family of friends from NYC. Rachel will stay home with Akira the Destroyer. She has some things to do and the pup is nowhere close to being able to be left alone yet, certainly not for an entire day.
Today will be a long and exhausting one, but I will bring cameras with me. Now I feel obligated to bring my best one.
The best looking people I know, Ben and Helena:
Shit. I just realized that the lead image of Helena is one I've already used here.
I'm slippin'.
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