Professional Portraiture

I read a lot of photography blogs.  A lot.  Recently, I've seen a lot of photographers (or wannabe photographers) complaining about people saying things like "your camera takes awesome pictures! what kind is it? I want to take pictures like yours!".  I guess they get offended that people don't think the quality of the pictures is due to their amazing skillllllz, but rather they think it is due to their camera.  I've seen comebacks like "your oven makes awesome cupcakes! what kind of oven is it?" and other such cleverly sarcastic lines.

As I read these remarks, I thought - Yeah! What they said! I'm tired of people thinking a great camera will automatically entitle them to take good photos!  My skilllz make great photos!  I'm outraged! This is despicable!  A conspiracy!  Stick it to the man!...sorry, got a little carried away.  Anyway, I felt their pain.

I have a great camera.  It's awesomeness and kickassness and fantasticalness, all rolled into a seven pound block of glass and aluminum and plastic and whatever else Nikon puts into a camera.

I don't really know if my camera weighs seven pounds.

I also don't know if it has even an ounce of aluminum in it.  I lied.  I'm sorry.

As I was saying, I have a great camera.  And some pretty sweet glass (that's what we call lenses in the photog world..."glass"...cause we're cool like that.  And when I say "we" I mean photographers who really know what they're talking about.  I've never called my lenses "glass" in real life.  Cause I'm not a photographer.  I'm a picture-taker.  I don't know what I'm talking about.  But the ClarkPharm isn't real life, you crackhead!  Geeesh.) So I take some cool pictures sometimes.

Here are two examples of my cool pictures.

Grams and Tom.  Some nice portraits, no?  I like them.

These portraits really portray the character of the subjects.  I just had an epiphany!  They're called "PORTRAits" because they "PORTRAy"!?!?

Gosh, I get distracted easily.

So a lot of thought went into the composition and lighting of these two pics.  I tried to use the light from the kitchen to create artistic shadows and lines on their faces.  Used a little backlighting on Grams, and used a flatter light on Tom.  Lots of time and thought involved.  Yes, the camera helps, but this is skill man!!

I'm sorry, I'm lying again.

Triston took these pictures.

Seriously.

I hung my monster camera around his neck, showed him how to look through the view finder and how to push the shutter button, and sent him out into the world to take some pictures.  And these are what he came back with.

Maybe it is just the camera.  OR maybe T is a photography genius!!!!!!

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I spent an entire fifteen minutes of my life today trying to convince Mom that I was, in fact, driving home from work in Colorado tonight...and not driving home from the Omaha airport with Beanie to surprise her for Easter.

You surprise you parents one time and they suspect you for the rest of your life.  Even after I tried to convince them I was in Colorado (I yelled, I laughed, I whined, I gave up), they still called Beanie and harassed her about our locations.

Mom has a whole theory about my "plan" based on my facebook messages to friends, my lack of blogging, and my sister's absence today...she's like a super detective.

Except she's wrong, but try telling her that.