Houston Street Portraits
I have made a promise to myself:
If I ever have enough rental gear to set up a street portrait station (and time before I have to take it back), then I will set up and shoot portraits.
However, this time, it was a much smaller operation. I called my friend Marc to have him come assist…
Again, first thing is to pick the location. I have been keeping my eyes open for good places to shoot in and around Houston. One place that I have known that I wanted to shoot is in a small park directly across the street from the county hospital ER… It always has an interesting mixture of people, from hospital staff to patients in gowns to family and friends. The common denominator? Everyone is on a smoke break. There are literally thousands of cigarettes scattered all over the ground. It is a great place to make some interesting contacts and give people some images. It requires a balance of forwardness and humility because, as we found out, some people are literally having the worst day of their lives.
Ok, now the set-up. For this one, I brought a small roll of white paper that I planned on throwing up on C-stand. The roll of paper is small enough for one stand, but I put up a second for support. Clamp it, gaff it and we are ready to shoot a few test images to dial in the light. Marc stood in for me.
Once the exposure was dialed in, it was time to find some subjects willing to stand in…
Fortunately, after having shot the Dallas Street Portraits, I was able to show potential subjects some images on my iphone. I was surprised at how much that helped to convince people to come and get some images made…
A few images:
The weather was very bizarre that day… It was unusually windy and unfortunately, what happens when you put up a 5 ft. wide piece of paper 7 ft. up in the air is that it acts as an enormous kite. If you have properly secured the paper to the light stands, then that “kite” will actually pick up and fly down the park. Which it obviously did. Repeatedly. So, we ditched the backdrop. I hated to do it because a big goal of this “project” is to totally remove the subjects from their environment and shoot on a “neutral” background to create a sense of commonality…but the mega-kite was just getting in the way of making good connections with people…
So, with the “natural” backdrop:
On a side note, we brought out the old Polaroid Land Camera and it proved to be a great addition. After I shoot someone’s portrait, I give them a card so that they can contact me through email to receive the digital image. Well, it has been a frequent occurrence that subjects don’t actually have an email address. If that situation came up, we would snap an image with the polaroid and give them the print immediately. It was an unintended happy accident. More refining to come…
What do you think?
