Street|Portraits in the park…

To this point, I have been setting up for these StreetPortrait sessions in pretty high traffic, high activity intersections.  People are going somewhere.  It seems that the real skill is trying to convince someone to take the time (no matter how little) to have a portrait made.  Interestingly, it tends to exclude the “busy” people.  So I thought that I would change it up.  For this quick setup, I decided to try out one of the large city parks here in Houston.  I wanted to find a place where people are already lingering…excercising, walking, sitting by the large fountain systems, reading a book, lounging in the grass… I wanted to find out if I could have conversations that extended beyond the forty-five seconds it takes to make an image.

So, this StreetPortraits vol. comes from about a half-hour in Hermann Park on a lazy, late-summer evening here in Houston. I was of course glad that Cody came out to shoot as well…

First things first: Roll out the cart, setup the (small) backdrop, put up the light, shoot a test:

Now obviously the left image is natural light, the right is strobe… Personally, I was really digging the natural light, but it was getting late and we were already chasing the light.  Every few minutes was another stop gone and in a pinch, I went for consistency… So we fine tuned the strobe and off we went.

Some images:

Now, I know that I have talked about the why of this project, but it struck me again how strongly I feel about giving subjects a copy of the images that I make.  Giving someone a good portrait can be such a healing act.  More importantly, though, it acknowledges our partnership in the process.  For these moments, I am not just “Taking Pictures.”  We both GIVE, we both RECEIVE.  Now, I don’t want to have an overly developed sense of importance when it comes to photography.  I don’t necessarily believe that photography, in and of itself, can really do that much.  People surely can, though, and I do believe that we, through our interactions, are responsible for putting legs on the big ideas: peace, hope, love, home.  But again, rarely is it the big, sexy, “significant” stuff that helps us feel connected.  The clearest pictures are painted through the small, intentional actions, repeated over and over.  So for me, with this project, the small action is simply passing along a copy of the image.  I hand out cards with an email address to my subjects/neighbors(!) so that they can contact me if they want to.  I would say that nearly seventy-five percent of the people that I photograph end up contacting me for images. Of those that ask, I would say a third of them have emailed me after receiving the images to tell me:

1. how surprised they are to have actually received them

2. how much they enjoy them

It’s a small thing, but it is something.

Now, if all of this Street|Portrait stuff sounds interesting to you, then head over and check out my friend Jeremy’s idea: Help-Portrait. It is going to be quite an event this December and it could be a great way for you to get involved with some GIVE AND TAKE photography.

What do you think? Email me at ryanwrites[at]gmail[dot]com or just click here