Some days back, I was asked to photograph a couple of artists for a friend’s new blog that showcases the personalities, artists and small business owners from the Bemis Building here in Seattle.
There was one minor hitch though: neither of my subjects were all that keen on the typical portrait. In fact, they wanted to see what I might be able to do if I ‘weren’t’ to show their faces.
I’m all about client services, so I was happy to oblige. In fact, I’m quite liking the results.
More always,
Mike
“Doing Math in Your Head” series
I’ve had an idea knocking around for quite some time about a portrait series showing folks doing simple math in their head. Think I was interested in the idea that no matter how comfortable you are at computing digits in the brain, the simple act can indeed yield some interesting portrait results.*
Seen above is Muna, a graphic design friend kind enough to sit for me as the first subject of the day. I realized pretty quickly that math was not Muna’s strong suit, and she had no problem telling me about it. Wanted to push it another layer, so I got a few more folks into the studio who do math pretty much the entire day.
This is Kasey, my favorite teller from the local bank where I do most of my financial business. They’re the nicest folks and when I ran the idea by them, they jumped at the idea of sitting for these left-of-center portraits.
Here’s Cat, manager of the bank. She was always at me about getting that business account. When I came through on that for her, I told her she owed me one. She’s a sport and delivered quite exceptionally on that promise.
And finally, Sam, the lone guy at the bank. Don’t think he’s smiling because there’s a 5:1 ratio of guys to girls. Oh no, it’s because he was the quickest calculator in the bunch.
Several interesting projects in the works, so stay tuned for new posts over the next couple weeks.
More always,
Mike
*quick note on the project: the left panel image was captured from behind the camera by way of cable release. The right panel image was captured about a half-second to second after by way of ‘capture’ button on a tethered laptop by a completely different DSLR system set up in profile to my subject. Diptychs composed from chronologically symmetrically-sequenced images from either capture system.