Growing up, I was an observer of people around me, on the television screen, on magazine pages, strangers and friendly faces. I was a shitty lip-reader. I could lip-read if they were my kinfolk, but beyond that, I had absolutely no idea what was pouring out of people’s mouths. So I became attuned to what they were NOT saying – how they stood, how their hands found their place, whether they were resting on a hip or tightly clenched, how their eyes rove around, quickly or slowly, steady or flitting, how their faces look, how their bodies moved. They told me stories through these tiny tell-tale actions. That became my truth. I grew up without closed-captioning until I was in 7th grade when my parents won a TV in a contest, and they chose a TV with a built-in closed-captioning. I went to drive-in theaters in the shadow of Fayetteville city limits, underneath starry sky, and learned how to “read” the story unfolding and guessed at the ending, and invariably, I would be right about the movie’s ending. I obsessed about the whys of the way people behaved. I drew pictures of them. I studied them. I could major in psychology, but I never did because my heart and soul belonged to Art. I sought the beauty everywhere in the world I lived in.

As a child of the South, the pathos of the people around me left a very deep impression on me. I grew up, writing stories and making movies inside my head. I wanted to be a filmmaker. I went off to college and studied theater, art, film-making, studio production, anything that has to do with people, be it a philosophy course or a psychology course. A major life crisis left me in a position where I had to make a decision. A decision that ultimately led me to photography. Led me to run off to Savannah, Georgia. Led me to resume photographic studies at Savannah College of Art and Design. My choice of study was people, not landscape or anything else. There simply was something about the people I shot. Each of them had a story. The soul of a picture is not how pretty it looked, but how it grabs you, the audience, and pulls you in. You want to know what’s happening within that frame. My personal aesthetics is not how beautiful the art is, but how it feels right, how it has the power to grab me and pull me in, has the power to leave me reeling, to wonder and be in awe of the artwork. It has to have soul.

Someone told my husband a few weeks ago that she feels that my work is “ordinary. Nothing special.” That hurts. It made me second-guess myself. Made me sarcastic and said to my husband, “Here I am, producing ordinary images. I am a nobody producing ordinary images.” It made my husband angry whenever I said that. That person, for a few weeks, held power over me. Made me take a thousand looks at my work. Then I said, “That’s all right. If she feels that way, then my work is not for her. I have had people who fell in love with my work. There are some who don’t like my work. That’s all right.” That that, I shook off her words, and thus they lost power over me.

Artists, true artists, are always in a process of evolution. My work has been evolving for many years. What I am creating right now will not be the same years down the road, but the fundamental will always remain the same – my aesthetics and why I shoot people: to find the truth in the stories they are telling through their body language, the environment they are in, the situations that led them to a certain point where/when I photograph them. The truth of what they are doing. It may be documentary. It may be a product of my imagination. It may simply be anything. Truth, after all, is subjective. Truth is what I perceive the people to be. It may not be their own truth, but it’s mine.

image taken at a neighbors’ 2nd birthday party

What more could I say than what I said in the sneak preview? Don’t you think Julnar and Devin make the sweetest couple? Love. What more could be more powerful than love?

It was one very hot day, just past noon, when I met Julnar and Devin. She had contacted me and wanted some sweet photographs of them being in love. They were very shy, and they were so sweet. They love the nature, so Julnar suggested that we meet at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC.

I wanted to do something in black and white, and Julnar, with her boyfriend Devin, gave me the opportunity to do this project. I grew up seeing vintage photographs, and the posture was as formal as the people’s attire, and I thought it would be ironic to have the sense of the formal while wearing casual outfits, and Julnar’s and Devin’s shyness really brought out the formalness.

Thank you, Julnar and Devin, for giving me the opportunity to photograph you both, and I hope you both continue to be in love since the last time I saw you, back in April 2010.

I never got around to showing off the ShotBox images from Rochel’s and Beejay’s wedding in Washington, DC.  I wanted to hold off from posting the images until I got the new website and blog up and running, so here they are!!!!

Their wedding at the Hampshire View Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, dawned a bright sunny day, a wonderful sign that they were going to end the night on the most happy note.  I came into the ladies’ room, and Bethany was in the middle of all the swirling women working to make her into the loveliest Cinderella like she was the calm eye of a storm.  She sat there, quietly with a smile, her eyes shining with quiet happiness.  By the end of that day, she was going to be Mrs. Brandon Bures, and she would’ve kissed her bridegroom for the first time in the years of their dating relationship.  They had agreed, from the beginning, that they would not kiss, and that their first kiss was going to be special and magical.

On the other side of the church, Brandon and his men got ready in a Sunday school classroom.  Their excitement was contagious, and they could not stop smiling as they made sure they were all right in their suits and got their boutonnieres pinned (although it was a long battle for the best man to get it on Brandon, but he won the battle).

Bethany and Brandon, you were the sweetest couple I have been honored to photograph on your wedding day.  Thank you for being so sweet and charming, and I could not ask for such the sweetest couple.  Thank you for letting me into your lives and to capture your wedding day. I can see the love you have for each other, and the love from your family and friends certainly make you not only the sweetest couple, but the luckiest ever.

The wedding can be seen in its entirety over at the CLIENT LOUNGE.  To view the images, type in 6702 for Slideshow ID#.

There may be no dancing at this wedding, but oh boy, did the Bures Wedding rip it up with the good times with the ShotBox!!!!

When I told Brandon and Bethany that there will be some crazy goodness coming out of the ShotBox, they were like oh whatever, but when they saw it get going, they sure got in on the action, and got the other wedding guests going, going, and oh boy were they gone! Gone with the fun and all!!!

I know I did post a sneak image from Bethany and Brandon’s wedding a while back on the old blog, but that was when I was doing an entirely different workflow. This time, yup, another sneak preview, but I think this sneak preview of both Bethany and Brandon is so much more.

I will be posting a much bigger post with more pictures from their wedding soon. I can’t hardly wait!!!!

Dawn sent me a FB message, wondering if I would be in town and if I was, could I photograph her daughters.  I replied back to her, “Yes I would be in town to visit my parents, and let’s do arrange a time to do a photo shoot.”  Then we got hit with freak snow storms during the early part of 2011 in Northwest Arkansas.  By the time summer rolled around, we were not able to do it due to conflicting schedule and other “surprises” that kept popping up.  Before the end of summer, we managed to find a time that everything fell into place, and Dawn brought her mother and her daughters, Samantha & Crystal.  I have known these girls since they were babies, often dropping by to see them on my infrequent visits to Arkansas.  I am so glad that we were able to do the photo shoot before I moved to San Francisco bay area.

Move the cursor over the image to see the slideshow of Samantha & Crystal’s images.

Go to CLIENT LOUNGE to take you to the slideshow from the portrait session.  Slideshow ID is 66b8 to log in.

 

Christmas has come to the House of the Kuyrkendalls, and it was perfectly captured in the expression upon Izabelia’s face as she first saw the Christmas tree in its full glory with all the presents underneath.  Ol’ Saint Nick has arrived during the night and left behind such surprises for the girls to tear through, finding treasures upon treasures . . .