Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Too Abstract



I recently shot this assignment of a church support group and it felt like a dry environment to work in. Maybe 12 people were present and half didn't want to be photographed for sensitivity reasons. It was a big empty church room and the scope of it ran like a church service. So, I attempted to try to shoot things a little more abstract in order to keep my creativity going. It's not often I get feedback from editors on photos. On these, I was told they were different, in a good way, but the editors wanted to know if I had a general overall shot. Mistake: no i didn't. Shame on me: yes. I asked if they were too abstract. And I was told, "yeah, at least for you." What does that mean? Am I not allow to be or incapable of being abstract. Well, bummer either way.

1 comments:

Djamila Grossman said...

that's such a weird thing to say: at least for you...what does that mean? i'd be confused too. i really dig the first photo, it's awesome. like we were talking before, in austin i think, it's tough to stay creative in those visually uncharming environments. this is proof that there are cool photos to be had pretty much everywhere. the question is how open is your paper to running these instead of the typical shots. i almost always shoot twice. or often my editor won't ever see the photos i really like. i usually cover my bumbum, shoot all the overall/detail/vertical stuff and then sneak one in i personally really like that's a little more 'out there'. sometimes i get lucky and they run it. but i think it depends on the paper. how are their presses and how big do they run stuff and how, uhm, traditional they are, maybe. anyway. i like the photos. that's all. if you'd had that overall, would they have liked them better?

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