My photo class at Tyler Junior College is still lurching about in the fog. I blame the teacher but it reminds me of how hard it is to actually SEE what's in front of your face. Especially so if you are going to drive it through a camera.
Very hard to be simple.
I had them shoot a portrait of someone else in the class during class. We went outside in a nice pice of light and I posed some folks. Then we went in the studio and I lit more people so everyone could shoot. They are still struggling to make their cameras work. Total disaster. Of course, the only person not to pay tuition...me... I'm learning a LOT.
Nothing as easy as it looks.
I spent the whole work day before class shooting stills to go with a video series that the college is doing. We were working in Ornealas dorm, a huge new luxury dorm just opened this semester. They've already had to close the lobbies to activity because the kids were going wild. The director running the dorm quit and went back to her old job. Real chaos. Signs up on every post in the lobby announcing its closure. Trash. Noise. I'm sure it was a riot.
It gave me a quiet nice place to shoot with lots of varied backgrounds and lighting situations, though it was full of strange colors of light. And I had 18 subjects, most of them young and photogenic, though there was a drama along with nearly every one.
The most drama free group I ever photographed was some MHMR folks at a sheltered workshop. They looked like hell on the outside but had absolutely positive attitudes about their appearance. To a man they thought they looked GOOD.
One of yesterdays portraits above. Window light and a foam-core reflector carelessly clamped to a stand.
