My past weekend..

So, what a crazy weekend! It was a really nice weekend, and I LOVED every minute of it, but it was also (and this is going to sound stupid) but it was life changing! ha ha. I'm not even joking.

On Friday, as you will read in the post below, I went to Borders, one word, amazing. Then on Saturday I went to work and me and the this girl I work with Meg, watched Christmas music videos which lead to watching The Christmas Shoes, a Hallmark movie everyone should see. While watching this movie I had an epiphany, ha. There is a part when the grandmother picks up a picture of her son when he was a boy, and you can see it touches her, she stares at it and remembers that time in her life. Well it got me thinking.

This whole year I have been wondering where I want to go with my photography and I think it would be really cool to take pictures for families, seniors, weddings. I know, crazy. But, I would rather have my pictures mean something to someone like that grandmother in the movie, then my pictures end up in a trashcan or on a girls wall for a few years with them striving to be skinny and beautiful like the models in the pictures. I would rather have my pictures mean more to someone personally, then be a blimp in the entertainment world for a month, and then disappear.

I'm good at networking, and I think I have the personality for it. As a family portrait photographer and wedding photographer, I could bring in pretty good money, and still become famous for it down the road. I have this idea that instead of making photos of models for girls to strive to be, how cool would it be to take (for instance) a regular senior girl or whoever, get to know them and what they want, and take a portrait of them, but in a fashion magazine manner. For instance, setting up, not just a white background for a normal senior portrait, but setting up elaborate scenes in a type of Americas Next Top Model manner. So they can be their own fashion spread. All you need are good ideas, collect props and scene items, even think of locations, and that's it. I would market my studio in a way I haven't really seen done before.

I mean, when your working for a fashion magazine, a lot of times, your photos really aren't what you could be as an artist. Fashion photography is really not art, but a form of advertisement, good advertisement. Thats all. And the photographer really doesn't have free reign on their own pictures because the whole time they have someone over their shoulder and editors to crop and pluck the photo to their leisure.

As a portrait photographer, it would be my control. I would make it my duty to get to know the person I am photographing, and give them the opportunity to get an elaborate shoot done they wouldn't have the chance to do anywhere else. Instead of them looking at fashion spreads or picturesque family scenes in O-magazine and Vanity Fair, they could be their own. I mean all it takes to get those pictures are good clothes, good photoshop editing, good placement and a good idea.

I just think I could do something with this. Allowing someone to be their own fashion spread. Not just the typical senior picture of white background, fake letters, fake outdoor scenery with fake lighting. My studio would go to cool locations, set up elaborate scenes for each individual person, go to wherever that person feels they are as much themeselves, using natural light as much as possible. There is a photograher Michael Franzini, who published a book, One Hundred Young Americans. His portraits are amazing of these teenagers, but its because he allowed himself to understand them. I wouldn't just be another senior portrait photographer, but I would want to understand exactly who they are. Go to the link below, look at the pictures of these teenagers, I just think they are great, but so simple.

http://www.100youngamericans.com/home.htm


I don't know, what do you all think?