After being sick for a week and hitting a deer with my car, I realize I have been self-contained for so long that I take most everything around me, including myself, for granted. I am amazed how much I have fallen out of shape over the summer and with the sudden series of events I see I need to become kinder to myself. Since I am caught up with all my other work, I am at a point now where I can take a break for the next couple of weeks before the peak season starts at UPS. I can really focus on something that is meaningful to me but I am not exactly sure what it needs to be. I would like to bring my focus back to The Naked Man Project, but I am never quite sure where I am going with it all; it seems difficult at times working in such isolation. Working with Dustin yesterday afternoon I really had a blast and felt totally connected to him.
Dustin is also a photographer so it great to begin a kinship with someone who can appreciate the world from my perspective. He was completely willing to go on this crazy adventure with me all afternoon and is incredibly beautiful to photograph. He has an awesome sense of humor, extremely smart, and just down right fun to hang out with. After he left I loaded the images on my computer and began to work through them. Wow, everything was extraordinary. He was completely natural and I knew deep inside I have matured and grown so much over the summer. Though I have not worked on this project in some time I am now ready to jump back in full force. Dustin really hasn’t seen the images but has agreed to come back and work again. The first session always seems to be an ice breaker and I do not expect great things to emerge so quickly.
My studio is an open room flooded with natural light and I use studio strobes that contour and shape the subjects. They don’t get a real sense of what I am actually getting during the session, so they don’t really see the results until I bring them in to review the proofs. More often than not subjects become a bit impatient with the beginning phase because it is a series of tests to see how I can light them, moving the light, testing different types of light. I often hurry through this part of the process because I am afraid I will lose the subject’s focus. But somehow with Dustin also being a photographer, I was able to spend the extra time completing the testing and dial in what makes it pop for him. For many subjects this often does not happen until after several sessions. Today I am jacked that I have regained my focus and am back to shooting what I love most.
Today’s image is of Dustin from our shoot from yesterday.
