Portrait Project Spring/Summer 2023

An integral part of my process as a hobbyist photographer is creating projects for myself.  It gives me direction, focus and motivation to follow through on an idea. 

After my father left the mortal coil in 2019, I'd been thinking about how I wished I'd taken more photos of him.  I have some but you know how it is,  always wanting more.  Since I don't have a time machine and I can't go back and shoot more with my Dad,  I had the idea to do something for my friend and her dad as a gift for her birthday. 

So back in the spring of this year,  I ran the idea past my friend's father and see if he would be willing to sit for portraits.  I wanted to do a short series to reflect his personality and put 2 or 3 together in print.

He was on board so we got started!

We met up at Botanica on my lunch break to shoot there.  My thinking was, how many people would be at the gardens in the middle of the day? Not that many, right? WRONG. 😆 I pulled in the lot and it was so full! I spotted him at the entrance and we went in. 

I shot him on my Pentax 6x7 with Fuji Acros II film.  We ducked and dodged folks throughout the gardens which admittedly threw me off my game and took me a bit to get it together.  

Afterward he told me he'd never sat for a portrait before and he had fun doing it.  Which was great to hear because we were going to shoot him throwing axes next! 

Next up, I went to his home where his axe target is setup in his yard. When he talks about his axes, blade shapes and thicknesses,  handles, finishes, personalizations, he is lit up.  You can see how much he enjoys the process from selecting an axe to describing the zen like state of feeling the instrument glide from your hands into the bullseye. These were shot on Fuji Acros II in 120 and 35mm through my Pentax 6x7 and Minolta Maxxum 300si.

I had originally planned to do a 3rd and final shoot but ran out of time to shoot so I had a test print made and let him have final approval of my selections of which photos to go with.  

I used Boutique Film Lab in Tennessee for film development and 4x6 prints and i went with Mpix out of Pittsburg KS for printing the final images.  I chose metallic paper and mounted and found a frame online and framed it myself. 

I haven't shot a lot of men so that was a challenge in itself but he was such a good sport and very at ease having his picture taken. 

I hope that you the reader will take pictures and be in pictures.  Those shots are the time machine.