C (44:21)
Yes. I mean, I definitely kind of stay to a bit of like an old school motto with some of these pictures in particular, of not impacting the scene too much. I mean, if I was photographing somebody, you know, I might say, hey, take the cell phone off the table, or, hey, you know, you know, something small in that sense. But to try to make overt metaphor with people in using their likeness, I try to avoid a bit. You know, I try to hopefully have that metaphor and symbolism appear more naturally in the images. I think that it would, you know, just be a bit unethical to project an emotional sensibility onto a photograph that's not there. You know, you tell somebody, oh, maybe look a little more pensive or, you know. And I think in a collaborative portrait setting, that's not unethical. But in these photographs in particular, I try to photograph people as they chose to present themselves to the camera. And I think then in narrative sequencing is kind of where maybe some of those themes can come across. But I think that there is, when this kind of being the first series that's not about my own home and my own family, I did feel a sense of, you know, responsibility in how it is that I portray the people that I was photographing. And, you know, like I spoke to earlier in this interview, you know, about how the responsibility I had of not pairing somebody with something else that was, you know, heavy handed. And so there was a few things early on, like double spreads where we said, I, I can't put this person next to this image. The correlation isn't fair to have them kind of put into a context that is maybe, like I said, just more overt and heavy handed, narrative wise. But I consider a lot of the people who I photograph to be friends. Luckily, a lot of the people who I photograph I see year after year at the various events or places where I go to photograph often. And so there's not too many people who are out of reach that I make my pictures of. You know, I often will have times where I, Because I personally love sharing the photographs with people. I love their reactions and just to, you know, I might even text you some photos sometimes or, you know, it's just nice to show somebody what you're working on and to have them say, oh, nice. And so I love to share photographs with people and then when they like them, I mean that I always make the. Tell the funny story about a time that I photograph a family in Taylor, Texas, and was photographing these two young men and was kind of doing like a creative, you know, trying something new with the framing and a crop. And I sent it to the mother of the two boys I photographed and she was like, why'd you cut my baby's head off? And so, you know, sometimes people will want. Or you'll get the cowboy who says, why isn't my horse in the photo? Like, there's none with my horse, you know. But then often, sometimes people will say, hey, you photographed us at this parade. And you know, we're actually doing like, it'll be a marching band or something. They'll say, oh, we're doing new photos for the marching band. Would you be willing to do the photos? And so I'll do them for them free of charge and also make a new picture. And so the photos actually do function as a community album in that way as well. I mean, I've made graduation photos for people in the community. I've done anniversaries and it's all like a thing of like, you know, something that, you know, I often thought about in this book was. And something that I spoke about earlier with this kind of loss of family is I really began to like, find that awkwardness of like visiting with an extended relative, that feeling of kind of sitting there in like a kind of stiff living room that not, you know, many people hang out in like those moments are so imperative to family in this kind of like way we try to connect between generations. And so I really enjoyed being in those settings of being like an event photographer or, you know, visiting with someone who I've met and being able to, you know, bridge that, that gap with them. If it's, you know, a generational gap or if it's someone who I'm just interacting with on an assignment, I really enjoy those moments. And I find that it, you know, once you begin to become a little bit more comfortable in the silence of just sitting with people and enjoying each other's company, that that's typically where the best photographs come out of because that's when a lot of the tenseness that is involved in making a photograph of person. I always talk about how stiff the camera is at the an object. It turns three dimensional life into this like two dimensional rendering. And that just inherently that is a stiff format, you know, and so even someone who is comfortable with you, it can be difficult to get a photograph of them looking comfortable. As one of my mentors says, there's a bit of magic in how that's done. And so, yeah, that's how I approach that.
