Since moving to South Bend and embracing freelance photographer status, I've found that a majority of the assignments I receive have a request for at least one portrait. I have embraced this new normal and I am continuing to push my portraiture. I had a bit of a lull in my schedule the other day and I went back over some of my favorite portrait sessions from my time at the Daily Herald.

After combing through the portraits, I've found there are a lot of images that I enjoyed more than what actually published. The portraits that I am gravitating towards reflect my personal style more, rather than images that will run well on the page. I think the portraits I pulled for this blog also show a relationship with the person and an understanding of the story. Also, for me, creating a portrait generally involves a bit of off-camera light. I do photograph portraits with natural light, but every one of these images in this blog post demonstrates a different use of strobe to help communicate the story. For the above portrait of Tevis, the strobe is modified by a umbrella to Tevis' front right. I wanted to keep the feeling of the bunk room at Jail Industries, which is a part of the Utah County Jail, and so the light is underpowered to not dramatically change the lighting of the situation, but it puts enough light on his face to draw the viewer's eye.

For the two portraits below, the light is much stronger and and creates a very high-contrast image and directs the viewers eye. For Ben, whose story is definitely worth the read, there are two lights, the key light on his face and then a very underpowered light falling on the side of his face. For the portrait of Jahshire, we were working to create dramatic images to highlight his tattoos, which are very uncommon for a player at BYU. The plan was to do a story on his tattoos and the meaning behind them, but I am not sure if we ever did.