While portraits may not exactly be my strongest point in photography, candid emotion kind of is. I love capturing people’s thoughts and feelings through my camera and thankfully that was this week’s assignment. At some point I will get around to write a blog post which isn’t about photojournalism assignments, in fact I have at least three different ideas for topics, but for now here are some black and white snapshots of my week.
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Kayla Guettich (center right), 19, of Steamboat Springs, Colo. sits among a group of friends and laughs at one of the standup comedians at the Underground Coffeehouse’s open mic on Tuesday, Jan. 27 in Bellingham Wash.
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The first trick was to figure out where good emotions were going to be expressed. The on campus coffeehouse has an open mic every week which feature a variety of local comedians and singers. I was fairly certain of finding good emotion there, the thing was just to keep my eyes open.
This particular shot was largely accidental. I had picked out a group of friends near the front who were especially emotive and within a clear shot of my camera. Whenever a comedian came to their punch line I trained my camera on them and shot as many frames as I could, focusing on different members each time.
When scrolling back through the pictures this one immediately caught my eye and I knew I had the shot I wanted. A stray beam of light perfectly lights up her face and I had just enough depth of field to get her in focus but none of her friends. In situations like this I find it is sometimes nothing but a game of odds. You estimate at the best settings to use and then shoot as many frames as it takes to get just the right composition. The ability to play the odds game is one of the beautiful aspects of the digital age.
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Jonathan Perez (top), 18, of Wapato, Wash. and Savanah McDowell (bottom), 18, of White Bear, Minn. cheer during an intermural dodge ball tournament Wednesday, Jan. 8, Bellingham Wash.
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I knew of two other events where I would get strong emotions – the swing dance club, and the intermural dodge ball tournament. I went to swing dance first, shot a few frames which I didn’t like and then walked quickly across campus to the doge ball game.
Featured here is my dorm’s team, and in fact that is my roommate in the middle. I think she has a vague remembrance that I was shooting for my photo-j class which means that this photo would eventually end up on my blog. But it might end up being a nice surprise for her today…
Everyone was sitting on one long skinny bench on the side of the court, which made a great team shot but it also made it difficult to isolate faces. Then all of a sudden something happened in the game, I have no idea what, these two popped their heads up and voila – one more emotion shot for my collection. But I was still one emotion picture short. I didn’t like any of the other ones from the game, so it was back to the swing dance for me.
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Brother and sister Lori Ludeman (front), 18, of Bellingham, Wash. and Chris Ludeman (back), 23, of Bellingham, Wash. practice basic swing dance steps at a beginner’s class at Western, Wednesday, Jan. 28, Bellingham Wash.
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As I ran back across campus I just kept hoping that these two hadn’t left the dance yet. I had seen them earlier in the evening, they were dancing together and just having a generally grand time with life. When I tried photographing them then the results weren’t great but I had a better angle now and better settings to capture them.
Watching them through my viewfinder I became rather homesick for my own brother. Their joyous goofiness reminded me of the fun all three of my siblings and I have shared over the years and it was so nice to see Lori and Chris not give up on that even after going off to college.
I watched them with a almost stalker like fascination for at least ten minutes. Finally there came a pause in the music and I figured I should probably introduce myself.
I’m getting increasingly better at these conversations. They go something like “Excuse me, you might have noticed me obsessively taking pictures of you for the past few minutes, before you call the cops let me just say that it is not as creepy as you think.”
No, but really, I am getting much better at it. I actually enjoy the brief touch points I have with people through my camera. Asking for all the info I need for the captions – name, age, phone number, home town – can be a bit awkward but I’ve even got relatively used to that.
Lori and I talked and laughed as Chris struggled to enter his information into my smartphone and at the end of the night I parted with two friends I would never have made if photojournalism hadn’t pushed me out of my bubble.
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This was technically the end of my assignment but we all lobbied our professor to give us extra credit for photos we got during the Super Bowl.
These are a few of my favorites.
But of course, there was the last play where none of us could believe what was happening before our eyes…
These photos get to be extra big because the moments were larger than life. The wide range of aghast expressions, my roommate randomly jumping up and down in the background – much as I hate to say it defeat probably gave me better photos than success.
But of course, I’m still mad.
Despite the disappointment, these photos still make me laugh. Two weeks from now, and certainly two years from now, only a couple of people in that shot will care about Super Bowl 2015. But in that split second, the game had such a hold over our lives that it was all we cared about. Events in Arizona, who knows how many hundreds of miles away from us, provoked the best photos of honest emotion I captured all week.
Just something to think about.
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And that’s it for now.
Next week, instead of honest emotion the theme will be people in motion, a topic which I am already having great fun with.
Kesia Lee 