The Soulshake

The only thing that exists is you. If I look into your eyes everything else falls away and nothing else exists. Don’t squirm. Please don’t feel uncomfortable. It’s not like that. It’s just two people recognizing each other. It’s like a handshake of the soul. We will readily take a stranger’s hand and clasp it. But not as often do we take their hearts.

One purpose of photography is to record things. To capture memorable people and events. I am often called upon to do that and do that I will. But another purpose of photography, at least as I see it, is to see into a person’s heart. To see them more deeply than we do when we pass each other in the office. I endeavor to capture the essence of a whole human being.

Of course that’s not possible. But you can sense a true depth, a greater dimension, more of a presence from a portrait that is created the way I create portraits. I like to use natural light and interesting backgrounds to bring out this depth. I like to engage with my subjects in a deep and personal way. And I like to gently tweak the look and feel of a photograph so that conveys a painterly look.

Converting color portraits to black and white portraits is one way I do this. The skin tone in a black and white portrait is just exquisite. And I feel that one’s attention is more focused on the subject’s eyes. There are less distractions. I’m always trying to recreate the feeling I had when I took the photo. My experience of a person in that moment is naturally going to be different than yours but I do what I can to bring you back there with me.

When you’re taking a portrait, the moments leading up to the photo matter. What you’re seeing in the picture is the accumulation of those moments. So a portrait really isn’t about one brief second of time. It’s about the minutes preceding the opening of the shutter. And if my attention is focused solely on you, then people just might see what I see.