left behind

 

I’d wished my client had chosen this image as one to purchase, but understood there were others more immediately compelling that caused it to be passed by. Portrait photographers know going into a shoot that images not fully showing the faces of their subjects aren’t as likely to be final choices, but still we go on making them. While a lot of clients appreciate these kinds of photos and may even decide on one or two, when it comes down to it they’re most apt to feel their money is better spent on less subtle portraits. So unassuming, quiet images are often left behind.

Why do we continue making these images knowing full well their probable fate? I think because most of us photographers are essentially story tellers at heart. And it’s frequently in the photographs that don’t reveal all that room is allowed for imagining, and where wonderful tales of possibility can emerge from.

Is our goal as portrait photographers to document the factual or convey the poetic? I like to think it’s some of both; the primary objective being a continuing excavation to dig just a little bit deeper toward that place where the edges blur between so-called reality and fantasy. A place where true or false no longer exists nor matters. Getting to that feeling place where it isn’t so much what is actually seen but what is felt is the stuff that excites me most and keeps me creating the images that may ultimately be left behind.

~Cynthia