People First, Camera Second

Kate, and in memory of Disfarmer. See it big.

This summer, my friend Kendall Smith asked me if I would ever consider photographing children. I met Kendall because we both have been involved in the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase, and Kendall has been very kind with his compliments of my music photography. I had not considered photographing children. (This is, assuming one does not consider the musicians I work with children.) But when he asked me, it didn’t seem like it would be much of a stretch. “Sure” I said.

On my way to his girlfriend Kelly’s farmhouse this week for the photo shoot of her three daughters, it dawned on me how different this task might be from photographing my typical musican clients.

First thing is first: I believe all art – all work, has intention and purpose as an inherent prerequisite to be any act worthwhile and meaningful. Second, cameras don’t lie just like guns don’t kill. It matters a hell of a lot where, why, and when both are pointed, and most of all, who is holding them.

As I drove down Santa Fe Drive, both of these notions came into clear focus. While the execution may be identical when photographing musicians and children, the intention and purpose is not. Yes, I use the same camera, the same lenses, and many of the same lighting strategies (i.e. the execution). But why I am propositioned to photograph children is very different, and the difference is this: Photographing musicians of any age is done to create and/or perpetuate the personification and myth of the musician or of the band, in order to attract new ticket-purchasing, merchandise-buying, and music-downloading fans. The images are made to be mass-produced in any all mediums to promote this process, and I am paid by the band or their representatives to perform towards this goal.

In contrast, photographing children is done to visually exhibit the parent’s pride in – and affection for – their children. When photographing children, I am being asked to be a liaison between the parent’s vision of their family and it’s manifestation into a photographic image. (If the kids parents could make a photo that looked the same way they feel about their kids, they wouldn’t be asking me to do it.) Furthermore, the images are made for private use, single consumption, and are often printed by traditional means and viewed by only those who already know the child. This last distinction is important, I thought as I pulled past the gate up the dirt lane to Kelly’s house. I am not trying to manufacture a personality in these images, like I often do with musicians, I am instead trying to capture and elaborate on the personality already there.

Lastly I thought about the often relied on maxim that ‘cameras don’t lie’. I had never met these kids. What if they were hellions? (What if the musicians are assholes?) What if these kids were rude and mean and I didn’t like them? (What if I think the band sucks?) While a camera doesn’t lie, as a portrait photographer who is being commissioned by the parent, or being paid by the record label, I have to be prepared to.

Does this mean as a photographer, I trade a few bucks for my moral standing? Hardly. And anybody who has been even one time around their own block knows it is never so black and white. But more to the point, if I want to keep my conscious even cleaner than my CMOS chip, I have to learn to find ways to genuinely admire and respect the people I photograph. I have to find a way to be truly interested in them, if not in the same way their parents or their management is, then at least in some way for my own sake, if I am to be a genuine photographer whose images I can believe in, and whose viewers can sense honest reverence in their creation.

Ultimately, this is a character trait that is in some people and other’s not, regardless of their pursuits as a photographer or any other occupation. I am lucky that I can find enjoyment in meeting most people and find merit and an education in a variety of people, from taxidermists to summer camp councilors. I am far from knowing it all when it comes to photography, and I think any success I have made with portraiture comes not from any technique but in finding an honest and palpable reverence for, and connection with, the people I take pictures of.

Footnote: It was an easy shoot. The kids were great and beautiful. It was easy to like them and they were a blast to work with, and Kelly and Kendall had the utmost trust in me to make images as I saw fit.