creating a story | jacksonville lifestyle photographer

An assignment I didn't share in my last post on The Art of Observation, one of the workshops I took this summer, was one in which we were asked to tell a story through images.  I feel like this is my main goal in photography and I do it every day when documenting the story of my own family and the stories of clients' lives.  But this assignment was unique because we were asked to envision the story and images before shooting, which involved more advance planning than usual.  This story was inspired by a Chopin piece, visually depicted here. When I listened to the piece, I saw my subject, who had just gone through a breakup, wistfully wandering, looking for a fresh start.  My sweet friend Joy agreed to serve as my model, and we shot one evening in San Marco.  We had such gorgeous light as a storm was rolling in, and it poured as I drove home.

I really enjoyed creating these emotion-filled images, and they inspired me to look for more contemplative and serious expressions when I shoot portraits.  Even though we all want to look our best in photos, and that usually means wearing a smile, the faces of 'real life' are part of the story, too.

Experimenting with free-lensing, a technique in which the lens is detached from the camera to create unexpected patterns of focus and blur:

And a couple of happy shots, because we were actually doing a lot of laughing as we created this story!