the Mullins Shoot

Beth & Jonathan

Halloween 2010

One day we'll look back on these and say, "man, what was I thinking?" - that will be a good day.

Some shots of my good friend Kate.

More Practice Sessions

These are a sampling of a practice shoot a friend let me do for her. More to follow.

100x800's

These compositions were not planned, like many things that strike us as high points in our life, they came about by failure.

I had a several shots of a beautiful sunset, but they were only mediocre at best and all or most all of them were out of focus. So, once again I was feeling beaten by my own skill set. I then concluded that if I could not get a finished image out of a single shot, then I would compose one of several.

Taking a 100x800 pixel sliver of each of the 14 shots I had gathered, I was able to create something that had several principles of design: continuity, balance, variety, color, line, harmony, shape and an extra - message. The message though was not hidden, but rather available at a pretty surface level. The mistakes, the errors, were merely opportunities for discovery and investigation.

Tonight I watched a short clip about Bill Evens, referenced by Frank Chimero, an accomplished Jazz musician of late, in the interview he discussed his process; how he arrives at solution. He mentioned that it was important to be comfortable in the not knowing ( paraphrase on my part ). Essentially, that we should not be disappointed if the process of getting somewhere takes a bit longer or is more tedious than expected. Or if what we come up with is quite different than the outcome desired when we started. As depicted by my 100x800's, the outcome is actually much better, fully more vibrant, and quite simpler than the muddied solution I thought it had to be in the first place.

As a great friend of mine points out often, "so many things in life can be summed up as Design Problems." This one just happened to be an indication of a solution.

Friend Portraits

Recently I've been upping my skill set in regards to portrait shots. Fortunately several friends were willing to model for these mini events.

It worked out great, they got a free shoot and I got some much needed information about how to take better portraits.