On emotional storytelling in photography
Working draft — copy pending Alisa’s review.
Years ago I stopped trying to make pretty pictures and started trying to make true ones. They’re not the same thing. This is what I mean.
I photograph the second before, and the second after. The pose between poses. The look that happens when someone forgets the camera. That’s where the story lives.
I’d rather a frame be soft, slightly off-balance, slightly imperfect, than crisp and dead. A perfect photograph of a moment that didn’t actually happen is a worse image than a slightly blurry one of a moment that did.
I photograph couples the same way I photograph families and brands — by finding the thing they want to remember and getting out of its way.
What makes an image last in a frame on the wall, fifteen years later, is not the resolution or the grade. It’s whether you can still feel the room.
[DRAFT — Alisa to review and rewrite in her voice.]