First freelance assignment for The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

For my first assignment for The Commercial Appeal this summer, I was asked to accompany columnist David Water to an interview and photograph an ex robber, and musician Derrick Harris a. k. a Lil Noid one of the original members of Three 6 Mafia in Memphis. This photo was to run with David Warters' column "Safe in Memphis." 

Naturally I was nervous, I didn't want to mess up one of my first assignments for the newspaper, all I thought about on the shoot was capture good light, moment, and a simple portrait (tight medium and wide) for variety.

Below you can see more images from the shoot. 

Enjoy!

Portraits

WorkingPortraits

This weekend I really tried to push forth my new endeavor, portraits.  Whether it was with my iphone or camera I was practicing posing people and bringing out their personality. In all of these photos I barely told the subjects to stand here, and nothing else. The expressions you are are an accurate reflection of how the individuals felt self consciously at this point in time. 

Attempt at Portraits

My attempt at taking portraits, there are some technical things that could have been done better here, I'm not happy with my pictures but I happy with my efforts. This is Jessica Lax a museum curator in Athens, Ohio. Curating is something I'm interested in doing in the future, so I said why not photograph her for my assignment.

I recently got into portraiture after reading some material by Josh Birnbaum which was very insightful. He was talking about the balance between subject control and photographer control in photographs. It made sense to me, and his work reflected his philosophe when I checked out his website. So I now embrace the portrait as an exploration device into people's lives

I'm lacking a tighter shot here out of this selection and I centered her in almost every photo. I plan on going back and ding this shoot better this coming week. So be on the look out to see pictures from my reshoot. 

-Aaron