Several years ago I met an amazing young lady named Andrea. She is a photographer and a model who likes to be on both sides of the camera. She is one of the nicest people I know, a genuine artist and free spirit, and loves life. She is a very driven, focused, and hard working person yet she never places herself ahead of others. She is the type of person we should all try to be a little more like.
I give her a lot of credit for helping me out with my personal shooting. Several months after we met and I began to help her with her photography, she asked me to photograph her. I'm a long time news photographer with some freelance experience, but I'm not really a portrait/fashion photographer. Andrea pushed me to try something DIFFERENT, something OUTSIDE of my daily comfort zone of newspapers, and that has made all the difference in my personal work these last few years.
I have had so much fun shooting with Andrea and other models in the last two years. Usually I am shooting models for free as a way to work on my lighting and location work. I shoot what the newspaper needs all week, I shoot what the occasional freelance client needs, but what do I shoot for my own personal work? Photographers need to shoot subjects that interest them and in ways that don't have restrictions or expectations other than those placed on the photographer by himself. Personal work is pure, fun, and an absolute MUST to keep one's sanity.
These images are from our shoot last October at Elwood's junkyard on Rt 64 near Chewsville. Yes, there REALLY IS a village in Washington County called Chewsville and Elwood Grimm's junkyard is 72 acres of pure magic for any photographer. Andrea and I shot color, black & white, we used available light, strobes, and a ringflash and after two hours we had over 650 images of what ever we wanted to shoot and they rocked. It just felt great to stretch out and shoot new things in a new location.
