Vacations invigorate the senses. Seeing new and novel scenes excites creativity. I hadn’t expected it when I chose to tag along with Regina to a conference in Providence. I assumed I’d take a few images here and there, as I normally do. But once I got there it was like my eyes were opened to something new and exciting. Everywhere I looked there was an excellent photo waiting. Not every trip away from home presents as much, but maybe it was about being somewhere with no agenda, no rules or purpose for being there, that freed me up to see - or maybe I just got lucky and there was fabulous light everywhere. Who can know?
One thing I noticed about the images I shot there is the high concentration of images that fit my affinity for chiaroscuro or otherwise have a soft, cinematic feel. There’s also an overwhelming number of vertical, portrait orientation images. It could well be that I was railing against my typical commissioned work of ultra-wide, ultra-bright, ultra-crisp real estate photography. But even years after I shot these photos, many of them still resonate with me as some of my favorites - maybe not as individual images, but the collection has an atmosphere and feeling to it that I’m totally in love with.
It’s something I’m striving to return to more and more with my personal work, and perhaps I’ll even push more of my professional work in this direction.
