i’ve officially moved my entire website to http://squarerootofnine.com. please come and visit when you get a minute. feel free to leave your comments there.

reynaldo. september 2009. dallas, tx.

i have excuses. we all have excuses. but i came across something today that stopped me in my tracks and forced my hand.

sometimes we’re left without an excuse.

for what it’s worth, i believe that that Maria Kalman was right about the 19th century:

and the thing is – it was exploding with inventiveness and they hadn’t even gotten to the automobile or the airplane or open heart surgery or cloned sheep or broadcast or video or the internet or twitter or video on twitter. i sincerely believe that the world is – today as in 1838 – exploding with inventiveness.

i have to think that Ben Franklin – a well documented bad-ass – occasionally found himself with to-do lists that were too long to actually do. but that didn’t stop him:

…a little thing known as the United States of America.

he believed in doing good & still found a way to invent more things than any other person in this country ever has – and he slept seven hours a night. all without computers!

wow.

hopefully, at this point, you feel like me – utterly without excuse. Ben Franklin set the bar pretty dang high. or, as one brilliant comment on the blog from which i was first learned of this NY Times piece put it – “For his time [Ben Franklin was] a renaissance man. For our time, given the tools and opportunities we all have, he’d be a certified legend.”

let me leave you with a simple benediction:

go forth. make a chart. set a goal. read Maria’s piece, “Can Do”, & be inspired to stop sitting on your A doing absolutely nothing. invent something wonderful. and tonight, ask yourself “What good have I done today?” then smile just a little when the answer is finally an admirable one.

In one of my screenwriting classes, we looked at the set up in The Usual Suspects. Do you remember it? The mealy mouthed cripple, Verbal Kint, in the detective’s office, says of Keyser Soze, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

That line haunts you the rest of the film. That is a great set up. And the genius of the line is it takes a complicated theme and puts it into incredibly simple terms.

This same idea can be used, to great effect, in photography as well.

This is a subject I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately and I’m not sure where I first encountered it in practice (the only place I can think to point to is Dan Winters, who does it infinitely better than anyone), but simplicity – simple light, simple composition, simple posture – is the best way I’ve found to expose for honest emotion.

I recently did portraits for Need Him, a non-profit whose mission is to give people a chance to hear the story of God’s love for mankind as it was personified in Jesus. They wanted their story to be told with authenticity, so early on, the decision was made to cast ordinary people instead of models.

However, people are a complicated tangle of story lines and emotions and most put up high walls that hide the honest, authentic emotion from strangers. Putting a camera in their face or being placed under a bunch of lights while being told what to do only adds to their discomfort.

So, as excited as I was about the opportunity to explore some of the complexity that real people bring with them, I knew that in order to create an environment where that could happen, I would need a simple set up.

I used a single head, camera left, as my key & outfitted it with a 1×4 strip box placed just in front of the subject & the spill from that strobe gave me just enough exposure on the background. For a bit of fill, I placed my 5-in-1 reflector, the translucent white part, on a light stand opposite the key. Occasionally I threw in a stool or a posing table for my subject to interact with. Each person ended up needing a subtle tweak to the positions of the key & reflector, but the simplicity of the set up helped me take down the walls and created a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere for exploring a range of emotion.

Going back to The Usual Suspects, you don’t fully understand the power of Verbal’s line from the first of the film until he reprises it at the end, in voice over, as the detective scrambles out to the street, having put all the details together and we see the cripple lose his limp and transform into Keyzer Soze – the Devil himself. It’s one of the most rewarding film endings I can think of and not because you are aware of the story telling technique being used. It’s rewarding because of what you’re seeing happen on the screen.

Just like in the movies, a simple photography set up isn’t effective because it’s simple; it’s effective because the resulting photographs make the viewer feel what you want them to feel – in this case, to feel a connection with the universal human longings for purpose, meaning, hope and joy.

On a related note, Need Him has been running a really great television spot that touches on these themes & they also launched their new website. If you have a minute, check them out.

All to say, we have a good time.

While we were waiting for our first subject yesterday morning, we ate breakfast, made a few images & laughed.

The city was threatening to condemn an historic old church just south of downtown Carrollton. The ninety something year old building required tens of thousands of dollars in repairs to bring it up to code and to make matters worse, the church was strapped for cash. Believing that The Church was an idea bigger than a building, they began making phone calls to other area churches to see if anyone would lend a hand in saving one of the oldest African American congregations in the DFW area.

The Church answered the call.

This past Saturday, the faithful of St. John (and the hundreds of volunteers who helped save it) received a tremendous piece of encouragement for all the sweat & prayers they offered in the name of helping a neighbor in need. The city of Carrollton honored them with an historical marker. It may not sound like much, but it was clear to me as I stood among those gathered for the early morning ceremony that the gesture was one of the highest moments in the congregations 117 year history. It was an incredible honor to be there to witness a quiet piece of history unfold and celebrate with The Church a triumph of unity.

You can read the full story of the history of St. John at their newly launched website and see more images after the jump.

please take a minute to download the PDF (6.1mb).

we’re about at the halfway mark; i’m 6 months in and it’s amazing to me that i can see anything new or find new ways to see the things i’ve seen a hundred times. this job has been an incredible exercise in learning to look harder. i’m rather happy with my latest effort on that project.