"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.”
Robert Capa once said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.”
I bet you’ve heard that one before. I know I have, but it’s a challenge I regularly face. With candid and street photography, I have always felt more comfortable with a little bit of distance and a huge lens between me and my subject. I can chalk that up to a little social anxiety, but my real fear was that being too close to my subject would interfere with the portrait make them feel more self-conscious and awkward, or even annoyed, and that the resulting photos would look uncomfortable and stiff.
Believe it or not, that is not my whole family.
Robert Capa once said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.”
I bet you’ve heard that one before. I know I have, but it’s a challenge I regularly face. With candid and street photography, I have always felt more comfortable with a little bit of distance and a huge lens between me and my subject. I can chalk that up to a little social anxiety, but my real fear was that being too close to my subject would interfere with the portrait make them feel more self-conscious and awkward, or even annoyed, and that the resulting photos would look uncomfortable and stiff.
But on Christmas Eve, I was reminded again of how right Robert Capa was.
My family’s tradition, is to gather at my grandmother's house on Christmas Eve and gorge ourselves on pasta salad, pepperoni bread, fried raviolis, baked ziti, and most importantly, Meme’s meatballs.
They are straight-up, hands-down, the absolute best meatballs that you could ever dream of– let alone consume. If my grandmother’s meatballs were a religion, well, let’s just say I would find the energy to drag myself out of bed on Sundays. I would be there early.
But no matter how many times we go back for seconds or thirds, we can’t keep up with my grandmother. The woman made over 300 meatballs: she is an unstoppable meatball making machine which is a Christmas blessing in it’s own right, because it guarantees the best gift of all: Meatball Leftovers.
Every year, as the evening winds down, she grabs a couple of her kids or grandkids and disappears into the basement to begin packing the leftover meatballs and divvying them up between the families. This year, me, my boyfriend, and my uncle were tapped to help her with her task.
Once downstairs, my grandmother and I immediately went to work, counting meatballs and scooping them out of a tabletop roaster into tall, clear plastic containers, careful not to drip or spill red sauce on our Christmas outfits. At the end of the assembly line, my uncle would press the lids onto the containers and label each with the name of the family members still enjoying the festivities upstairs: Missy and Paul; Deb, Laura and Jim; Shelley, Kevin, Nicole and Josh, etc.
You may be asking yourself, wait, where did your boyfriend fit in this assembly line? He didn’t. While we went to work, he pulled out his Fuji X100T and started photographing my grandmother with the available light. He got close, he got closer than close, he got within a foot of my grandmother’s face and when she asked what he was doing, he told her “You know exactly what I’m doing” and started taking some of the most endearing, candid portraits of my grandmother I have ever seen; portraits that I know I will keep forever.
Was she uncomfortable at first? Absolutely. But we kept going, because after she was uncomfortable, she started laughing, and after she was done laughing, she went back to doing her thing: packing meatballs.
Seeing that transition in her and how quickly she accepted and then forgot that the camera was even there, was enlightening and kind of a relief. Being that close, didn’t hinder the shot, it made it. It’s a lesson I have taken to heart and that I hope you will too: it’s okay to be a little uncomfortable at first, it’s good to push past that feeling, it’s great to be close.
Renaissance Woman
Hello all!
This coming Tuesday, November 10th, I will be showcasing some of my artwork at the Main Street Boutique craft show. You can read all of the details like time, location, etc. in this lovely flyer and associated link.
What will be I selling?
Being a photographer, graphic designer, writer, and jewelry maker, I have a made a line of custom products that are inspired by my photography including:
- Lancaster Christmas cards
Each card features a photo of downtown Lancaster during the holiday season and a unique Christmas greeting inside.
- Custom Gift Tags for your Christmas presents
- 5x7 notecards featuring scenes of downtown Lancaster and Lancaster county
- Photo jewelry
- Custom guitar pick jewelry made from exotic wood
- Photographic prints
- And more! (I don’t want to spoil the surprise, come and find out!)
So why am I doing this? Why am I not just focusing on photography? Why am I making jewelry when I could be doing book layouts or family photo shoots?
Way back when, before I called myself a photographer, graphic designer, etc. I was just a creative kid. “Where are my colors?” was one of my favorite questions for my mother when I was on the hunt for my misplaced box of crayons.
At heart, I’m still that creative, curious kid who asks “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” Wouldn’t it be cool if this photo was a card? Wouldn’t it be cool to wear this photo as a piece of jewelry? Wouldn’t it be cool to tell a story in a different format?
And heeding that question, pushes me to try something different, to do something more. Even as I tap away at my computer in my studio, I am not only surrounded by filters, strobe lights, and camera bodies, but also jars of Mod Podge, spools of wire, and paint brushes. I am a Renaissance woman (also a tiny bit of a hoarder).
The best part of pushing myself? Of saying yes instead of no– It makes me a better artist, storyteller, photographer– all around. By focusing and refocusing on different creative projects and mediums, I am constantly expanding my horizons and learning new things about different artistic fields and applying them to each other.
So come by on Tuesday and get a jump on your Christmas shopping! It’s going to be a lot of fun.
