Portrait woes

For some reason portraits have been giving me a lot of trouble recently. They have never been on top of my list of favorite things to shoot, but I've gotten by. The past week or so has brought on a rash of portrait assignments and they've been kicking my butt.


Late Friday, I got this assignment to photograph Mary at her home in Aurora. The story was about a few recent incidences where people killed themselves after getting into accidents and DUI's. Mary's brother was one of them.

When I met her we talked a bit first about who her brother was and the the close relationship they had. After looking around for some good light inside, I took a look in her backyard which turned out to be a forest Preserve. "Perfect," I thought.


We spent some time out there, talked some more, took some pictures, and had some smiles even with the grave nature of the situation. Mary was amazing which helped me relax and just shoot, rather spending time racking my brain coming up with some crazy, contrived portrait.

Check out the story HERE.