Creative Shifts / Photo Shoot Reflection

I remember every time I’ve stepped behind the camera. I remember my point at shoot I needed to bring to high school and take pictures with everyone I knew on the last day of school, the first time I borrowed my dad’s DSLR and took it to a swim meet, when I flooded my underwater housing during a big FINIS shoot, all the goddamn flatlays of every product in the catalog, and best yet, the random days I simply decided to bring my camera along for the ride.

Photographs in themselves are meant to capture memories. I don’t need to describe to you the power a photograph can have or why we love them so much. And I’ve shared plenty times why I love taking pictures. I just got myself caught in another reflective state, and it seems when I do so, there are certain photo shoots that I fall back on. And maybe because this year has been fairly minimal on the photo shoot front, I’m sifting through my archives more often than not. This image is from a shoot with Olivia at UGA we did in summer of 2019. Maybe the images more famously known from this shoot are of "her in the red room” and running on the bottom of the dive tank. But, as a whole, this collection has so many epic images and is a very memorable shoot I’ve had. I didn’t have a team with me, barely any equipment, just two cameras–and really, it was just her and I for a day, pool to ourselves, getting creative and having a blast.

Before this, it really felt like I was doing all my photo shoots the same way (and for too long). Not that it was bad, but damn was it getting boring and repetitive. And I was changing bits and pieces of how I was shooting throughout the years, but I still wasn’t switching up enough. And I remember this shoot with Olivia being a game changer. My whole approach, direction, how I did my mood boards, and overall communication was just different. And during the shoot, I remember taking a photo and thinking “hell yeah” with that instant hit of feeling like this was some dope shit. And this was what I needed to do. And the final photos turned out so much more impactful and moving than I could have predicted. In the end, looking back at previous work has always been good for me. Seeing what I accomplished or didn't, how certain moments made me feel, and reminding myself of what can result when you make shifts in your creativity.