Philadelphia Portrait Project Movie
Enjoy!
Zave Smith
www.zavesmith.com
Showing posts with label portraits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label portraits. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Reinterpretation
view gallery: Reinterpretation
She was my first love. I found her on the pages of “Life Magazine” and hanging from the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts. She was small, rich in the colors of black and white. She was the representation of an artist’s reaction to life. She was the etchings of Rembrandt and Brueghel and the photographs of Weston and Smith. Her images were honest, brutal and beautiful. She inspired my first black and white photographs. It was love at first sight. It became my method of interpretation of life as I felt it.
Musicians often reinterpret their work. Visual artists tend to create with the sprit of one and done. While visual artists might work on a theme or style for a series we seldom go back to the single original and rework it.
Recently I have had occasion to revisit some recent photographs. A client had asked me to convert a couple images into black and white. I did not simply do an image>mode>grayscale in Photoshop but I went back to the original raw file and completely reworked it. It was like bumping into my first love all over again. Seeing these images anew in Black and White rekindled a passion that had been left behind.
Sincerely,
Zave Smith
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
34 Portraits
Showing Off
It is hard to find the time to sit down with art buyers and show off the new portfolio in person.
But it is such a blast when we do it. The reaction is just so positive.
Zave Smith
Monday, January 17, 2011
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Crossroads
I had the wonderful experience of meeting and photography some amazing young adults yesterday. A true testimony of life's sprite overcoming life's challenges
see the rest at: Crossroads
Sincerely,
Zave Smith
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
My Daddy Always Said
Floating above America with new work in hand. Did I achieve what I hoped to achieve or are the new images more of a promise than a reality? “Stay open”, I often consul others, “Enter into a dialogue with your work. Your pictures will point and tell you which way. Don’t rush them, don’t judge them to soon or to harshly.”
So easy to say, so hard to do, I feel like a preacher with much sin on my hands.
Floating above America after a weekend in the Big Easy. Hot, humid, a lot of hurry up and wait. We had four to five portrait sessions scheduled. We have dreams of a book. We have dreams of the big time, we have dreams of making a difference, and we have dreams of a decent cup of coffee and a cool gin and tonic.
Like most self-funded projects, the type of projects you squeeze into an already crazy life. This project about the love and relationships between African American Fathers and their children has been more talked about than worked on. We have dreams but we also have paying clients.
One of our five fell through before we began; the second canceled ten minutes before we were to meet. But the three that we did hook up with worked out just great, I think.
What is it I want to say? What is it I want to show? Are these three portraits interesting, compelling, visual or even worth viewing? Will my partner, Glenda McKinley English, like them or think that I am just another poser?
New works are like babies; we should not judge them to harshly. We need to sit back, enjoy watching them grow. For our children can teach us even more than we can teach them if we learn to listen well.
So easy to say, so hard to do, I feel like a preacher with much sin on my hands.
Floating above America after a weekend in the Big Easy. Hot, humid, a lot of hurry up and wait. We had four to five portrait sessions scheduled. We have dreams of a book. We have dreams of the big time, we have dreams of making a difference, and we have dreams of a decent cup of coffee and a cool gin and tonic.
Like most self-funded projects, the type of projects you squeeze into an already crazy life. This project about the love and relationships between African American Fathers and their children has been more talked about than worked on. We have dreams but we also have paying clients.
One of our five fell through before we began; the second canceled ten minutes before we were to meet. But the three that we did hook up with worked out just great, I think.
What is it I want to say? What is it I want to show? Are these three portraits interesting, compelling, visual or even worth viewing? Will my partner, Glenda McKinley English, like them or think that I am just another poser?
New works are like babies; we should not judge them to harshly. We need to sit back, enjoy watching them grow. For our children can teach us even more than we can teach them if we learn to listen well.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The UnPhotographed
Go to any school play or sit on the sidelines of Saturday morning soccer and you will see more cameras and camcorders then the White House Press Room. These snapshots are destined to fill family albums, spill out of kitchen drawers and decorate the entryways of homes across America.
Families who are fighting for their kids lives do not have the energy to bring cameras to the hospital and record Sara lying in bed. Flashes of Hope is a newer organization based in Canton, Ohio, whose mission is to go into the cancer wards of children’s hospitals and create photographs of these young patients. These portraits are then given “gratis” to the children’s families. After all, at the end of the day, kids with cancer are just kids. They are beautiful, cute, and full of hope and promise. These are the kids whose faces have the power to remind us why we are all here.
RainTree Children and Family Services is a social service organization based in New Orleans. They help arrange foster care, adoption services, after school programming and provide a group home for teenage girls who need a safe harbor. In this time of government cutbacks, trying to keep an organization like RainTree going is a huge challenge. In post Katrina New Orleans, this challenge has become a Herculean task.
Through the offices of my friend, Richard Cardona and the Create-A-Thon I found myself spending a recent Sunday afternoon at RainTree. I was there to create a cover for a brochure. Since you cannot photograph foster kids for promotional brochures I had a couple of cute, “employee” kids to model for us. After the shoot, which was watched very closely by the six teenage girls who currently live at RainTree the director told me how foster kids seldom have pictures of themselves.
Just like with “Flashes of Hope”, I decided spend the rest of the day creating portraits of these unphotographed girls. These images were made not to “sell” but to share. And like the portraits from Flashes of Hope, these pictures will fill an empty spot the on the kid’s bedroom walls. For at the end of the day, foster kids are also just kids with all the energy and hope of tomorrow.
While I get a huge kick out of creating photography for advertising and I love seeing my images spread across the pages of magazines. And believe me I love the checks that I received for doing this work. There is a special joy in photographing the Unphotographed. Models know how to flash for the camera and create smiles that sell a million items. But capturing a smile emerging from the shy faces of those we seldom see is a challenge and a real pleasure.
It has been an amazingly busy summer at the studios. We have been shooting for Aramark, High Mark Blue Cross & Astra Zeneca. Check out our new work at: zavesmith.com
Sincerely,
Zave Smith
www.zavesmith.com
Families who are fighting for their kids lives do not have the energy to bring cameras to the hospital and record Sara lying in bed. Flashes of Hope is a newer organization based in Canton, Ohio, whose mission is to go into the cancer wards of children’s hospitals and create photographs of these young patients. These portraits are then given “gratis” to the children’s families. After all, at the end of the day, kids with cancer are just kids. They are beautiful, cute, and full of hope and promise. These are the kids whose faces have the power to remind us why we are all here.
RainTree Children and Family Services is a social service organization based in New Orleans. They help arrange foster care, adoption services, after school programming and provide a group home for teenage girls who need a safe harbor. In this time of government cutbacks, trying to keep an organization like RainTree going is a huge challenge. In post Katrina New Orleans, this challenge has become a Herculean task.
Through the offices of my friend, Richard Cardona and the Create-A-Thon I found myself spending a recent Sunday afternoon at RainTree. I was there to create a cover for a brochure. Since you cannot photograph foster kids for promotional brochures I had a couple of cute, “employee” kids to model for us. After the shoot, which was watched very closely by the six teenage girls who currently live at RainTree the director told me how foster kids seldom have pictures of themselves.
Just like with “Flashes of Hope”, I decided spend the rest of the day creating portraits of these unphotographed girls. These images were made not to “sell” but to share. And like the portraits from Flashes of Hope, these pictures will fill an empty spot the on the kid’s bedroom walls. For at the end of the day, foster kids are also just kids with all the energy and hope of tomorrow.
While I get a huge kick out of creating photography for advertising and I love seeing my images spread across the pages of magazines. And believe me I love the checks that I received for doing this work. There is a special joy in photographing the Unphotographed. Models know how to flash for the camera and create smiles that sell a million items. But capturing a smile emerging from the shy faces of those we seldom see is a challenge and a real pleasure.
It has been an amazingly busy summer at the studios. We have been shooting for Aramark, High Mark Blue Cross & Astra Zeneca. Check out our new work at: zavesmith.com
Sincerely,
Zave Smith
www.zavesmith.com
11/06
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