Mustafah Abdulaziz | mustafah@wearemjr.com
Matthew Craig | matt@wearemjr.com
Archive for June, 2008
Shooting your best friends is a hell of a lot different from shooting strangers. Is it easier or more difficult to shoot people you know?
For me…its easier and much more fun to shoot my friends, but for others it isn’t so. Here are some things that i keep in mind when i have a frame full of homies aka idiots.
It is important to remember to not let your friend control the session, keep them at bay and remember that while standing in front of your lens they are subjects, not friends. If they are true friends they will respect what you are doing and respond accordingly. If not, just keep breaking out your camera until they get used to it.
Schutz- This is his quintessential face. Someone told him that it was a costume party and he showed up in that damned hat. Nobody else in attendance wore a costume and schutz never took off the hat.
When shooting, I suspend the fact of friendship and what I do is treat them like models, not the guys you just spent 9 hours drinking with. The camera in my hands gives me a license to be the boss and them the employee. So I direct them as such, tell them what to do and react to their responses. If it isnt working then we try something else and continue to move forward.
Dave- He bought those sunglasses in Venice the day before. I think everyone at the party tried on those glasses and they quickly became the prop of choice during the photo shoot. He wanted to fix the glasses and I stopped him from putting them on correctly. This is the “i know what you are trying to make me look like” face.
Smith- has never been to Brooklyn
The environment and circumstances played a large role when i chose to photograph these guys. All of the images in this post were taken from 6am-7am after a party at a friends house where we all spend too much time. I saw that the sun was coming up and I had 5 of my best friends together all on the same level (which was lower than most at 6am). I grabbed my camera bag with the 6×7 and 35mm bodies and put my friends up against an ivy wall in the yard. We were still drunk and still drinking. It was an overcast morning so light was everywhere and the mood was somewhere between excited and haggard. The setting was neutral place for everyone, nobody was intimidated by their surroundings and my equipment was minimal which made everyone that much more comfortable.
These are the first five images that I shot. It was a little after 6 am and the sun was just coming out behind the overcast sky. There wasn’t a lot of light and I had Velvia 50 in my camera not the best for this situation but i worked with it. The images are a bit dark and grainy but the moments are still there. I think these were taken at about a 15th or 30th at f2. This combination worked because I didn’t necessarily want to freeze the action. The movement in the images adds life to the pictures.
With friends, you are already familiar with their distinct facial expressions and unique behaviors and you know what you can do to get your friends to react in ways that clearly demonstrate who they are. Use that to your advantage, get them smiling or get them looking at you the way they always do. Take the time to freeze them the way they really are.
Dylan- was actually flipping off Morgan
Morgan- was deeply saddened about graduating college. That night he challenged three University of Arizona frat kids to a drinking contest and won. The other three guys passed out hours earlier. One even needed to be slapped awake and put in the shower.
Smith- ? i have no idea whats going on here but that’s a stale bagel in his hands.
This was fun. it was one of those times where everything just lined up and i was in the right place at the right time. Sometimes thats just what happens.
That is pretty much my process or at least was the way this particular shoot went down. We had way too much to drink and couldn’t laugh enough about it. It was a fun time and well worth the seven rolls of film. Thanks for reading and l please let me know if you have any questions. I promise to get back to you as i’ve been working on my correspondence technique.
-J
while matt’s going through security, i’m writing this from the floor of the dallas-fort worth airport, where we’re waiting for our ride down to Mexico City and onward to Oaxaca where we’ll be meeting up with mr. flanigan for some trouble and maybe a few pictures.
by the way: congrats to dina for the tribute win. loved the frame.
the last few days has seen us driving through long stretches of narrow roads in backwoods Alabama, across the Mississippi river, and on through the sweltering heat of Louisiana until we the flatland of eastern Texas. we swam in the Little Tennessee river, sampled catfish off the highway at Sue’s, and now we’re finally onto the second act of this show: mexico.
feels great to be on our way.
hope you enjoy,
m+m
The hounds over here at MJR are pleased to announce the winner of the Intimacy contest Dina Goldstein. Although the decision was close, we feel that her frame simply titled “#4″ was far from ordinary and actually quite stunning. The moment captured strikes close to home for everyone who remembers those adolescent days where going to party and grinding with that special someone was a profound moment. The bond between the people is unspoken and for that 3-5 minute song everything else around is dark and inconsequential. The moment between the two of you was confidential and undisclosed until after the dance, when the gossip takes charge. Suddenly your invisible moment was not as sub rosa as you thought.
The “feelup”, the “booty grasp,” the prepubescent togetherness on the dance floor is not only intimate, but an often overlooked milestone in people’s lives both as the copper and the copped. This image is as intimate as it is momentous, carnal and prime. Congratulations to Dina for winning the contest and thank you everyone for submitting. Keep on the look out for more competition notifications in the upcoming weeks.
Here is Dina’s winning image and be sure to check out more of her work at http://www.dinagoldstein.com/
Here is the MJR teams intimacy tribute. Unfortunately the downloadable PDF was not created due to time constraints/travel plans and the likes. But we will be back with renewed vigor next month. As for now the MJR intimacy tribute is published below. Thank you for understanding.
Intimacy
“Whether in the privacy of a stranger’s home, or close proximity, it requires one to give and take more than usual. As subjects, they are giving a large piece of themselves. As stranger, I have to resolve and justify what they’re experiencing as a photograph. And so light must be my inspiration, composition my eloquence.”
Mustafah Abdulaziz | mustafah@wearemjr.com
Julius Metoyer | julius@wearemjr.com
