Thornton, Mississippi
Driving along US Highway 61, I passed through this tiny flyspeck of a town and noticed a small gathering of men sitting in front of one of two buildings in "downtown" Thornton. The scene grabbed my attention, and I stopped, turned around and went back to ask if I could take their photo. One demurred, but the three in the foreground, after some initial suspicion, agreed (while the fourth in the background gave his implicit consent by stepping into the frame). We exchanged first names, but unfortunately, I still go around thinking my memory is like it was 30 years ago (I keep forgetting that it isn't), so I didn't write them down and have thus forgotten them. :-(
I really like this photo.
Photographing dark-skinned individuals is trickier than those with a lighter skin palette, and when I first uploaded this photo, I didn't do a very good job of managing the contrast. I think it's much better now (January 2019).
On my annual early spring trip to Florida in 2019, almost exactly 3 years after taking this photo, I decided to swing through Thornton again, and give each of these guys a copy of this photo (in 7X12 inch prints). I quickly found the gentleman in the center of the photo (Chester) but the others were not about, so I entrusted the distribution to him. Unfortunately, one of the four deliveries will never be made. The guy 2nd from the left had died in the intervening years. More specifically, he had been murdered . . . by his own son. That must've really roiled this tiny community. In any case, the guy I gave the photos to said the murdered soul had been his best friend, so he was particularly happy to receive the photograph. I suggested that a surviving relative might want a copy, and Chester said he would see to it.
Another patron of the bar here saw the photo and asked for a copy to post inside the place, and I consented, having made several copies. Making those copies turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. Since I've become fairly serious about photography, I've generally been content to leave my creations as digital works to be viewed on screen. Only a tiny handful of images have I ever developed in a print. Though I quickly found out that processing an image for the screen and for a print are two different things, I never had the trouble I had with this photo. First, it took me a while to discover that most printers are not up to the task of printing a pure B&W picture. The result was always sepia. I didn't want sepia. I took it to several different places, but the result was always the same--sepia. Someone finally gave me a clue and I found that for pure B&W I would have to find a laser printer (you would think someone could develop a pure black dye, wouldn't you?). This was all taking place on my drive to Thornton. Armed with this new information, I tracked down a professional portrait photographer who had the proper printer and, for a price, natch, agreed to develop my image. We did several test images as I fiddled with getting the contrast right. After about five or six such attempts, it seemed to be right (the pro agreed), and I made six copies. And everyone lived happily ever after.
For a posed portrait, I'd never have the subject with a cigarette (I hate cigarettes), but this being "in situ," it would have been inauthentic to ask Chester here to snuff it out.
Weird. The EXIF doesn't show the camera make. It was a Nikon D7100.
Thornton, Mississippi
Driving along US Highway 61, I passed through this tiny flyspeck of a town and noticed a small gathering of men sitting in front of one of two buildings in "downtown" Thornton. The scene grabbed my attention, and I stopped, turned around and went back to ask if I could take their photo. One demurred, but the three in the foreground, after some initial suspicion, agreed (while the fourth in the background gave his implicit consent by stepping into the frame). We exchanged first names, but unfortunately, I still go around thinking my memory is like it was 30 years ago (I keep forgetting that it isn't), so I didn't write them down and have thus forgotten them. :-(
I really like this photo.
Photographing dark-skinned individuals is trickier than those with a lighter skin palette, and when I first uploaded this photo, I didn't do a very good job of managing the contrast. I think it's much better now (January 2019).
On my annual early spring trip to Florida in 2019, almost exactly 3 years after taking this photo, I decided to swing through Thornton again, and give each of these guys a copy of this photo (in 7X12 inch prints). I quickly found the gentleman in the center of the photo (Chester) but the others were not about, so I entrusted the distribution to him. Unfortunately, one of the four deliveries will never be made. The guy 2nd from the left had died in the intervening years. More specifically, he had been murdered . . . by his own son. That must've really roiled this tiny community. In any case, the guy I gave the photos to said the murdered soul had been his best friend, so he was particularly happy to receive the photograph. I suggested that a surviving relative might want a copy, and Chester said he would see to it.
Another patron of the bar here saw the photo and asked for a copy to post inside the place, and I consented, having made several copies. Making those copies turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. Since I've become fairly serious about photography, I've generally been content to leave my creations as digital works to be viewed on screen. Only a tiny handful of images have I ever developed in a print. Though I quickly found out that processing an image for the screen and for a print are two different things, I never had the trouble I had with this photo. First, it took me a while to discover that most printers are not up to the task of printing a pure B&W picture. The result was always sepia. I didn't want sepia. I took it to several different places, but the result was always the same--sepia. Someone finally gave me a clue and I found that for pure B&W I would have to find a laser printer (you would think someone could develop a pure black dye, wouldn't you?). This was all taking place on my drive to Thornton. Armed with this new information, I tracked down a professional portrait photographer who had the proper printer and, for a price, natch, agreed to develop my image. We did several test images as I fiddled with getting the contrast right. After about five or six such attempts, it seemed to be right (the pro agreed), and I made six copies. And everyone lived happily ever after.
For a posed portrait, I'd never have the subject with a cigarette (I hate cigarettes), but this being "in situ," it would have been inauthentic to ask Chester here to snuff it out.
Weird. The EXIF doesn't show the camera make. It was a Nikon D7100.