On Seeing: A Journal – #253
May 1, 2018

I have attended and taught/lectured at the four-day Eddie Adams workshop in Jeffersonville, NY, almost every year since 2000. Each year, on the Saturday afternoon of the workshop, I set up a temporary portrait studio in a converted barn that houses the conference/lecture hall. In the studio, I make portraits of about 100 attendees, staff, and teach. I send each person his or her portrait along with a collage of all the portraits made.

Year after year, I challenge myself to develop a creative technique that will result in portraits that are unique, uncommon, and idiosyncratic. My challenge: an imaginative approaches to making photographic portraiture.

The images in this journal post were made on a long Saturday afternoon of portrait-making in which I set up a large sheet of mirrored Plexiglas and proceeded to bend and twist it, then shoot the reflection of each participant, to create strange and wonderful (at least to my eye) images.

Here are a few:

Alyssa Adams, who runs the annual workshop.

Greg Heisler, the very accomplished and respected photographer and teacher.

Elizabeth Krist, Editor at National Geographic.

Marco Grob, well-known portrait photographer.

Stacy Pearsall, great photojournalist.

And, finally, the collage of many of the zany portraits I made that day: