Of portraits and steak

I was back out “on assignment” again this weekend.  Instead of my usual stomping grounds of a gymnasium filled with the sounds of epee blades clashing and fencers screaming, I found myself on Sunday in a more formal setting of a hotel conference hall documenting a commencement ceremony.  Initially, the scope of my commission was a simple portrait session for my client that the day, a senior classmate and friend who was graduating and earning his Juris Doctor.  As usual for my life, however, I unexpectedly ended up spending the entire day with him, his close friends, and his family throughout the day as he had an extra ticket to the ceremony.  He extended his invitation to an extravagant steak dinner with his family afterwards.  I suppose it is in my curious nature as a practitioner of documentary photography to integrate myself into the scene, and as such get into close interaction with the people I photograph.  I can definitely say that this is not the first time I have had the pleasure of sitting down for a delicious meal with my clients after a shoot.  Indeed, one of the aspects of portrait photography I enjoy most is becoming friends with my subjects.  I shall expand more on the portrait and ceremony shoot in a subsequent post, however, as I still have many images to process still, especially for my client, posthaste.

In the meantime, though, I shall now digress into other images from the weekend.  I admit that my last post, “Evening calm,” was rather melancholy as I reflected on the loneliness of . . . let’s just leave it at melancholy.  My spirits and inspiration have been down lately under some clout.  I could not risk being banal for the shoot on Sunday, so on Saturday I decided to walk out to the lakefront at Promontory Point here in Hyde park with an 85mm lens and challenged myself do something creative with it.  And so I did, and for good measure, I did the same on Sunday before the portrait shoot and throughout the ceremony.  I think it helped . . . photographically, at least.

All images © K. Dao Photography 2014, all rights reserved.