Photographing a Gallery Show Opening

Peter Sieger with one his prints at the Form + Content Gallery, 10/20/2012

Last Saturday evening I went to the opening of a show displaying the work of five local photographers. One of whom is my friend Pete Sieger: not the folk music legend. Pete’s an architectural photographer who works primarily in the Twin Cities and Minnesota.  Pete’s work is very crisp and he uses color and light masterfully. He’s also my neighbor and we get together occasionally, when he isn’t on a shoot, to chat about our shared passion for photography.

Pete’s is displaying two 40″ by 60″ black and white prints that depict a local landmark, the grain elevators near Hiawatha Avenue. Architectural photography is a technical discipline that requires great precision. Pete, through composition and the use of light extends the technical into the artistic.

My challenge at the show was to portray both Pete and his work in a manner that conveyed the spirit of his work and of him. The solution was to take two photos that represented both sides of the person.

I chose black and white for the first image because it reflected Peter’s choice for this photos and it is a classic editorial approach. I intentionally allowed the right edge of Pete’s photo to go off at an angle rather than make it perfectly vertical which provides a hint of the photo being instantaneous. In addition, if you were to look at an actual print you would see that I have used a technique that smooths tones and creates a slightly sculptural appearance to Pete’s face and form.

In this second photo I selected color to capture Peter’s warmth and spontaneity. I used the same tone smoothing technique to link the two photos.

I prefer the editorial approach to photography for a simple reason: it matches my attention span. At a gallery opening, street demonstration, or location shoot, I feel a need to move around and be engaged, in some way, with my subject and when an image presents itself, I grab it and move on to the next image. I work to take technically good images but I know that in the digital darkroom I will tweak them to ring out the nuances that are buried in within.

 

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