Assignments that come around every year pose the special challenge of trying to shoot something different each time. Most readers won’t know the difference if the photos are pretty much the same year-to year, but we as photographers do, which is what keeps us searching for that different image. For the last several years I’ve shot the graduation of the University of San Diego, and like all assignments, shoot the obvious stuff while looking for those few opportunities that make it all different. I always try and arrive at scheduled events well in advance of the start time so I can scope everything out and see if I can make interesting photos before everything gets going which is what I did with the headless graduate. He was standing behind one of the numbered signs where the students were to gather based on their name, and his body was placed just in the right place right to make it look like the sign was his head. Still searching for a different kind of image paid off at almost at the end of the ceremony. I was just finishing the seventh or eighth lap around the graduates in the gym, when I noticed two students kissing at the bottom of one of the stairs nearby. I shot several photos with different lenses until they came running back inside just as the full class of 2009 was being introduced as the newest graduates of the university.
Howard Lipin
Photos used by permission of The San Diego Union-Tribune
No comments:
Post a Comment