Another Day, Another Afro

One of my recent afro shoots was with James, a 13 year old with a lot of hair.

Here is a little background on how a shoot like this goes and how I get what I want out of my subjects. With this shoot I photographed James for awhile and got some great laughing photos...

...but I wanted something a little more stoic. To give him a break for a few minutes I photographed him and his brother together.

In that photo, he gave me exactly the look I wanted but couldn't get earlier. I asked his brother to step aside for a second and asked him to keep that same look on his face. He held it perfectly and I got exactly what I wanted. I think one of the keys to being a good photographer is knowing what you want in a photo and know how to achieve it. I love the feeling of clicking the shutter and knowing that I just captured exactly what I wanted.

You can see that if you just remove his brother from the above photo, it is exactly the same as the one below. I love the peaceful but confident look on his face.


Here is a picture to give you an idea of our "huge" set for these afro photos. I bought the piece of metal from a scrap yard and it is pretty thick and heavy. It was also the largest we could fit in my Jeep Cherokee without tying it to the top. It can be somewhat limiting at times, but has been perfect in achieving the look I wanted with these photos.