Central Arlington 2014 Portrait Part 2

The Story:

A few weeks ago I wrote about my trip to Arlington with my sister where I snapped her portrait.  That shot is part of my inadvertent series of adult portraits of the kids for my parents.  Normally, there’s no structure to my shooting, but this started when I got a cool shot of my younger brother at his graduation from the University of Dallas.  Over the next five years, I captured shots of my siblings, culminating with my youngest brother in 2016.  I did a fairly good job capturing shots at roughly the same stage in life, age 22-24, just after undergrad.

This may leave you wondering, “what about your own photo”?  Truthfully, I’m not a fan of photos of me; few exist since I’m typically behind the camera, and I like it that way.  Even though I was deliberately procrastinating delivering my portrait, I knew it was inevitable so was not without any plan.  I probably could have done a self-portrait using a timer and tripod, except I eschewed tripods until year last year.  I don’t have any weird opinions against tripods, they were just not a budgeting priority for how often I needed one.  This turned out better without one, anyway.

The Shot:

When I took both Patricia’s and Peter’s photos, I had Patricia snap one of me each time.  It’s kind of like a tripod with artistic license.  Between the two, I preferred the Arlington shot; overall it looked better, plus it was closer to the age range of the other shots.  After I took Patricia’s Arlington photo with the sculpture, I handed her the camera with the same settings.  She does a decent amount of photography herself on a Sony Alpha variant with my Dad’s Minolta lenses I used in high school.

Patricia stood in about the same spot, but opted for a full-length shot.  That form makes the canvas-wrap-style print a little more difficult, but she did capture the characteristic “me.”  In her well executed photo are my then 8 year-old shoes and nonchalant clothing to include blue-themed shirt.  If you ask her, she would tell you it’s essentially the only color shirt I ever wear.  As I survey my closet, she is not wrong.