The Fleeting Intangibles

miav
Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

For me the art of portraiture lives in such abstract thought. I can tell you things I look for-- movement, expression, the fleeting detail of who a person is. I can tell you technical basics and guidelines I use. But how do you explain seeing beyond the obvious. How to you explain taking an image but having some other vision simultaneously that can't be described but it's there swimming around in your head.
I do loads of portraiture, probably my very favorite thing. But with photo shoots like this-- a Christmas present for her man- I'm just thankful she let me do what I do, mostly post-shoot. Because I could never have been able to tell her where any of these images were going artistically with any clarity.

We did two set ups. These images were part of the second set up. All hail my wonderful smoke machine and this beautiful woman who herself had a vision to immortalize herself, letting me do the honors.