I was in Wichita Kansas back in August for business with the company I work for full time. Obviously being a passionate photographer I’m going to bring my camera with me. I do both portraits and street photography on a regular basis as I enjoy photographing people and documenting every day life.
The above photo is a portrait I made while in Wichita in August.
The camera is a tool people use on a daily basis, especially now with decent cameras in just about every phone. As photographers we can create stories with a single image, and those stories can be made to tell a story that the photographer wants to be told. That story can be capturing a moment that tells the viewer a truth about life, or that story can be made to communicate something that isn’t actually true at all.
I made the above photograph of this young couple back in August. I had walked past these people a few times as they were hanging out around the Old Town area of downtown Wichita while I was doing photography. It seemed as though they were having a good time together. I assumed they were on a date. I decided to go back to a spot across Old Town that I wanted to photograph again. This couple had stopped and the guy pulled out his phone to use it. As I was passing the young lady folded her arms and looked the opposite direction. I ended up publishing this imagine to social media and the caption read “pay attention to the lady, not the phone”. Sometimes you get lucky when doing street photography. I feel this image sends a clear message even though I don’t think she was frustrated at all with her date. A second earlier or later could have told a completely different story, just with a turn of the head, a shift of weight from one leg to the other, or the arms in a different position. Since we can’t see her face we can only make assumptions about this image, and the title can lead the viewer to believe one thing over another. That’s the power of a photograph.
The above photograph was taken in a stairway leading from the bottom of a parking garage to the top. As I was coming down from the top of the parking garage I noticed this image and I knew I wanted to capture it. I ended up publishing this photo on social media too. Once I got back home to the Dallas area and I saw this image on the screen of my laptop and I had the idea of making a portrait in this space. The only problem was this stairway was several hundred miles away. Well, I got the opportunity to return to Wichita for business again at the end of September. I decided to take more photographs from the top of the parking garage where the stairway is located. This time on the way down I see a photographer doing some portraits. We strike up a conversation and come to find out both people are photographers. The one taking pictures is a photography student and the one who is having her picture made is a photographer who has started a business. We show each other some of our work and I explain how the last time I came here I took a photo of the stairway and wanted to make a portrait. I ended up making the image below of one of the ladies in which that day happened to be her birthday too. ( It was nice meeting you and I hope you had a great birthday).
Here are a couple more I made on the second trip to Wichita.
Scott Alan Photography 