PATRICK ALONSO PHOTOGRAPHE

Where it all started

© Patrick Alonso

This is where it all started …

My test shot is better than your shot …

This portrait came from a series of test shots taken earlier this year. I hadn’t payed attention to it until recently, it has that mug shot quality that I like and of course that « Just get on with it » stare from JF (my main guinea pig) that I’ve come to appreciate.

© Patrick Alonso

On the subject of portrait photography, I attended a lecture by Gabor Szilasi this weekend, very interesting stuff. He went over a career’s worth of portraits from various projects and shared some of his thoughts about them and the whole process of portrait photography (from his point of view). Made me think about my own process, it also made me think about what constitutes a good portrait by yesterday’s standard, today’s standards and my standards.

So much of what I see in portrait photography out there feels like such crap to me. I look at pictures in magazines, ads and all these other places you get bombarded with portraits these days and I ask myself if they were all taken by the same guy, everything looks the same, all of it soulless photoshop grotesquerie. I wonder why I keep seeing so much of it and why so many photographers get paid to produce it … I must be abnormal.

Check out some of Gabor Szilasi‘s work over on Slightly Lucid which posted quite a bit about him.