So after having finished up the shots I did of Rostick in my previous post I headed back to my friend bVo’s place — bVo stands for Bryan Voliton for those of you who are not lucky enough to know him. bVo is my of the most talented designers I have ever met — and just a genuinely good guy with a great outlook on life. I met Bryan when I started the photography program at The Creative Circus in 2001 — he was a year ahead of me in the design program. He was one of those students that stood out to me. He seemed to be a step above some of the designers there at the school talent wise. He was just a cool guy.

At times in school I would get really frustrated due to being broke — worrying about how to pay for everything that went along with going to school there. Sometimes I would get frustrated because I didn’t feel like my work was good enough. Sometimes I would get frustrated because I didn’t do as good as I could have on a assignment, and I knew it. Sometimes I would get frustrated because I felt I had given an assignment my absolute best — yet I still had my instructor for that assignment tear me apart for it not being good enough, and tell me to go make it better. Looking back on this, I am glad they did, because it wasn’t about making the shot better, it was about making me better. And it did.

Needless to say this wore thin on my nerves at times. Well, bVo was one of those guys that would always be up at the school really late working, like I would be. I usually would tell him about my frustrations and he always had such a positive view on things. He offered insight that always made me feel better, but it wasn’t like he was saying any of it just to make me feel better. He just genuinely had a good outlook on things — he had a good outlook on life.

Back to my ride from Rostick’s studio to Bryan’s place. Well that ride consisted of a difficult phone call that no guy ever wants to deal with — yeah — the kind where you have a girl crying uncontrollably on the other end of the line for no understandable reason. Well, when I got back to Bryan’s place we went out for a beer,  and I sure enough needed one after that call. As always, bVo managed to give me great insight on my concerns and frustrations due to that call. He just made me feel better.

So after we got back to his place I decided that I wanted to do a portrait of him in front of one of his paintings — a design that he uses somewhat as an icon these days. He paints it on everything from canvas’s, to journals, to clipboards. My goal was just to get a great business style portrait of him that looked that he could use in his marketing and self-promotion. I figured that was the least I could do to help him out with his new venture as a freelance designer.  This was that one shot that I was really looking to get:

I am very happy with it, but it took me getting through all the other shots I did to get this one; to find the right combination of composition and expression that I was looking for. All the other shots leading up to this one was the most fun; and those people that really know Bryan will probably agree that they are better actual portraits of him because they capture so much of who he actually is. We were just goofing of and having fun with it, and it shows:

So as you can see, the first shot works best as a straight forward business portrait, but alot of the shots that follow it have soooo much more character. Me shooting all those allowed him to loosen up and just be himself, which is what I wanted, and you still see it in the final business shot that I was going for. Going through all these shots also made me just kinda forget about my concerns due to the earlier phone call I mentioned above.

So I guess my point behind all this is something that I was trying to express to my students in class the other night. Enjoy photography. Use it as an escape to life – which is much easier to do when you are not depending on it to make a living. It can be so relaxing just shooting for fun. And shoot alot. Don’t just take a few shots and think “that’s good enough”.  Good is the enemy of great. Aspire to make your work great — and sometimes just taking those few extra shots can do just that when you are shooting people.

I guess I also should say how lucky I feel to know people like Bryan. It’s good to surround yourself with people like him. People that are positive, talented, ambitious, intelligent, and passionant about what they do — because all of those qualities are contagious.

If you have read this far, thank you for reading what I have to say, I think there is value in it in this case. Sharing the stories and the thought process behind my portraits can sometimes be just as important as the portraits themselves. The portraits I have posted here of Bryan give those that don’t already know him an idea of who he is as a person, but what I have written here about him affirms it.

Thank you for be you bVo.

To this day, this is a favorite portrait of mine. It’s of bVo, and I took it when I was still in school. Through it I was trying to show the frustration he had with the design job he had at the time. Blue is his favorite color. The rubber ducky tie is just him. And the yellow paint dumped on his head shows his frustration that he was dealing with as a designer. At first he was a little freaked about the paint getting in his nose and mouth, and then, true to his nature, he just decided cut loose and have fun with the shoot. This is my favorite of many great shots I got of him that day.