Art of the Improvisors

Ok, so I’m a jazz musician.

I’ve been a jazz drummer for 40 years, studied it through college, got a Master’s in Percussion Performance, taught drum set and Jazz History at the University of Washington. I’ve played with a lot of great musicians over the years. Since earnestly developing my career in photography around 2006, I’d never had a shoot that felt quite like the improvisational, collaborative, kismet driven, words unspoken but understood kind of experience I’ve had on the bandstand so many times. I wasn’t expecting to, it’s a different medium.

I was in Utah for the Northwest American College Dance Association Conference a few weeks ago. There I presented two talks on Dance Photography and Photographic  Storytelling in relation to dance. In addition to these duties, I offered the students in attendance 20-minute photo sessions. They could buy a time slot and purchase retouched photos at a later time. A lot of really wonderful dancers came through and I was amazed by the images we got in a very brief amount of time. Truly talented students.

At the end of one of the shooting days, the last scheduled person came bustling through the door and I say bustling because there was a change in the energy of the room. It was suddenly awakened, alive.

Dawn entered the space, plopped down their bags and said, “I want to do a head shot, I have this makeup over my eyes and then I want to take it off and shoot some movement photos.”

“Sure, fine, happy to do whatever you’d like in your 20 minutes.”

Dawn looked like they’d arrived through a portal from 1984. They quickly found the tape mark and proceeded to pierce the lens with a gaze that went straight through my skull, intense, focused energy. The images were immediately visible on the screen next to us as I was running my computer through the overhead projector. Dawn began reacting to the projections: varied intensities and expressions, I reacted as I often do, picking up on the vibe, directing a little…but we were already on the same page. Dawn was fearless, uninhibited and gave every part of themself to the camera.

As quickly as we began, Dawn marched off the paper stating that they were ready to do dance images, wiped off the eye makeup and began undressing, all the while saying, “Can you match the color of my trans-tape to my shorts?”

“Uh,… yeah..I..I guess.”

Back on the paper, Dawn proceeded to contort, twist, jump with some of the coolest, most interesting lines and forms I’d seen. It was like seeing Bartók or Stravinsky personified. They were speaking my language. I like the unconventional, unexpected and fiercely committed and Dawn was all these things.

We were having a blast and anything I said, Dawn committed to as though it was their idea initially. In return I “yes and..?” everything they threw my way.

Next, Dawn decided to simply walk straight toward me, with broken, awkward gestures.

“Oh, this is cool…wait though, I’m not really set up for this but let’s see what happens…”

I’m in a lecture hall with fluorescent lights above, two strobes and a modeling light. Normally, I’d go to greater effort but made do with what we had, dragging the shutter to introduce of bit of blur…Magic.

We went on to shoot more headshots and our 20-minute session which had stretched into 40-45 was over. I knew immediately that this was a special encounter. Artistry without walls from 0-60 in a blink of an eye. Dawn’s commitment required no explanation, questions, convincing, it simply was and I felt like the entire shoot could have been done without exchanging a word. These few of the 700+ photos we shot are just a smattering of the inspired moments we captured.

I don’t know that I can really express how I felt after this shoot, and I don’t know that I’m doing all that well now, but I knew something special had happened, not all that different from most shoots I do, but something else was at play that I hadn’t experienced in the studio before. It felt like jazz, it felt like soaring, responding and interacting in micro-seconds. The best way I can describe it is that I felt like there was someone being seen the way I see.

I look forward to working with Dawn again.