October Portraits for Leafly

I had the opportunity in October to take portraits for Leafly magazine and interview various public officials around the Los Angeles area who were supporting Proposition 64 to legalize recreational marijuana use.

It was an great opportunity that I was so grateful to have. Thanks to Patrick Fallon, a great photographer and awesome person, for passing my name along.

One of the best parts about this, besides being able to work on portraiture (something I consider a weakness), was being paid to travel around my new home out here in California and see places I'd yet to stumble across. So much of my passion for photojournalism rests with its ability to take you places you wouldn't otherwise be and forced interactions with people you may otherwise have never known. 

I was also under tight time constraints with each shoot, which upped the ante for me and was great growing experience. I was pretty pleased when I didn't fall flat on my face.

It was also one of my first actual journalism related pieces I've had published since moving here. Being able to interview the people I photographed on an interesting topic was another great opportunity that I loved. Reporting is cool and I wish I got to do more extended versions of it more often than just captioning photos.

Anyways, blah, blah, blah. Here's a couple frames from each of the shoots. Thanks for giving it my work a peek!

Picture Story: Take a picture, tell a story - Frankie Humphrey

My Instagram feed @justnlstewart)

I was fortunate enough reconnect with Frankie, who I met and briefly photographed on New Years Eve, but didn't really talk to. The internet is an amazing place from which I was able to track him down through Twitter and arrange a shoot and interview for a Picture Story assignment called "Take a picture, tell a story," based on this project by Robert Gumpert.

I think both the shoot and the interview went well. Frankie was really open with me and has a great voice and some interesting stories. I wish I'd taken a couple more variations of the close-up, but I was feeling a bit nervous because we were running behind schedule (because of me) and Frankie had to leave town at 2.

I should have slowed down, but I'm always feeling like I'm inconveniencing my subjects and I still haven't realized that I'm the photographer and they're just listening to my instructions - I have the power.

That led to me forgetting my wireless transmitters as we ran out the door to shoot in an alleyway. I think that actually ended up playing out in my favor, but it was still a mistake.

Originally I was hoping to photograph Frankie in his home or a studio, but I didn't realize he didn't live in Columbia and with the way things played out, this is how it was. When I said we should shoot in a studio, he said the dance studios were "basic" and that we should shoot in an alley.

I was hesitant at first, trying to remind him that I was a photojournalist and it wasn't a commercial shoot; I wanted the background to say something about him. Then he told me that he grew up dancing on the streets and I figured an alley was perfect.

We turned on some music, he did his thing, I did my thing and this is what resulted. Below is a second version of the video I edited in a little different fashion, with a larger selection of photos.