about the photos

The Putnam Museum, in Davenport, Iowa, was celebrating their 150th anniversary. They chose to kick it off with our ONE by ONE Community Portrait™ experiences. They did a great job of publicizing it…newspaper, TV stations, radio, celebrity visits. A great job. So great that people came in droves! What was usually a 4 hour photo session still had a 2-hour line at the end of 4 hours. And that kept up for all 3 days!

Though he had planned for an entire section of their lobby wall to display the portraits, the overwhelming turnout forced Display Director Shawn Graves to McGyver some additional kiosks to display the images.

Everyone was encouraged to bring something of historic significance to them, which made the experience doubly interesting. Two of our favorites were Susan McPeters, who brought in her well-worn teddy bear. No wonder it was well-worn! She also brought in a photo that showed the teddy bear sitting next to her in her crib when she was brought home from the hospital as a baby.

Another favorite was John C. Anderson, man who came in with 2 sets of handcuffs!?! To explain, he also brought in a newspaper clipping telling about how he swam across the Mississippi River HANDCUFFED!

It was a long 3 days. 6 hours each day, for a total of 18 hours that our photographer, Tom Styrkowicz, was creating amazing portraits. There are no other photographers we know who could do that, and make every one of the images amazing.

I found relatively late in life that I have a talent for almost immediately sizing up a person, and knowing how to elicit a fun, interesting photo from them. Averaging over 50 photos an hour, you might think that they’d be pretty basic. But look at these. Hardly basic! (OK, you could say I cherry picked only the best photos. Yes, these are some of my favorites, but look at any event and you will see that ALL the photos are interesting.)

People ask me if I get tired photographing so many people. My answer is that everyone brings their own energy, so I feed off of that. And it’s a bit easier because everyone who’s in line WANTS to have their photo taken. Not like certain portrait situations where I hear, “I never take a good photo. I hate all my photos!” I don’t buy into that concept. EVERYONE is interesting in their own way. THAT’S my challenge…to get at that core personality. And quickly. Oh, did I mention…about 80% of these photos are done in ONE SHOT.

I had one woman waiting for me to take more photos. (I had already taken one. ) I told her to look at the shot in the monitor. When she saw it she shouted at the top of her voice, “DAMN. NOW THAT’S HOW YOU TAKE A PICTURE!” A family told me that the shot I got of them was better than all the ones they took in a 3 hour session at a portrait studio. One of my favorites, though, was the mom who literally cried when she saw the group photo of her family. (See that one in the Greensboro History Museum page.)