I picked up my first SLR about two years ago, and haven't stopped shooting since.
My name is Brandon Downey, and as you can guess from the blog, photography is a hobby of mine. I started the blog because I felt like my Flickr stream was a little too broad as a place to point people to for my photography. I put a lot of crap there -- stuff that almost works (and therefore fails horribly), photos of social events, random things that caught my eye at the time that don't age well, and occasional embarrassing examples of drunken processing. Similarly, I felt like a portfolio would be too narrow. I felt like it wouldn't really reflect the fact that I'm taking a lot of photos, and my taste (and hopefully my eye) are still changing a lot.
Hence this blog: A place I can point friends at where they can my personal favorites from the stuff I shoot, along with a bit of commentary about how, why, where, and when I got (or didn't get) the shot.
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The types of photography I like best are street photography and portraits.
Portraits, because I still think I have a lot to learn about people. The great portraits chip away at people, and show you what you always knew was there and only suspected -- or something you never suspected was there.
I shot this portrait the first year I had my camera, and it's what convinced me I might be able to do more than just be a fan of portraits.
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Street photography is really where's it at for me. Something happens to people in groups (well, or in cities) where you can catch them 'in the wild'. Closest we can come to what passes for people in their natural habitat, at least without us all moving back into the trees.
It's also hard. I shoot more crap on the streets than anywhere else. That's part of what makes it fun, of course. I'm taxing my brain to the limit to try to arrange all these walking, talking, running, screaming shapes into something that works. And when it does, it's my favorite photography. When it doesn't.. well, that's most of the time.
This is the first street picture I took that convinced me I might not be wasting my time:
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That's what I'm about with my camera right now. Hope you enjoy the blog, and find a few photos you like while you're at it.
