Process
One face, two hours
Most portraits are over in ten minutes. Mine aren't — and that's the whole point.
When I book a session, I block a couple of hours for one person. Not because the camera needs that long. Because you do.
The first twenty minutes are a performance. Everyone has a face they put on when a lens points at them — chin angle they read about, the smile they use in group photos. It's not fake, exactly. It's just armor. If I shoot it and send you home, you get a competent picture of your armor.
So I keep working. I move one light around, slowly, and talk to you while I do it. Somewhere past the halfway mark the armor gets boring to hold and the real face shows up — the one your friends would recognize from across a room. That's the frame I'm after.
The light does the rest. One deliberate source, shaped hard, shadows allowed to fall where they want. Drama, but honest drama — I'm not inventing a person, I'm lighting the one who's already there.
Heightened, never fake. You, but seen clearly. It just takes longer than ten minutes.