Close Up Experiment

I love portraiture. Most of the time though, I take a portrait to show people that they are beautiful. Sometimes it is to show other people that the person is beautiful. Last night though, I decided that I wanted to show people as they are flaws and all, at least for one image. No retouching. For me this is a different kind of beauty. A braver kind.

(By the way, click the image for a larger version, or here for the largest version)

If the style of these images is familiar to you there is a reason.

I don’t like to copy people’s work but, sometimes that work is so powerful that you have to try it yourself. Martin Schoeller is that person to me. Specifically his Close Up series. Chances are you’ve seen it already but if you haven’t please search for it online, it’s truly amazing.

I wonder sometimes if there is anything left to be done creatively that hasn’t been done in some form or another already. Often times there will be an idea floating around in my head that I want to try, and upon investigation I run across something from last year or 10 years ago that somebody already did. Somehow those things happen to be the spitting image of what I had in mind.

Rather than this being an original idea of mine then, let these images and the ones that I will inevitably make of other people stand as recognition and tribute to a great concept by Martin Schoeller.