Photography Interviews: People and Portraits

Welcome to an interview of the amazingly talented People and Portrait Photography artists: klapouch, sollenafotografie, vaxzone, grodpro, and luciekout representing the various galleries within People and Portraits. We hope you will enjoy the insight this interview might provide you on the People and Portraits Photography gallery, and each artist's personal experiences and views.

1. First off, could you introduce yourself to us? What's your name, where are you from, is there anything you'd like to share with us, etc?

luciekout:

Hello! Thank you so much for lovely invitation. My name is Lucie Kout and I am one crazy photographer and retoucher from Czech Republic. Perhaps I should say I am an multiartist. I begun as graphic designer and painter, moved onto photography and now I am getting back to my roots and would like to fulfill my dream of becoming tattoo artist since this was my dream since I was 17 or so. But no worries, not giving up on photography .

Dream is a goal without a deadline and sometimes it's good to challenge yourself with deadlines instead of plain dreaming, right? Creation is my basic need same as breathing thorough I make myself complete. Hard to define it correctly. Photography is my passion, medium that is natural to me as my second skin. We became one. Without creating I would burn like a piece of paper thrown to a fire.

sollenafotografie:

My Name is Sandra, I am a selftought photoartist and mommy of a 8 years old girl. I am Swiss, but live in Germany for about 10 years now. Photography is a passion since I have been around about 11, so it took me already so many years until now.

vaxzone:

Nicholas Vax from a beautiful city island call Singapore.

grodpro:

My name is George Rodriguez, I hale from Chicago Illinois. I currently live in St Louis, Missouri (USA). I'm single and have a daughter living on her own.

klapouch:

Hey there! My name is Anatole Klapouch. I'm from Curitiba, a capital in the south region of Brazil.

2. What is your specialty within people and portraits photography and how did you begin?

sollenafotografie:

I started with an old camera, trying to figure out what I love to catch. I was 11 ... maybe 12 and my dad bought a new camera and I got the old one. So my start has been in the analog way and I got some really nice experiences in the darkroom and with all the chemical stuff to get my work on paper. After a few years I realised, that people, interesting faces, kind of fairytales and mystical stuff were more an more important, so I took the focus on people photography.

grodpro:

My specialty is executive portraiture, product, industrial, and event photography. Modeling photography you see in my gallery is a side project.
I began my career by graduating with a B.S. in photography. I wanted to pursue fashion and was seriously thinking of moving to Paris France, but I met a country girl while in school and thought that might be too much for her to handle, so we agreed to look at Miami Florida as a start, and in the early summer of 1985 we departed for Miami. I found work there as an assistant, but soon found out that it was the off season and what little work there was didn't support us. After discussing options on where to move next we set our sights on St Louis Missouri. I immediately found a full time job as an assistant for two product photographers.

luciekout:

Well, this is an old story... I've been always creative, I had this inner tension to express myself, I was drawing all the time so later I went to an art school. These were my dark times. I continued drawing, painting, sculpting, studying arts and crafts, history. Then I explored optional subject of photography. So I borrowed camera, keys from studio and started playing. I immediately got a significantly greater response and feedback to my photography than to my other artworks here on deviantart. Three months later I had my first paid photoshoot. Ever since I was told by audience to become pro photographer and probably year after I started with my first photography attempts, I realized these people might have been right.

But I wanted to stay myself and kept going on with my own style and way I see the things. I was always this stubborn. Never wanted to be compartmentalized. Once someone started classifying me somewhere I had this need to move on. And yes, I am still like that. I am hard to define for myself and it would be probably even harder for others. I am seeking myself in creating art. I am kind of strange introvert, open minded but somehow also closed and hurt. This way I can feel the emotions hidden in me and show a bit of my inner world to larger audience.

grodpro:

How I find models is mainly through Model Mayhem and Facebook. Most of them are new (green) to modeling, so I coach them a lot to get the results I want. My benefit are the years as an advertising photographer, doing commercial ads for companies and advertising agencies. My advise for those who struggle finding the right location? Look at pictures and plenty of them. Look at how they are composed, how the background works with the subject.

luciekout:

In the very beggining I had the same issue as every other aspiring photographer. I had nothing to show and nobody was interested into working with me. So I asked few friends if they do not mind posing for me and quickly built something I could show to other people. I also started asking interesting people myself, with no promise of superb result but with honesty what I want to try and learn. It didn´t take me long to get in people's mind and people started asking me for photography themselves. Now I no longer have no problem of not having people to photograph but of course my demands are different these days. Before I was happy enough if girl was nice and now I seek for real characters. I can shoot photos of almost anyone for money but there will be always people I would love to portrait just because of who they are and what influence they have on me.

Locations musn´t be necessarily an issue, I use plain walls all the time, I play with various focal lenghts, f stops but of course it pretty much depends on what type of photography you do. Sometimes it matters, sometimes not... for landscape photography is location the key, in portrait photography the key is who you picture. In my country we say the end justify the means. But in every case it´s good if you know what you want to put into your photography. It can be just general feeling, emotion, maybe some dream... And this is so fascinating. Everyone is unique... no matter what.