A personal perspective.
It was an absolute pleasure to have been asked to do the photos for the Humans of Armadale project.
This project based on the “Humans of New York” was to be a local version and was very beautifully crafted by Betty Desalegn from the City of Armadale.
The images were shot over three different days in different locations. Although I started the assignment as a straight forward job doing some head-shots I quickly realized this was something special. These people and their personal stories were amazing!
With the next two sessions I used Fiona my partner as an assistant to help with lighting, she is my eyes on the subject and a nurse so she can connect with people very quickly which is perfect when doing this type of thing. We work really well together and it leaves me to concentrate more on the posing and the technicalities so to speak.
The next two days were great fun and we both met some beautiful people. It was easy to see why they had been chosen to share their stories with the rest of the community.
On the 17th August 2021 the project was launched with an exhibition at the Champion Center in Armadale.
It was a great event with the images being printed to A1 poster size and books that contained the personal stories along with photos being available.
When I was asked to join this project I did a bit of a google search and although I found a couple of other organizations that had done something similar they were nothing like this.
With the other groups it seemed that the photos were an after thought that was achieved with a mobile phone being stuck in someones face with a resulting “startled gazelle” look that didn’t really work.
It was to the City of Armadale’s credit that they used a professional photographer (whether that was me or not) to create images that could showcase the project. If the people and their stories were the heart of the project the images were definitely the face of it.
The whole project was a huge success to the extent that Channel Nine, a local TV station interviewed a few of the people involved for the local news.
It was a splendid way to finish what was a very successful personal and professional assignment for both myself and Relive Imaging.
