Expanding My Comfort Zone w/ Feature & Enterprise Photos
- Kyle Benner
- Oct 24, 2016
- 2 min read
My most recent assignment in Visual Storytelling involved taking my first feature photos and enterprise photos.
My enterprise photos centered around a union on strike near Owens Community College. As I was driving home from school, I saw them and decided to stop. They allowed me to take photos of them as they walked back and forth with their strike signs. After I got the pictures taken and took their names, I drove home.
Once I arrived home, I looked at the pictures I took, and realized that enterprise photos are the ones that I enjoy seeing the most, because they literally capture the moment in the most organic and natural way.
When a photo shoot isn’t planned, I think it shows the most unbiased story and makes visual storytelling carry much more weight.
When approaching my feature photo, I needed a class that not everyone knew existed at Owens. After I realized that the ballroom dance class on the website no longer existed, I found a yoga class.
I chose the yoga class because I knew that it would be visually appealing and interesting, which is a requirement of my feature photos. Secondly, I knew that many wouldn’t know that it even existed.
When I went into the class, the first thing I did was meter the space (with which I am getting much more comfortable). After doing so, the class of about five started. As the class went on 10 minutes or so, more stragglers came in, and the class bumped up to about seven people. Since I hadn’t asked the new people’s names yet, I knew I’d have to stay the whole time.
Through the class, I got more and more comfortable getting closer to the instructor, and capturing the whole class. I also played with focal length, which played a big role in the shoot considering the low light in the studio.
When the class finished, I asked the two others that came in late for their names. As I did this, the rest of the students came up and asked if I would send them an email with the photos I took, and they all seemed fairly excited that the story would run on the Owens Outlook online student newspaper.
Overall, both of these types of photo shoots taught me more about being a photographer on the fly, and made me more comfortable with taking pictures of people I don’t know.
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