Christine Chang Photography

Here’s a picture that’s published today in the newspaper. This picture was assigned, and everything went smoothly.

There was also another picture that didn’t get published. I was assigned to get wild art (a random picture), and since it was really cold I wanted to find someone who wasn’t really afraid of the cold. It’s not that cold in Cali, but most people were bundled up. But I did find one person in his trunks.

I asked him if it was cold at all, and he said, no it’s so nice. He’s off during the day, and he’s an actor by night (he has starred in a few mexican soap operas). But overall, this assignment was more fun than the first because I got to talk to him. It got me thinking about a piece of advice my professor gave, which was to save all pictures.

Afterall, one photographer caught a girl being close to our former president at a dinner party. Three years later the photographer saw monica lewinsky on television and it rang a bit familiar. So he went back into his archives and dug up the picture and it published all over the country.

I don’t think this will be the case, but the best part of this assignment was asking him to act natural. Pretend I’m invisible. So I’m trying to take some pictures of him just sunning at the beach and then he does what any man of his muscular stature would do. Flex (”What a beefcake!” says my publisher). Then he asks me–now it is confirmed, I am not invisible at all–if he can go into the water, because he naturally does so, and I’m thinking, go ahead, he’s so happy and he’s enjoying himself. So I keep on shooting, and now he’s splashing water on himself and looking at the camera. Somewhere along the line I was thinking, so how many married women can say that they’ve done something like this before without getting in trouble? My husband got a good laugh out of it too.

I had a feeling that these pictures wouldn’t be published; it’s too flesh-y and I probably could have done a better job portraying my idea in a different angle, but in taking this picture it illustrates again why I love photography: meeting different people, encouraging them when I can, and just having alot of fun.