A lifetime ago…

I worked in a hotel in Stamford, CT. It was a fun job, with plenty of characters and personalities. One of the team members I always remember is Tiarra. She worked at our gift shop and we always had friendly encounters. In one of our exchanges, I remember being very excited about beginning Photography. This was something I shared with anyone and everyone willing to listen, including my team members at the hotel. Tiarra was very excited for me, encouraging and said that we should shoot together sometime because she was a model. I was absolutely up for it and looked forward to us creating together.

9 Years later…

There’s really not much excuse or reason why, but Tiarra and I never connected in Connecticut and had that shoot. However, we didn’t give up. All it took was 9 years and both of us moving across the country to Los Angeles. In April of 2018, I decided to love myself enough to throw a birthday get-together at Mama Shelter in Hollywood. I had no idea if I would get “LA-ed” with a lot of empty commitments, but the turn out was pretty nice with a good handful of very caring friends. Tiarra was among the group and it was on this night that we both ABSOLUTELY COMMITTED to doing our shoot. I remember saying that all I saw for her was “black and white.” I was referring to her outfits, I just thought her in black and white would look cool. She came prepared with a couple of combos.

Speaking of black and white, I have a problem that’s not really a problem. Sometimes I can’t choose if an image is better black and white or color. For this set with Tiarra, there was no chance that I could pick which shot was better, so you will see both. Also, it’s my website, I can do what I want. Enjoy. I think both options work in most cases.

We met on a Saturday afternoon at a location which is very popular for fashion photography for good reason. It’s also dear to my heart because I love architects. Our location was none other than Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall:

a couple on film

Venting: It’s always a recurring heartbreak of my life that I have external hard drives fail. It’s one of my long time to dos to go to a data recovery team and retrieve long “lost” images. I was particularly hurt when the hard drive that housed the original RAWs of Tiarra skipped and somehow failed, because it was only about a year old. What you saw above were the jpegs I emailed her after our shoot. That means there probably a few more gems to be shared, but it also means that a batch of shots I created of her that are “gone” for the time being and those are those I captured on film with my Nikon N75. Sigh… Three are available thanks to me sending them to Tiarra via Instagram long ago:

The Black Portraits

Worth a few words if you’ve read this far... I’ve said this before but, I create this website in very odd ways chronologically speaking. I’m creating this page in 2020 though these were all shot in 2018. More specifically, I’m writing this is July of 2020 and needless to say, some things have happened in our country in this particular year. In June of 2020, as a response to the continued racial injustices against the Black community, I decided to create a portrait project that features the images, voices and stories of the Black community and it’s entitled, “The Black Portraits.” Early on, I knew that I wanted Tiarra to be a part of it, and I thought it might save some time to use one of her images from this shoot and just get a statement from her. She obliged. I’m thankful that she was one of the first people to partake. Here is a link for you to see her and more participants of The Black Portraits: