Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/16/15 Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/16/15

therapy session 1

It's been a hard couple of months. Loss-filled. Recurrent. It's hard to not see that kind of pattern as something fated. It's hard not to draw lines and connect, pinpoint, and justify why Bad Things Keep Happening. Last week after something really painful happened, I felt deflated and defeated. The mountain of grief looked exhausting. But I realized that to process these things-- anything really-- can bring an insight and a lightness. It's working through something but also learning from something. So, I took on a mini-project that I hoped would help me move through this. It became more than it started out to be, like most things. I'm calling it a therapy session because it was reminiscent of the change I would feel while working through a session when I was a teenager: Cluttered mind goes through a filtration process. Then, release.

here's what I learned:

-it's really hard to look yourself in the eye
-it takes a long time to stop seeing yourself as yourself
-if you can start seeing yourself as a subject, you're way kinder to yourself
-creating collages over your face means warping yourself and zooming in on yourself and taking yourself apart and that ended up feeling really damn good.

Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/14/15 Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/14/15

Elise & Chris

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Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/9/15 Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/9/15

DOOMTREE ZOO

I'm going to be really honest right now. Shooting this event was really hard for me. I had some bad news the night before and I felt really unfocused. The day was kind of a blur--I was working mostly on auto-pilot and thankful to just get through it. When I shoot events, especially live music, I go into a trance that can be really helpful when there's a lot that I don't want to think about. However, it was hard for me to know if I was taking good images. While I was feeling alright about it (and thanking whatever force was allowing me to stay in focus / exposure consistently), coming home I felt a little discouraged. I have been working with Doomtree for almost 8 years and while that presents its own set of challenges (namely, how to take a new shot of a group that i'm so familiar with...), I really love these people and I wanted to blow this one out of the park (pun inten...yeah, you get it).

I sent in my photos. Didn't feel great.

But then I decided to sit down and take another look. I often don't play outside of my regular editing box and I thought I'd try out a couple tweaks. Crop super tight here, add a little grain, get a rich contrast here, blow out there...That changed a lot for me. I really realized the potential of the post-process. It's also important to give your photos a chance to settle-- there were ones I had completely skipped over but when I came back to them, saw some potential I hadn't seen before.

So, I'm feeling pretty proud of this collection at this point and I hope you do too.

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Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/5/15 Zoe Prinds-Flash 10/5/15

Ellie & Brooks

The sun filtered through the trees perfectly on the day Ellie & Brooks got married. Everything seemed light and calm and their ceremony harnessed that light and that calm and produced an immensely moving tribute to two in love. I could sense the strength of Ellie & Brooks' community that day and it was a pleasure to witness. Here are some of my favorite photos: