Headed out to Kitchener City Hall’s Rotunda Gallery last night to check out Sean Puckett’s Portrait of Kitchener. 1024 portraits on the wall. Last shoot wraps up Sunday.
Sean is that awesome intersection in a photographer between the creative and the technical.
And he is *everywhere*, promoting the arts. We had a chance to chat…
with Sean about the project…
and what it took to achieve the uniformity in all these portraits. They were shot across many sessions in all kinds of ambient lighting from near-darkness to sun beating on a white tent. Distance from camera to subject and careful placement of lights was all meticulously measured out as you would expect from Sean. He used a 2 light + 1 strobe setup. Shot with his Leica body and a 90mm lens at f5.6. The individual portraits are assembled in Adobe Lightroom into 8×8 panels that generate ~400MB PDF files for printing. This is why, when artists ask me to photograph their work for a portfolio, I just say go pay Sean Puckett to shoot it. Money well spent.
Snacks!
The result is really powerful. In a world of images of impossibly beautiful air-brushed people, this piece shows real people, and in lots of cases people we know. An amazing cross section of the city. When you put them together like this I think fabric of the city.
You’ve still got time to get in on this historical record: Sean’s shooting in council chambers (on Frederick St?) on Sunday.
From Sarah Kernohan’s show, to CAFKA, to Sean’s show last night: I seem to be always leaving my city of Waterloo to check out cool art. At Kitchener City Hall. Does Waterloo have anything like this? If we do, why haven’t I heard of it? If we don’t… why not?
Congrats Sean on approaching the finish line and completion of a really unique piece. Respect.
Happy making,
DW