the background

After taking just about every photography class offered at Showcase, I decided to go ahead and venture into portraiture photography. The Showcase School calls the class, People Photography. I wasn't crazy about taking pictures that included people (breathing causes movement and movement results in blurry images unless you can make that shutter move!), but for some reason, I went ahead and signed up. The instructor oozed enthusiasm and I have to admit, I was hooked during the very first class. I was lucky to have a friend who had two darling children who I could use as models. In addition to children, I grabbed friends and begged. Pictured below is Barbara. This was an experiment...taken in my garage with natural light and a touch of processing.

It was during this time that my sister sent me a children's book called, Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds, that was written by my niece, Paula Yoo. The title caught my attention...so clever. I'm not absolutely, positively sure when the idea came to me to start this photography project, but I do know that Paula's book was my inspiration for the title, "The Huntington High School Class of '65 at Sixty-Five." I thought this would be a great way to focus on my portrait photography and hopefully get some willing models...my classmates from HHS. 

Soon I enrolled in my second People Photography class, People 2. This class focused on posing and lighting. Famous photographers were discussed and we had creative assignments, such as duplicating an ad that we liked. I chose one of the Gap ads...love their simplicity and creative poses. My friends breathed a sigh of relief because my husband was my only model for this class. I took that class last spring and I knew that the 65th birthdays were about to begin. The planning had to commence. 

Next post: the experiment