This was a completely amazing experience. While I was in Mexico to photograph my cousin Christians wedding, I got an email from E-Town saying that they were going to do a story on Shaun and that he asked if I would do the photos for it. I was nervous because it was my first big assignment with the added threat of being on the cover of the magazine.
I won't give you a play by play but this is basically how it went down. The first time I met Shaun I went to the funeral home where he's the director, jefe grande, master undertaker or whatever you want to call it, I brought along my camera but I didn't really plan on taking any photos. I wanted to get a feel for him and what he was like.
Working in the funeral business I thought that it would be really cool yet a little typical of us to go down the macabre road and come back with some gloomy or creepy portraits, however, I quickly shunned this idea once I met Shaun and realized what a gentle and caring person he is. So what I decided to do was to set up a time at the funeral home where we would do some very straight forward, almost stiff, portraits. And then later on we would get together at his house to focus on him as a person and his art. This strategy worked better than I could have hoped.
At the funeral home, things went pretty smooth. I had just purchased a set of monolights and I think these shots were the first time I really got to use them. Shaun was patient while I scrambled to set up lights and reposition them and dial them in then move them again and on and on. Finally we got some good shots.
The next weekend I showed up at his home. I brought a bottle of wine and we made a night of getting some more photos in the bag. We would talk for a while and then shoot for a while. It was such an organic way of going about it. I really hope that it shows. He's a great person and I'm sure we'll get together again and again to visit and yuk it up.
Please go to flickr to see the rest of the Shaun Cummings shots.
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