Portrait of a Culture
For this project, I really wanted to step outside my comfort zone. Exploring the world of photography has really helped me broaden my horizons. Last weekend I visited The Easy Riders Convention at Vets Memorial. When I first walked in, I was a bit overwhelmed. I walked around clueless until I finally worked up the courage to ask my first sitter to take a picture. The more pictures I got, the more comfortable I felt. After about 20 minutes of wandering around I came across Rich “The Lube Guy” from Quaker Steak and Lube. I got to talking with him, and he took a liking to me. He told me,” I studied Art back in the day, back when a 4 finger bag of weed was 15 bucks. You know dear, we didn’t have scales back then.” I decided I liked him too. The rest of the show, he escorted me around and introduced me to everyone! I quickly went from lost college student to VIP photographer from The Ohio State University. I am very satisfied with the outcome of this project because I ended up capturing an entire culture. At the end of the day, I asked Rich “The Lube Guy” what one word he would use to label his people. His reply, “There isn’t one word, all I can tell ya is, don’t let the gift wrap fool ya.”