Church Photography - Polk Street Methodist - 13 photos

Its actually about the addition. The architect had added multiple sections over many years, and none of the brick matched the original. We had to shoot around that rather obvious fact.

We hadn't actually been hired by the architect to photograph anything, I'd only walked into his office and asked for a couple addresses that we could bid on. He mentioned this and another.

A few from the obvious key angle.

Since it was during business hours, we went directly over to the church and walked in the office. I said I had been hired by the architect to shoot the property and wondered if there was a way to get the lights turned on just before dark?

The church manager, now realizing that to comply he would have to be there after dinner, messing around with things, and driving up the power bill. Before he could say anything about churches and commerce or hours committed, I volunteered, "We will give you free copies of everything. It should only take an hour."

He'd never best that asset value to price ratio, knew he couldn't say no, and just kinda laughed. Said, "When do you want to do this?"

I asked what day the building was going to be used around 7 pm, and he said it was going to be every night this week then added, "I gotta be here tomorrow night anyway. That work?"

There is a delicate balance between photographing existing, as is--photojournalism style--and staging everything to a magazine level of order. Given the situation of not really having any actual personal link to anyone involved, we left the strobes in the van and didn't move anything.

We didn't set that up at all.

So there was this huge freeway on ramp on the south side of the building and it was an obvious shooting angle. We didn't ask anyone to turn the lights on in the early morning, so this side got daytime photography. Which is nice, because as @foovler points out, one doesn't need to schlep a tripod all over.

You can see Cheryl in this next photo, she's got the tripod anyway. Turns out some lady pulled up in that white truck, pulled out some surgical tubing, shot up a bunch of heroin, paused for a minute, then drove off. I was on the on ramp and saw none of it. Naturally. She is the one that hangs out with Wayne Gretzky and Mike Tyson, I'm the one that went to bed early. Had I been down there, I don't know that I would have even noticed anyway.

I wanted to add a bunch about the whole pushing the truth part to get hired, but now instead I gotta go right away. Anyway, it was still pretty close to 2012, we were actually living in a van, heading to a state I'd been to briefly, 20 years prior, with a collective cash worth of about $600. The architect never gave us a dime for these images, but the other address totally bailed us out. We sold that collection for $1500. We were actually driving away, got a phone call, and turned around. It also became our first photo on google maps to cross 100 000 views. It was a big deal for us then and became part of our portfolio for a couple years. I probably have to post that next.

Also, thanks to the people of Polk Street Methodist in Amarillo Texas. You were the first crew I noticed to be quite different from the western US. Your hospitality, generosity, willingness to be part of our show, and most notably, your lack of any judgement was outstanding.