face study

I'm usually the one pushing my camera in peoples' faces and trying to get them to smile. The other day,  we went and had our pictures taken by Peter, in his fabulous garage studio. I gotta say--I feel a lot better when I'm the one on the other side of the camera, but Peter is a genius with getting people to open up and look natural. 

When I photograph people I know, I tend to go with "smile. um. not like that. ew, you look really cheesy. SMILE. okay that's better. MY WORD NO. put your chin down. put your chin down. put your dang chin down!" 

Peter's photos are stunning, plus he is awesome at this part of it, too. He just finished this Face Study Project--studio-taken, up-close-and-personal, stunning portraits, exploring how people open up and respond and show their real side instead of pasting on the cheesy camera smile. 

He photographed all different kinds of people, and put together some beautiful video, too. Go, and be amazed. I love how he has the whole National Geographic soulful, mind-blowing eyes thing going on in several of them.

my brother Benjamin. um, he is beautiful.

And the amount of genuine-honest-to-goodness smiles is just amazing. Looking at all of them all made me so happy. There's pretty much nothing better than a honest, up-close black-and-white portrait. And apparently Peter is the god of honest, up-close black-and-white portraits. :)

and his wife. holy cow.

Anyways. Check out his posts--be inspired to greatness and awed by some of the smorgasbord of beautiful, quirky, unique, hilarious people that God saw fit to throw into the world.