sharpfocus photography dc headshots portfolio

sharpfocus photography dc headshots portfolio

these are sample pictures from the portfolio of washington dc headshots photographer of sharpfocus photography. sharpfocus specializes in people photography with a focus on corporate headshots, actors headshots, model photography as well as portraits for business. with a unique approach to letting clients make themselves comfortable in the studio, balanced lighting and minimal use of props, souleye tries to take pictures that reveal the real character of the subject. more photographs can be seen at sharpfocus photography website.

sharpfocus photo-genesis

how did I come up with the concept of 'sharpfocus'? I had a contax fitted with zeiss lenses.  one particularly a 85mm at f1.4 extremely sharp that I used mainly for what it was designed for: portrait photography. I fell in love with it. even at full aperture, the lens was so sharp that you would see the pores in the forehead. one woman told me she didn't like it. it reveals all your flaws. can't you make it a little softer? she asked. at the time, I was just a photographer. no name. except myself. life's tortuous paths took me to several directions until I even forgot that I was once a photographer. when I was in columbus, I would take pictures once in a while but that was merely to document my fashions. fast forward. dc. I worked in a photolab but didn't really like it because I was confined to production in the lab, loading film, processing, drying and things like that. I've always seen myself as an artist. so the practice of photography devoid of any creativity didn't really appeal to me that much. after a stint in graphic design, I started designing website. autoreverse was born from the ashes of souleye which was an umbrella website for all my endeavors. in 2001, my web designing efforts were not taking me anywhere. I dusted off my aging contax, and thought well, I have experience in fashion, experience in photography. and I like women. so I chose to start as a model photographer. domain name. I thought sharp focus would be cool. sharpfocus (no space) cute? that's how sharpfocus photography was born.

how I came to photography - part 1

I was born and raised in Dakar Senegal, West Africa. I came to photography almost by accident. I wanted to be a moviemaker. Cinema helped shape my vision of the world at a very young age. Growing up in a small country town, the movie was really a window to a world that was larger than life. A little town in Senegal would not even be the size of a village in America. We didn’t have many distractions. Apart from football, called here soccer, there was the movie. It was an open air movie theater that was sitting across the street from our house. So at night, when we were idling, it wasn’t rare that we would go to the cinema and just hang around. I was very artistic. Good at drawing and later took to painting. Formative years I guess. When I graduated from high school I missed a chance to attend film school in France simply because the people who could’ve helped me didn’t believe that there was a career in cinema. By the time I was in university, I had been reading every book that I could lay my hands on about movie making until I saw on tv someone who lived in my neighborhood showing on TV some ‘artistic’ pictures that he took of Goree Island. That was the ‘click’ – watershed event. It really dawned on me that you could express your creativity through photography without having to worry about all of the resources to pull a film together. Gradually a shift was going on in my mind and I started looking into photography more seriously. 

PhotoCamel

talk about photography gear

people get so enamored about their photography equipment that when they meet a fellow photographer, they can talk at length about their canon mark 5d iii or their Nikon d3. it’s not rare to go to photo forums and see the debates between the canon fans and the nikon fans. I personally prefer nikons though I have used in the past, when I was shooting film, a canon ftb and a canon ae1. my love of nikons stems from how their gear looks, their aperture priority mode, and maybe a good dose of marketing. though canon has always had top of the line, nikon somehow managed to position their camera as status symbols with so many great photographers swearing by nikon. so I call this guy but for nearly half an hour it was a litany of effusive talk about photoshop, lightroom, canon cameras and lighting equipment. I have never been that much into gear. of course, if you’re photographer you may have some liking or bond with a particular brand but my point has always been that it’s not the camera that makes the photographer. I’ve always thought that these guys who would tell you how canon is superior to nikon would be hard pressed if shown a photograph to tell you if it were taken by a nikon or a canon. plus, it’s sterile. I really don’t know what you can get out of an hour’s conversation of canon vs nikon, aperture vs lightroom. I don’t use either anyway. I come from a background of film, so I was trained to use as much photography skill that I can pack into producing a very good image right out of the camera. so, to me, the camera is only the extension of my eye. any artist may feel more comfortable using a particular tool rather than another but it’s not like, if you gave jimi hendrix a gibson guitar he would be utterly incapable of playing a note. photography plays by the role of any artform. it’s not the tool but rather how you can use it, what you can do with it.

if you like photography, chime in. my photography can be seen here.