Shooting the Elderly- A Lovely Experience

You know every now and then you do something that moves you inside and makes you look at things very differently than you normally would. Well Saturday was one of those days. How did this come about?

Shelton Muller is a guy I am so honored to call a friend, he's a great portrait photographer and a great mentor. He runs, with a business partner, Creative Photo Workshops and together they had an idea of shooting the residents of a aged carers home. Seemed like a nice idea so I thought that I'd join them and about 7 photographers and go a shoot at the home.

So off we went, all in the minibus and heading a couple of hours out of Melbourne to a small town called Benalla.

I'm not going to talk to much about what we set up and how we shot, but more how the experience effected me and the way I tried to shoot during the day.

I guess you can see through these couple of images that each one of the residents had their own personality and character, some a little shy, others maybe a little crazy but each one was very different.

One of the things that my friend Shelton seems to do very well is see and capture the heart and soul of a individual and translate this through their eyes and expression and then ultimately through the lens of his camera. I'm sure this comes from experience and is the one lesson I myself am working hard to achieve. These images I captured this day are the closest I have come to doing this. Each one tells a story of many years and it's this that has touched me in shooting these images.

I've already shot some nice models and enjoy that side of portraits as well, but this has been the most rewarding. These images are not posed, there not staged, they are natural, a little serious in some, a little fun in others and a little crazy in others but each one is special. Some of the residents laughed, others cried but every one of them enjoyed the special day.

Have to say thanks for those that organised this, thanks to my great mentor and I look forward so much to do this all again.

More images will be posted on my facebook page but here's one more laugh