Equipement: Canon R8, Canon EF 24-70, personal pair of glasses.
This was at my university's Bible Conference we have every fall, during which I was working as a yearbook photographer covering all the panels exhibited throughout. This was one of my first major experiences working event photography so I had to pick up a lot of stuff on the job such as positioning and settings. By the time I had taken this picture it was day two and I had covered a lot of my major bases on taking good, normalish photos and so I started getting a little restless with how my images were starting to turn out. I was wondering to myself how else could I change up this image to simply be "more." It was one thing to document the moment itself, but how could I elevate it? Really capture the emotion and spirit that was taking place. The panel featured three men of different faiths, Muslim, Judaism, and Christianity, in which they discussed their differences, similarities, and journey together visiting holy sites in Israel, talking through their backgrounds and having discourse over the nature of their respective religions. What they were talking about was simply something that my normal photos couldn't do justice. Being tired and in the front near the stage, I took some time to observe, and then thought of the glass elements in my lens, which led me to think about my own glasses and how they had their own interesting artifacts and characteristics that reflected light weirdly on a daily basis. Putting two and two together, I took them off, set my lens to a longer length (so as to leave the glasses frame out of the image), and then carefully balanced and tilted my glasses in front of my lens, slowly shifting the light sources in the scene. This picture was one of the first images I took with this technique and I really loved the end result, there was something so ethereal, grandiose, even heavenly to the way it warped the light into these streaks that acted like paint strokes on canvas like an impressionist painting. It perfectly captured the monumental unity and faith of these three men who came together and formed a beautiful friendship amidst a world that has them so divided. All this raw emotion, from a humble pair of eye glasses.