@Lifeandmylens
1. Introduce yourself
My name is Shawn Walters. I live in Franklin, right outside of Nashville, with my wife and two children.
2. What’s a photo you almost didn’t take but are glad you did?
Man, I feel like that’s half of my photos! I very rarely regret taking a photo. It may be a bad picture, but I don’t regret taking it. It’s therapeutic. But the pictures I didn’t take? They haunt me, I think about them all the time.
But to answer your question on a recent example, I was staying the night in Gary, IN and had looked on Google street view and found an interesting looking scene in Michigan City. But I was tired and decided to skip it. But that feeling of regret started seeping in and I decided I better go and I am glad I did. It was a wild scene with a power plant cooling tower towering over a residential home.
3. How do you choose your subjects for your photography?
When I first started photography, and honestly most of my time with it until recently, my goal was to take pretty pictures. But now, I want them to be interesting or tell a story of some kind. I love incorporating juxtaposition, humor or questions in my photos. For my portrait work, it’s quite similar. I’ve been leaning into the idea of people that I may be nervous to ask for a portrait are the ones I need get the most. It’s something I’m working on.
4. What keeps you coming back to film?
I’ve been doing photography for 20+ years. I owned a studio in my 20’s and played the instagram travel influencer in my 30’s and was part of the Sony ambassador team. All with digital. When I turned 40, I was just really bored with it. The cameras did everything for you. Someone suggested I try shooting film. It wasn’t long after that I had a freezer full of film and sold all my digital cameras. When I first started film it was about the graininess and look of film. Now it’s about the process. I love loading, shooting it, unloading, developing and that first time you see the scan.
5. What do you hope people feel or take away when they view your photography?
I hope they’re asking themselves questions, and not just saying that’s a pretty picture
