“Ideally, the best choice would be to incorporate the nature and the nurture,” Tamea Burd wrote in response to one of my recent posts. “Natural, unfussy photo taking and then really detailed, crafted post-production work on the resulting images.”
I really liked this sentiment from Burd, a wedding and portrait photographer, who was responding to my question: “Are you images fundamentally created in-camera with little technical fuss, or do they require painstaking control, either in-camera or in post-production?”
I absolutely love Burd’s images, which bear witness to the fact that she is achieving the photographic ideal she expressed in her comment.
Burd’s wedding, portrait, head shot, and family photography consistently exhibit two wonderful qualities that work beautifully in harmony with each other:
• On the one hand, Burd’s images feel utterly casual in the in-camera picture making sense. There seems to be little fuss. The comfort of her subjects is palpable, and many of her best images feel like casual snap shots.
• On the other hand, it is clear that Burd is carefully crafting her images in post-production, giving them a modern, compelling aesthetic. Her use of techniques such as black-and-white processing, vignetting, saturating colors and employing localized focus ensure that her no-fuss images become much more than snap shots.
The best part of Burd’s work is that she doesn’t go overboard in post-production. This ensures that her images retain what is best in casual snap shots — intimacy and approachability — while also meeting the standards of excellent professional photography.
It’s hard to discuss images that don’t call attention to themselves, but do exactly what they are supposed to do: call attention to the people they document. So here, to represent themselves — and the no fuss, carefully crafted work that the photographer put into them — are four of Burd’s images.
Continue reading “The Unfussy, Beautifully-Crafted People Photography of Tamea Burd”
