I attended the online session called “Mobile Photography: Make Your Portraits Pop” which was presented by Aundre Larrow in parternship with Adobe. Aundre Larrow is mainly a photographer (and sometimes a videographer) but I’d very much call him a visual artist. He was born in Jamaica and grew up in South Florida but is currently Brooklyn-based. He is currently an Adobe Creative Resident hence why this event was sponsored by them. Prior to the event, it was listed in the details that we would have to download the app, Adobe LightRoom on our phones as that would be what we’d be learning through during. The Adobe partnership was quite apparent during the whole event as we used the LightRoom app and Aundre Larrow shared his tonal presets with us, as well as his color mixes. I mean this part of the session was clearly to promote the app and his presets within the app, but that’s not to discredit this portion, he shared many tips on angles, moodboards, and even though it was through the Adobe LightRoom app, his vision and approach was interesting to see. After the LightRoom portion there was some post edit discussion regarding photoshop. Using LightRoom was fun and it was interactive, but I wouldn’t say that was my main take away from the event. I signed up for it because visual media resonates with me as I love taking photos and also have been editing using Adobe programs since I was 12. What I really took away from this event was Aundre’s attitude and his approach towards photographing people. He talked about how photographing people was an honor to him and described how he strives to make every photo “honest” and how he tries to capture the distinct value of each human being and their story; this really resonated with me as I too believe in the value of every human beings story. Even though this was clearly a “self-plug” in a way, Larrow’s vision and his approach towards photographing people is simply brilliant.
