Brian Regan / Music

You’ll never improve at anything if you don’t practice.

These are a few portraits that I made of my husband last week. He practiced his craft, and I practiced mine.

Photographing artists in their element is one of my favorite things to do. The results are powerful: genuine, relaxed portraits of people doing what they love.

I especially love this set of images because they remind me of the film work that I did in college. I chose to shoot and share them all in black and white for several reasons, but the biggest is the nostalgia that I feel looking at them. They remind me of simpler days spent processing black and white 35mm photos of my friends in my college darkroom.

Sometimes I feel like taking pictures of my husband is a “cop-out”, that my time could be better spent photographing someone who I’m less familiar with in environments that I’m less comfortable in. This isn’t true. I believe that I should always be striving to make new, different work; but that doesn’t invalidate shooting in a space where you can challenge yourself to see what is “normal” to you in a new and unique way.

I’ve spent time photographing Brian playing music for 5 years. This is how it looked to me last week. It is new and different from it was the last time I photographed him. And that is powerful.