Joe and Trooper Dudley
by Walker Pickering
Joe talking to Senior State Trooper David Dudley, the trooper who happened to be monitoring the Capitol rotunda, and coincidentally, a good friend of my grandmother. She worked for the DPS (Texas Department of Public Safety) for many years and only recently retired.
Great series Walker. I particularly like this one and the waiting area one (which is my favorite I think). The square format works really well in the formal settings in these photos (though I’m pretty partial to square format in general), and Joe seems to be a great subject.
I agree about the square format – partly to do with association, I’m sure. Stops the pictures from being off-hand, casual, candid.
In the last two pictures, looking at Joe’s back, I was afraid we were saying goodbye to him too early, before the series had got under way. The more I look at this one, the more David and Joe’s hands become the focus of attention for me.
Forgive me if I’m shooting off before tuning in, but in this series (and looking back through your archives) it’s almost as if you sometimes say “I don’t do composition. Not interested in pushes, pulls, weights, tensions against the edge. WHACK! Here’s the subject. That’s the way it is.”
Is that fair? In this series, it feels entirely appropriate . You don’t intrude. No need to get clever.
I’d say it’s a fair assessment. Unfortunately, I wish it weren’t the case all the time. It seems I let composition go a bit more often than I’d like to admit. But I’m glad you brought it up, because it’s something I need to pay more attention to.
I’m not sure there’s anything ‘unfortunate’ about it. Far better to come from this direction than the other. There’s a lot of excitingly composed vacuity out there. What you have in these pictures is much harder to learn, I think, and I admire it.