Andrews University Graduation: May 4, 2008

Showing up thirty minutes late, in some cases, can either be good or bad, fashionable, or rude. Showing up thirty minutes late to a party: fashionable. Showing up thirty minutes late to court: bad. Last Sunday, a few of my friends and I showed up thirty minutes late to the Commencement ceremony for this year's graduating class at Andrews University. The timing was... somewhere in between. The mall that only thirty minutes before was empty was filled when each individual from the inside of Pioneer Memorial Church found their way outside. The weather was clear, the temperature was a pristine seventy degrees, and the luminance of the sun was extremely challenged by the beaming faces of everyone there.

I wanted to try something a little unfamiliar to me while I went around taking pictures. Being late, I felt that I had already missed out on some prime "hey look at me, I'm a fresh graduate!" photo ops, and with such a huge event, it was only natural for every other person to be holding a camera, poised and ready to take portraits. So, I decided it was a good opportunity for me to try a little photojournalism. Most of the pictures I took were completely candid. I either tried to do a little scene stealing by taking pictures of people who were posed to take pictures from other people or tried to take pictures of people when they weren't looking, a la sauvette style. For my subjects, I chose people I already knew, because, well, my memory card's small and I knew I was going to be shooting a lot.

Turns out, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I couldn't get out of the portraiture mentality. I've been shooting nothing but portraits for months now, and because of that, I couldn't get my mind to open up and take in the whole picture.

Maybe if I wasn't so biased and actually took pictures of people I didn't know....

Nah, it would've turned out exactly the same way.

In either case, here are a few shots from that day. As always, more can be seen on my flickr by clicking here.





























Congratulations to all of this year's graduates.