Guestblog Bart Jansen (BartX)

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Sometimes on twitter I host a small “critique day” on which people can tweet their images and I give a small review. The best images I select and the people I will give a chance to post something on my blog. When I saw the image Bart send me the first thing that struck me was that I don’t like “smokers” and now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean the PEOPLE of course, I just don’t like smoking. But as Bart shows in this guestblog (and I agree) sometimes photographing these smokers can be very nice. I asked Bart for more images and I found out he was doing a series, so that was for me time to invite him over here to tell us about his photography and smokers…. so ladies and gents here is BartX.
And make sure to follow him via http://www.bartx.nl

BartX
Smoking. Some persons find it a bad habit. Others love it. I personally think that it stinks, but it’s awesome for photos. At school, I study Journalism in Utrecht, a teacher gave us the assignment to shoot some portraits. There was just one restriction, it had to be a portrait. I immediately wanted to do something different. Most of my classmates got the idea of photographing one of their close friends. I choose to use my dad as a model. In his spare-time he enjoys smoking cigars every now and then. So I thought, yeah a black and white portrait of my dad with a lot of smoke should be amazing. And it was.

On Twitter I posted an update about it and I asked my smoking followers to react if they wanted a so called ‘rokersportret’ . In no time there were five or six people who wanted to help me out. The serie was born. Everytime I posted a new portrait online, another smoker wanted to pose for my camera. In the beginning the shoots took 10 to twenty minutes. Later on I promoted the shoots as ‘being shot in one cigarette’. I had to work a little bit harder that way, but it was a great motivation.

I decided that I have to shoot at least twenty smokers to have a complete serie. I already imagined myself standing in de middle of a room with twenty smoker portraits surrounding me. All printed on a 50x70cm format. But, first I have to reach that ‘magic number’ of twenty. At the moment I have 18 smokers done. And two in the pipeline, so I’m almost finished. After that I have to look out for a place to show my photo’s. (If you can help me, please do)

I personally think that the power of this serie is the natural feeling that I’ve tried to capture. I never forced anybody to look at my camera or pose in a certain way. I just said: Smoke like you always do and don’t mind me and my camera.

Thanks to this serie I found out that I love to shoot portraits. Even though I am being thought to be a photojournalist, I would love to continue shooting portraits. That’s what I love.