Hunting and Gathering

By Brooke Berman

Directed by Kasi Campbell

Baltimore/ DC Premiere

Photography by Katie Simmons-Barth

Featuring Alina Collins Maldonado as Bess, Rex Daugherty as Jessie

This shot didn’t make it into the final cut for the advertisements but it happens to be my favorite image. I love that the focus is on the glass. To me it reads as though the action in the photo is a result of the glass itself…or what is in it.

It is this kind of happy mistake that I love when I’m working. It wasn’t purposeful but when I went back and looked through I loved it.

I shoot from the hip when I take pictures. It is gut, instinct and most importantly heart. I sometimes stop and take a deep breath then fire off a few shots as if I was shooting a bow. My methods aren’t by the book. I seldom know for sure how my work will read until I’m finished. When people ask me what settings I’m in I usually say…”I don’t know. The right ones.” The right ones for me.

When we think of an art form most people immediately think of painting, illustration, dance and music…we don’t often think of photography as an art. It is more a recording of events. Much of our culture is able via technology to get pretty high quality images of themselves and others so pictures are not too hard to come by.I feel like because we all have access…we take it for granted.

For me, photography is purely an art form. I breathe it in and exhale the same passion that I did when I was on stage. If my camera were a paint brush or a pen I would fly across my canvas and splash light and color wherever it was true and right to me. That is how I feel about my pictures. I am showing you what I see. Finally…in the most perfect of ways…I get to show you what I see.