If you read Part One of this series of posts about Me Ra Koh‘s Discovery Workshop, then you know that Day One was huge on a personal level. It was rough. It lead me to know more about myself.

Day Two was just as rough and challenging. On this day, we delved into portrait-making with Rick Chapman. He spent some time talking about how he made some of his portraits in various projects, from his portraits of pro athletes to his images of the human form in decayed industrial settings to his personal work of his wife and family. He would ask his subjects to talk about the photo that they had always wanted taken of themselves. He would ask them to talk about the things that excited them. He talked about how he brought his own point of view to his images.

He demonstrated everything he talked about with a portrait session with Leslie, a local resident of Stinson Beach, CA. Leslie is a chef. She makes gourmet crackers. She has a collection of vibrant aprons. We went out into the rain and found an amazing blue door to be the backdrop for a funny and regal woman. Rick had also talked about his own unsettled energy on Day One. He told us that he would try to incorporate the prickliness of his frustration into his portrait by using prickly succulent plants in the background. Rick and Leslie had a playful vibe between them, and the process looked so effortless.

Then, we were assigned to do our own portrait sessions with one of many Stinson Beach residents who volunteered to be our clients. I was paired up with Christene, and we set off to the beach to photograph Lauren Campbell.

I have to admit that this was a tough session. The pressure was high to come up with ways to photograph Lauren, and I had a lot of trouble slowing down to really think about what I wanted to portray. Lauren is an avid biker and incredible rock climber.

I think I did a fine job depicting his active lifestyle, but I just didn’t hit the note that Rick intended us to hit. I didn’t connect and find Lauren’s spirit.

Lauren is a healer by trade. After our portrait session was done, I got to know more about his experiences as a healer and how he was healed by Chinese traditional medicine after a diving accident. After I looked through all my photos much later, I found this picture. Even though it’s taken from far away, it reveals Lauren better. Calm, focused, balanced. In harmony with nature—with a dash of epic.

Now, I wonder how would I have depicted this up close? What a challenge.

I left Day Two of the workshop discouraged. I was nervous. When I get nervous, my mind blanks. I was struggling to solidify my ideas on the spot. I had some vague notions of them, but it was hard to slow down and assert myself and just say, “Hey, let’s figure things out.”

Driving down the winding mountain road that lead from Stinson Beach back down to Sausalito didn’t help, too. Thick fog was plastered to the ground, and there were times that I thought that the road beneath us had disappeared. Was it time to throw up, yet??

Come back for the final post of this series, Part Three on Me Ra Koh’s Discovery Workshop, at Cavallo Point and Stinson Beach in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA.