Ok, @Morgan_Hardwood bugged me about this on IRC recently, and it got me thinking about interviewing some of the amazing photographers hanging around here. The trouble is, I suck at interviewing people (see the old post on Faces of Open Source).
So, I figured I would ask folks most likely to actually read these things.
Could we please crowd-source some questions that folks might like to see asked of photographers that I can use as a template/guidance for actually conducting these interviews? What types of things would everyone like to know about? I would probably start generally, and then work to more specific types of questions based on the content/photography-style.
Any of these questions could be assumed to have follow-ups based on the answers (and flow of the conversation perhaps).
Maybe…
General
- How long have you been shooting
- How would you describe your style/photography (related to influences?)
- Influences
- Motivations (perhaps artistic statement/vision)
- Why do you shoot _________? (why landscapes/people/dogs/still-life/etc).
- What about [subject] draws you to it?
- What is your (top 3? 5?) favorite photographs of your own?
- What is your favorite [influence image]? (related to Influences)
- Is there something outside of your comfort zone you wish you could try/shoot more of? What is it?
- What is one piece of advice you would offer to another photographer?
other thoughts (slightly more specific):
- Gear
- Software
- Workflow
Maybe pick out a few specific images that would be good showcase images and possibly discuss it in more depth. Or ask them to pick out their favorites.
I’m going to make this a wiki post so feel free to edit it, or to sound off in a response so I can extend this. Ideally I’d like to have a rough framework to follow that is built from what others might genuinely like to know about the interviewee.