Guy Larson
“There’s something to be felt about creating.” – Guy Larson
You may have heard photographer Guy Larson say something along the lines of, “it’s like a moment of art that’s frozen in time forever.” We would agree that is true of photography, but what else is there besides the moment captured? Mystery. We truly don’t know, but that may be what makes it so intriguing. It can make your mind and heart race into a different dimension. What was being felt? What did the rest of the environment look like? Was it hot or was it cold? We try to put ourselves in that moment.
Maybe that’s what makes us take a second glance at a photograph we don’t yet understand. It’s the feeling. It’s all the endless micro expressions across one’s face. Frozen there for us to peel back all the layers of possibilities for as long as we’d like. We can become so consumed by where a photograph personally takes us, that we can forget what part the photographer really played beside the seemingly simple action of taking the picture itself. In Guy’s own words, “All of your planning and careful consideration comes together with the click of a button. When I’m creating for a client, I’m creating with them. I’m collaborating with the energy they bring. When I’m creating for myself, I’m creating with my environment. My surroundings inform me.”
Growing up with photography, Guy was immersed in the possibilities it presented for a young, aspiring artist—to breathe life and meaning into those captured images, those deeply personal and private moments. Coming from a family with multiple generations of amateur photographers, Guy formally trained at the Art Institute and received his Bachelor’s Degree in Photography from Seattle University. He quickly found himself pursuing his own unique approach to photography, finding his way into portrait photography.
When all your planning and careful consideration come together with the click of a button. When I’m creating for a model, I’m a model, I’m creating with them. I’m with them. I’m collaborating with the energy they bring.”
–Guy Larson
Guy’s innate sensibility and passion come from a long line of creatives that are forever searching for that moment. The moment. The moment that can all at once be so complex and ephemeral, and yet so simply and honestly captured within one tangible photograph. Predominately experimenting with expressive, contrasted light, and all the intricate settings cameras hold these days, for Guy, all these elements aim not only to evoke feeling but to magnify the feeling that the subject holds. It’s more than just clicking that button and taking that picture. It’s meeting and recognizing another energy; collaborating in such a way that that energy becomes a force to be reckoned with, a story that should be told. There’s something to be felt. There’s something to be shared.
Soft, edgy, bold, scary—conflicting energies within us hold a power we tend to describe wholly as emotion. Whether you prefer the term energy
or emotion, as Guy puts it, “How we perceive a scene, the little bits of eye candy that inform your feelings, the way the light falls... it’s intentional. It’s feeling with your eyes.”
