Alter Ego
A few months back, my good friend and photographer, Brian Appiah Obeng got in touch and said he’d like to do a shoot with me. He was working on this concept, he said, about capturing the different elements of someone’s character. It couldn’t have come at a more poignant time for me – as I was really coming into my own with my running and trying to marry these two sides of myself. One day in April or May, we met up and produced this shoot. It was a great day and I feel the shots have really captured something in me, the true beginnings of something. This set of photos documents pretty much the exact moment I became comfortable as a ‘runner’.
We had a lot of fun on set. Brian had me dress as the ‘blogger’ me first. He got me to talk a lot and pretend I was interviewing someone. He encouraged me to just relax and be animated. Then I changed into my running gear and we did the same thing – the conversation changed, I talked running and Brian, a keen practitioner of Parkour, talked about his various death defying stunts. My body language changed immediately. As the ‘runner’ I’m more relaxed yet I feel my body looks more powerful and commanding.
I’ve done a fair few shoots and this is definitely the one that got me thinking the most. If photography is about capturing a moment in someone’s life, this has absolutely done that for me. I feel lucky to have a visual documentation of such an important personal transformative moment.
You can check out more of Brian’s work here.
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Tags: Brian Appiah Obeng, Broken Jumps, photo shoots, Photography, running
