Despite shooting shows regularly, there aren't many of the photographers around me that I actually get to meet. Victoria is the shiny exception. Part photographer, full-time artist.
She's joined me on several shoots, with an ability to draw out the best in people that I'm always a little in awe of, and one of my favorite things to watch.
We met at an event I was shooting, when she walked up and asked if she could borrow my camera for a few shots.
A few minutes later, watching the camera move in her hands, I understood why the photos would be good before I'd even seen them.
There's a quickness to her, but not hurried, always trailing something only she sees. There's something determined in it too, fluid and sure of itself, gone before you realize where she went. That same instinct seemed to guide Victoria's hand, a fearless habit of her getting in close to the subject and/or low to the ground. Victoria's a person who'll lay flat on her back or squeeze between two giant speakers just to find the shot.
I also wanted to turn my own camera on her right then, to catch whatever it was that pulled her into her work so completely. Her laugh also seems to live right under the surface, ready to break loose the moment she coaxes one out of her subject, the two of them sharing a joke the rest of us missed. You had to be there, and she always was.
Several shows later, she's become one of my favorite subjects too, not just in the pit or with friends, but dancing with that wide, easy smile of hers, or in an unexpected candid, lost in whatever she's seeing through her own lens. I love catching her in those moments, the same way I love seeing what she eventually shows me from behind it. I like to think our vision overlaps somewhere in there, an appreciation for artistic talent and a love for capturing creatives at work.
Photos of Victoria doing her thing are mine. Everything else is all Victoria, work I was lucky enough to edit, not create.