The Story Behind The Photo: Kimi&Salvo
The Story Behind The Photo: Kimi&Salvo
By: Hoan K. Trinh
Over the telephone:
Me: “Hey Kimi, since you’re getting married soon, you want to go around Austin for a little bit and get some bridal photos done while I am down here?”
Kimi: “hahahahahahaha, NO!!! I DON’T WANT YOU TO WORK WHILE YOU’RE DOWN HERE!! I mean, thank you for the offer, it’s very nice of you but I just want to hang out……..”
Me: “Yeah, I don’t want to work either…………………but can you wear something nice?”
Kimi: “hahaha, we’ll see”
* I live and work in Connecticut, but I was visiting family in Texas at the time.
I break photography down into two broad categories: one category of photography make a statement with regard to the subjects in the photograph, the other category preserve the memories that have pass through the interpretation of the photographer. For example, a couple of years earlier, I went on a business trip with Kimi to Philadelphia. It was our third time in the city over the course of 8 months. Since Kimi was an international student from China, I thought it would be a great idea to do a series of portraits of her in Philadelphia to commemorate her time in the City of Brotherly Love. Who knows when she will be back again? Beside, her parents would be ecstatic to see photos of their daughter enjoying life in a city literally on the other side of the Earth. Really, with just the simple idea that some mom and dad in China might really enjoy seeing their daughter who is far from home, that became my goal for the photoshoot in Philadelphia. You can see some of the photos in this post.
Fast forward a few years and the conversation above, even though Kimi do not want to spend time to do an actual photoshoot and she is right as we have a lot of catching up to do, I still wanted to captured at least one good photograph of her at her happiest moment. Remember how I told her to wear something nice? Yeah….you’ll see hahaha 🙂
P.S: To view the image in better detail, please click on the actual photo itself.
Enjoying a drink at a local coffee shop. That pink lemonade is actually mine, but it matched with her shirt so I let her borrow it 🙂
Pointing at random things that does not exist 🙂
Noticed how many photos we pull sitting still in one place?
Still didn’t go anywhere 🙂
The drink that Kimi stole from me, it kind of match her shirt 🙂
Then we went to see a World War II reenactment since it was Memorial Day.
One more with the Jeep.
Photo credit: Kimi Shao. No other explanation necessary.
And then we saw this awesome wall that we had to take photo with, it was located right at her old apartment….
One more with the wall.
One “artsy” shot and that was it. I think this whole thing took 15 minutes? Definitely not the typical engagement photos and we probably need to redo this in a more formal settings but the moments are as genuine as they get 🙂
hktphotography 