Photography

This Month in Photo: Occupy Boston

October 18, 2011



This Month In Photo, October 2011
Kristin Caffray at Occupy Boston

Kristin Caffray gets it.

A talented young photographer who started at BU/CDIA’s Waltham campus in September 2011, Kristin has already demonstrated a deep commitment to her craft by documenting the recent Occupy Boston protests in the city’s Financial District during her Camera and Workflow modules. What attracted instructor Shawn Read and the rest of us to Kristin’s story, other than the powerful photographs and street portraits she’s been making, was the way she’s been using social media, her blog, and flickr to push her work out to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is noticing! We’ll let Kristin pick up the story from here...



The way this all happened was through social media. When Occupy Wall Street started, I realized no one knew what was going on. So I pretty much turned my Facebook, twitter, and tumblr into an archive of everything I could find that was happening in NY. I was the first person to post on the Occupy Boston Facebook group, and I started to spread the word about the first General Assembly that was going to happen on a Tuesday at the Boston Common. 

Open Media Boston contacted me on twitter, and knew I took photos. They asked if I would join them on that Tuesday night to photograph the event. It was dark and I used my speedlight, which is still very foreign to me. I was not pleased with my photos, they felt too forced and in the process of taking them I felt like a complete outsider among the group. I knew how time sensitive the photos were, though, and I posted them immediately to flickr. I went from having a total of maybe 15-80 views a day on my flickr, to 430 views that next day. Someone I had known a long time ago contacted me from the Metro (a local free daily newspaper) as well. They didn't use my photos, but because I was so active online about all of this, they noticed what I was doing.

Friday I attended the Right To The City march. This is where it all came together. It was daytime, and I had my 50 Faces project in mind. All the photos I had seen from the first few General Assemblies for Occupy Boston were crowd shots. I decided that I was going to only focus on portraits. I also did the exact opposite as I had the first night. Instead of running around and sneaking photos of people, and attacking them with the abrasive speed light that I didn't really know how to use, I took a deep breath. I thought about each person, walked up, took the photo, made eye contact and smiled. This is how the next few days went. I thought about the Big Shots lecture I attended at CDIA, the rock & roll guy (Nikon Product Manager Mike Corrado). One of the things he stressed was how important it is to build trust with the people you are photographing.  I made sure to be at tent city in Dewey Square from 10am-9pm every day that weekend. I got down and dirty with them. And they got to know me, my face, and my camera. 

My goal in all of this was to show what most of the media was lying to you about. Not everyone that is supporting the movement is a young, white, urban hippy. I wanted everyone who couldn't be there to see the diversity that I saw. White, black, Asian, Spanish, young, old, professional, unemployed, children, hippies...everyone is there. I wanted to make sure that the average person who saw the photos could find at least one face they related to.  

The Good Men project contacted me after someone had mentioned my name to them. They wanted 10 photos of people holding signs. The website gets over a million page views a day. My photo set was the second most viewed post that day (the first was about the Amanda Knox trial). It blew up on twitter, and got 116 facebook likes. They emailed me that night and told me I was a rock-star on the website. 

Since October 1st I have constantly had over 1,000 views on my flickr. October 4th was the highest amount, which was almost 5,000. 

I think the reason this all happened is because I put all of myself into it. The days I was not at CDIA, I was out in the city making photos. It is all I have been thinking about. And social media is SO IMPORTANT! I have a love/hate relationship with social media and technology, but I use it, and I use it every day. We MUST have an online presence, because this is where everyone gets their information now. I have so many more followers on all my networks because of this project, and any future projects I do these people will see it, talk about it, and re-post. 

Kristin has since led groups of her classmates into the city with her on subsequent shoots. To see more of her work be sure to visit:

  The Good Men Project: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/who-is-occupyboston/

Open Media Boston: http://openmediaboston.org

Occupy Boston’s: http://occupyboston.com

Kristin’s new liveBooks portfolio website is under construction at: http://kristincaffray.sites.livebooks.com/

Don’t forget to follow her on tumblr at: http://safesoundsimagery.tumblr.com/