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Photography & blog post by John Michael Cooper

4,798 miles, over 28 cities and towns from New York to San Diego, this truly was my first coast to coast project.  56 photographers families photographed.  All the images were intended to be simple in nature with very simple lighting.  I used the same retouching recipe that I used on the 2008 Roadside project as well as applied the same rules of posing and arranging. In every image the subjects are connected by touching or handholding in some way, from one side of the family to the other, every single person is connected.  Also my goal was to shoot the whole family once they sat down in the chairs within 30 seconds and with a minimal amount of frames. 90% of sessions lasted less then 30 seconds and my average frame count for the familiy image was around 5 frames.  I had several other self imposed rules for how I shot the families but you’ll have to figure those out yourself by looking at the images. I need to send out some big thank you’s to some special people and sponsors for making this possible. Simply Color Lab for making something that each one of these families will be able to hang on their wall (more on this later). Finao which will be  making one of their ultra cool albums as display of the collection. David Williams for an emotional presentation on the importance of family photography which is the inspiration for the project.  Jason Domingues for helping me with a good part of the driving from Roanoke to Little Rock and single handedly organized the largest group of families in Kansas City..  Also a big thanks to those who donated to help cover our travel costs, you made it possible for me to travel farther and to add in a few extra days.  And lastly a huge thank you for all those that I have photographed and that will be going out and paying it forward, your all the real reason that this project will keep going forward.

 

john michael cooper

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