We were lucky to catch up with Christie Goldstein recently and have shared our conversation below.
Christie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I live close to the gulf coast where hurricane season is something we take very seriously. Even with our preparedness, in August of 2017, a Cat4 hurricane named Harvey, caused about $125 billion in damage, took over 100 lives, and dumped a year of rain in less than a week. So many people lost everything and our photography community looked to do what they could to help in some way. I partnered with two other photographers to photograph as many families as we could to give them new family photographs. The amount of gratitude that was shown to us was staggering and will not be forgotten.
Christie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am showing my age here but growing up, I wanted to be a librarian. I learned to read at a very young age and immersed myself between new book covers faster than I could get to the library to check another set out. I thought if I could become a librarian, I would never face a book shortage. That didn’t happen. Instead I had a fantastic and long career as a nurse. As a delivery nurse, I got to be a part of many new family’s first chapter.
After my career as a nurse, I turned towards photography as a way to express myself and found that my desire for stories could be found through my camera. I often fail in my ability to convey in words what I am able to convey with my camera; my voice, my words are found in my images. I think being drawn towards people’s stories guides not only my client sessions but my images as well.
My photographic approach, to bring in the why and how I do what I do, is to try and capture movement, texture, or color in a framework that (hopefully!) creates a visceral response from the viewer if for no other reason than they feel that they have never seen the subject captured in this way. My secondary goal is to tell enough of a story that it leaves you wanting to see more, to feel more, and to know more. This holds true for my family sessions as well as when I create my fine art images. It also forges personal connections to art which I find to be beautifully beneficial for all.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
I read an article recently that states simply, the value is in the token, not in the art.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
That there is no need for perfection in art. That may sound simple in its statement but when I first started, I would shoot thousands of images in a session and spend hours scrolling through each one to find the most “perfect” one. Nailed focus, every strand of hair in place, clothes looking perfectly pressed. I wasn’t shooting portraits. I was shooting family interactions! I finally realized that capturing the feeling was more important than capturing some standard of perfection. Even now when photographing animal portraits, I am trying to capture personality over perfection.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.flashandflame.com
- Instagram: @ninetwelvephotography
- Linkedin: christie-goldstein-0912ff
- Other: www.ninetwelvephotography.com
Image Credits
all images are mine