"I titled it Pomme de terre, which is French for potato, because I think it ended up kind of looking like a potato," David Damroze says of this photo that he shot in a weekend workshop held at Midwest Photographic Workshops in Farmington Hills (www.mpw.com). Damroze got permission to do some shooting after the rest of the class had left, which is when he captured this photo. He began attending workshops at MPW 12 years ago, after buying a 35mm camera in a pawnshop. He now uses a digital camera because he finds digital photos easier to manipulate. He originally printed this shot in color and low contrast (which is traditionally used for nudes to cover imperfections in the skin), but decided to violate the rules and print it in black and white and high contrast, which gives the tightly framed shot its realistic texture. Damroze is a mobile X-ray technician who recently moved to downtown Detroit from Albion. He has had no formal training other than the workshops and his own study from photography books. He admires photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark for her sympathetic approach to subjects and André Kertész for his strong sense of design.
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