 |
Steven Shires was born in the unimaginably distant year of 1953, in Richmond, VA, where he attended Mary Mumford Elementary School, Thomas Jefferson High, and later, Old Dominion University (its nickname was Over Dose University, and, true to the era, it lived up to its name). Though his interest in photography was first kindled during high school, Steven pursued a degree in education once in college. Daddy said he had to, and since Daddy was paying the tuition, the argument was a one-sided one. Steven did, however, continue making images throughout his higher education.
Steven taught for eleven years while making images on the side, before "sticking it to the man" and retiring temporarily to Key West in pursuit of la vie boheme. There he took endless pictures of the colorful critters populating the streets of that weird little island (humans, mostly) while trying to figure out what to do with his life. The answer was to keep taking pictures. The impetus came when he was lying on a hammock on his front porch, and became suddenly obsessed with the patterns of nighttime shadows weaving across the uneven boards on the deck floor. He wanted to know how to capture that image, but he couldn't. So he went back to school, paying his own tuition this time.
Emerging from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale with a Degree of Science in Photography, Steven was one of the more grizzled members of the Class of '94. Degree in hand, he set about building his practice in South Florida; an endeavor of which this website is a part. You, dear reader, are encouraged to look around, and to see what you like. Over the coming months, examples of Steven’s extensive catalogues of product photography, nature photography, artistic portraiture, architectural photography, and still life will be appearing in these pages, each the result of passion doggedly pursued and recovered.
He brings to his work a unique compositional eye, unveiling hidden contours, colors, angles and shapes in every scene he captures. Steven's photographs discover the emotional life of his subjects, and preserve them for all to see.
- Brandon K. Thorp
|  |
