The first selection of October is the oddly-formatted, self-titled “Poverty without the Face“, which Wayne S. Grazio captured on June 3, 2015. Camera and vitals are not available in the metadata. “I chose to crop this image this way to allow the viewer to look at the face of poverty without the face”, he says of the street shot. Clarity, composition, and rich black-and-white tones make the portrait a keeper.
Wayne describes himself as a “retired, veteran United States Navy photographer and Photo Officer currently residing in San Diego”, adding: “My first pictures were taken on a 127 film format using a toy camera I ordered collecting Bazooka Bubble Gum Comics wrappers at the age of eight”. Ambitious! “I used all types of format film cameras in my career. My first 35mm film camera was loaned to me when I became my high school’s yearbook photographer in 1976. That is also where I had my first experiences in the darkroom processing film and photographs”.
Regarding career:
I joined the US Navy as a photographer in 1978 and served 25 years in the photographic imaging field where I learned photojournalism and darkroom photographic processes. Being a military photographer, I had to be adept at all types of photography. Documentary and photojournalism, forensic, combat, industrial, portrait, macro, medical, and aerial photography just to name the main ones. I was also trained in darkroom work for both film and paper, color, and black and white.
From Massachusetts, but living in California, Wayne joined Flickr in January 2007 and continues adding to his Photostream 13 years later. Also peek at his “Tongue and Street“, which appeared in my “Flickr a Day” series five years ago.
Photo Credit: Wayne S. Grazio