
Fort Worth city councilman, Joel Burns, in the Fort Worth Water Gardens.
My client,
The Dallas Morning News hired me to shoot a portrait of Texan of the Year nominee, Fort Worth city councilman, Joel Burns. Initially, I was to shoot the assignment at the Dallas Women’s Museum in Fair Park, but after arriving and talking with Burns we decided that shooting the photo in Fort Worth made more sense. It enabled us to select a location that was definitively Fort Worth.
Burns and I decided on the Fort Worth Water Gardens and met there in the early afternoon the following day to make the portrait. Burns, who is gay, was most recently in the news for speaking at an October 2010 council meeting about suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kids. As part of Dan Savage‘s It Gets Better campaign, Burns talked about his experiences as a gay youth in Crowley, Texas.
I sent the client three images, which did not include the horizontal photo posted here. I stepped away to retrieve a short telephoto lens and when I turned back toward Burns, he was busily texting–and had been most of the time we were together. Burns is a very busy man and I was grateful he took the hour out of his day to help with the portrait.
My favorite is the vertical.

Fort Worth city councilman, Joel Burns.
Often, a subject is eager to get the photo over–largely because they, like many of us, hate being photographed and want to be done with it. This typically forces the photographer to make the best photo possible in three to five minutes. My all-time favorite news editor, Tom Gregory, of The Times-Picayune/States-Item, was fond of screaming at me on deadline saying “God dammit, Hart, where’s my photo? It only takes a 60th of a second to make a photograph.” I’d reply, “Yes Tom, but it takes at least twice that long to make a GOOD photograph.”
So when a subject actually engages and wants to help make a good photograph, it makes a huge difference. Burns was definitely the latter.
These and other images from The Robert Hart Studio are available in my searchable online archive: