Loving Faces in Lucky Spaces
Richmond street photographer and visual artist Terrell (@_eyeofagiant) explores the concepts of luck and love, how they interact with his morals and lessons learned from over a decade of candid photography
By Tom Jakob | 3/1/24
“My candid career, believe it or not, came from me feeling self-conscious about being such a big guy with a small DSLR around my neck,” says Terrell, a Richmond-based street photographer who has been in the game for over 12 years. “I found comfort in the shadows… just playing with the perimeter of a crowd, trying to capture movement and feelings and people's expressions.”
Terrell is a big guy indeed. 6 feet 5 inches to be exact. He also comes packing a deep, billowy, and resonant voice that, when paired with his warm and sincere personality, all comes together to form––in the shortest of words––an enchantingly kind person. He radiates love, which sits at the center of pretty much everything that drives Terrell as an artist, family member, and friend. It certainly comes through in his photos from the street and events, which whether monochrome or polychrome, are bursting with the warm breezes and freezing gusts of human emotion.
Photography is a deeply intimate art form. No other visual art is capable of immediately capturing precisely what something looked like at a precise moment in time. It takes a great level of sensitivity towards others to pull off photography in an effective and ethical manner. But a stunning photo is often also a result of some varying degree of luck. What makes Terrell’s portfolio of candid photography so special is that it does have a lot of lucky moments, which he got to see because of how courteously he conducts himself as a photographer.
Terrell is a sentimental person. It’s obvious from the ways he talks about his friends and family. Consequently, a sentimental and loving family is what sewed the seeds of his early photography inspirations. “My mother, that angel, she's always liked pictures,” says Terrell. “I still sneak home sometimes and she doesn't notice, and neither does my dad, just to look at her old photos and see how she used to capture stuff.”
But it was actually his cousin, Click Thompson, a Fort Worth-based photographer known for his body of work in rodeo and bull riding photography, who became Terrell’s first true photography mentor and helped him see photos as more than family keepsakes. “He would always tell me ‘Do this. Don't do that. Try this. Stay away from that. I don't want to hear you talk like this anymore,’” says Terrell. “We have completely different styles, but he’s still a huge inspiration of mine.”
And so began the journey of Terrell harnessing photons and transforming them into stunning images of people in their natural elements. “My father bought me my first camera actually because I would always take my mom's Canon Rebel T3i without asking because she never used it,” says Terrell. “I ended up getting a Nikon D3300, which was my first official camera, and I’ve been a Nikon user ever since.”
Even in the beginning, Terrell knew he liked to capture people off guard. But when a fellow photographer friend of his gave him some advice, that’s when things began to accelerate. “He told me my camera should go with me everywhere I went to help me get better,” says Terrell. “So my regular movements started to include my camera. If I had plans to go out, it was coming with me, and that grew my passion even more… not knowing what I'd see en route to my destination.”
From sneaking through the crowds for shows at Helen’s, Strangematter, and other nightlife spots around Richmond, to putzing around downtown, Terrell grew his skills in photography. He dedicated his time to understanding crowd work and composition. This involved the expectable action shots of people on the dancefloor and DJs hyping up crowds. But equally important to understanding crowd work was understanding that crowds are more than a collection of bodies.
“You got to feel it,” says Terrell. “It's not something you chase. You have to feel it when a laugh is coming. You have to feel it when someone’s about to smile.”
(PHOTO Courtesy of Terrell)
Street photography especially helped Terrell overcome the early challenges of composition and utilizing spaces. “It was all weird to me, people taking pictures of buildings and architecture and whatnot,” says Terrell. “But the more knowledge you have, and the better you understand something, the more you can appreciate it. If you don't try to understand something, you won't see the beauty or the appeal in it.”
But the street can be a daunting place for a photographer with even a semi-expensive camera in their hands. Some people hate having their picture taken. Others are far too eager to be photographed. It was a workspace in which Terrell improved quickly because he had no other choice.
“One of the things I learned coming up is that a good picture to me isn't a good picture to everyone else,” says Terrell. “You’ve got to respect people and their space. So I started studying up a lot on body language and facial expressions because it helped me with that.”
First and foremost, street photography helped Terrell improve his ability to interact with subjects. But a huge part of that was developing an eye for composing subjects too. After enough trial and error, Terrell’s photos improved. But the progress Terrell made as far as composition had less to do with posing a subject and more to do with using the surroundings his subjects found themselves in.
(PHOTO Courtesy of Terrell)
“I like natural reaction. People are naturally beautiful. I don't feel like you ever have to compose a photo,” says Terrell. “Sometimes, it'll be the wrong space. That person will be in the wrong place and you may just have to catch them again in some other area.”
Over the next 12 years, Terrell learned the mechanical and human elements of photography through practically all kinds of gigs and opportunities, some paid, others on his own dime. This all culminated in his first gallery exhibition in July 2021 at Haus on Market in Petersburg, Virginia, then again in March of 2023. “At that time, Haus was the best place to have it because that was the whole studio. So it just made sense,” says Terrell. “They were real good turnouts.”
The camera continues to follow Terrell everywhere he goes. Of course, today he rocks a much more professional mirrorless Nikon Z-series. But in his own words, Terrell is “such an old man,” even at his young age. When asked about leaving Richmond to pursue photography opportunities elsewhere, Terrell shrugs. He’s interested, but has his reasons to stay.
“People tell me all the time ‘Terrell, you should go to New York,’ but I know in my heart of hearts when I go out there it's gonna be nothin’ but tacos, cheesesteaks, and camera time,” says Terrell.
Part of what keeps Terrell in Richmond is also the love he has found in his community of artists who are based there too. “I'm lucky in this city in that everybody kind of shows me love,” says Terrell. “I’ve maybe had two or three bad experiences here.”
Terrell still has his occasional doubts of course, whether they be of himself or the scene around him. As with all art scenes, Richmond has its problems too. Namely, there isn’t always a ton of stuff happening at once. So if you miss an interesting show or event, there can be an intense fear of missing out that consumes a great number of Richmond artists. So, Terrell is trying to “spread [his] wings a little bit,” by breaking away from the magnets that draw crowds and create his own FOMO-free art.
“For a while, I think I was in a circle of people that was doing stuff that seemed interesting. So I would just go to where people were going,” says Terrell. “Different DJs have different effects on places. A crowd may be swayed a certain way because of the DJ that’s gonna be there. If you know somebody is in a certain place, that's going to trigger you to go. So you kind of just follow people.”
(PHOTO Courtesy of Terrell)
Although business has been good, there have also been times when things felt a bit uncanny in Richmond. Another big problem in Richmond is that because there isn’t always a ton of stuff happening at once, there also isn’t always a ton of work to go around. But as Terrell sees it, the problem isn’t entirely that the demand for creative labor is insufficient.
“The people that have more opportunities, it can be a gatekeeper situation sometimes,” says Terrell. “I've run into people already having photographers on their books, but I’ll cover a random event for them because their photographer is not available. But then nothing comes of it. Once their photographer is back, it's like I was never there.”
But the frustration Terrell feels doesn’t come from a personal place. It’s just business, which is something he takes very seriously. “I always say ‘have the respect of a friend and do business correctly,'” says Terrell. And as he sees it, this gatekeeper situation helps nobody and only inhibits the growth of Richmond’s vigorous arts scene by sewing a status quo of bad business practices.
(PHOTO Courtesy of Terrell)
“People are not honest with you upfront, and they expect the most for the least. And that's not right. Because they wouldn't accept that business, so they shouldn't offer it,” says Terrell. “I know people are gonna read this, so let me say that I'm not throwing shots at anybody here or anything like that. But this has just been my experience in Richmond. There’s not always a whole lot of love.”
That’s really what troubles Terrell at the end of the day. He is a person who exudes kindness and empathy. It shows not only in the dramatically romantic and haunting photos he takes but also in how he carries himself in everyday life. But the absence of that from others in the scene around him is helpful to nobody.
During our interview with Terrell, anytime he mentioned a fellow artist, he made it a priority to plug their work and shout out to them. It’s clear that he has such a deep, sincere desire to see his fellow artists prosper. However towards the end of our interview, the discussion turned to the concept of luck and how it relates to a person’s success. Up until that point in the interview, luck had been an idea that was strictly grafted onto questions about photography mechanics and practices. But we could not pass on the opportunity to ask Terrell if someone as kind and supportive as him ever felt the twinge of jealousy.
“Nah man, that’s bad karma,” says Terrell. “I love to see that. I mean, it could have been a ‘Right-Place, Right-Time’ -thing for them. But I love to see that. Because there really is enough stuff going on around here.”
Although luck certainly plays a factor in the pictures Terrell takes, it’s clear to see that luck is something Terrell actually relishes. Where a lot of artists are inhibited, Terrell finds a way to be motivated and consequently find great success. Lucky moments on the street and throughout everyday life allow him to do what he loves in the way he loves to do it: with kindness, empathy, and appreciation.
“Just show love, man,” says Terrell. “Be honest about your expectations, what you have, and what you need. It’s so easy to show love. It’s not hard at all.”
To keep up with Terrell’s work, collaborate, or request his photography services, follow him on Instagram @_eyeofagiant