Eyeworld

81 EW IN OTHER NEWS August 2018 "Much like being in the OR, I can manipulate things and I can see it on my computer and it gives me this creative canvas. It's like a sur- geon going in and saying I want this and I want that. You get to control this technical environment, but in the end, it's all about the emotion. I like trying to read people's faces and getting them to relax and trying to see in them something that's beau- tiful or telling or sexy or mysterious. That gets to be a puzzle as well as a creative endeavor," Dr. Safran said. When Dr. Safran shoots his subjects, many of them already have professional headshots for their job. Often what he's trying to do with his work is tell a different story. "That has a lot to do with the eye, which is the irony of the whole thing, thinking about eye contact not so much as an organ of vision but as an organ of communication," he explained. "People speak with their eyes. How they hold their lids, if they're looking up at me or down at me, if their eyes are slanted or halfway shut, that communicates a lot to me and to the viewer. I pay attention to where the eyes are in relationship to the camera." In addition to working with the subject themselves to get expressive shots, Dr. Safran has brought in oth- er artistic media to his work, namely neon powder and neon paints that glow under ultraviolet lights. natural looking. There is a science and history to using these differ- ent lights," Dr. Safran said. "I have seven strobes that are on big tripods I can move around, and I know how to use them effectively. Going back to his interests in technical aspects, he emphasized the importance of light in photography. "Images are created by light. There is a beauty to creating light that allows me to make a picture that is dramat- ic and harsh or soft or angulated or "I started thinking about light in a more scientific way after that and understanding the relationship between types of light, proximity of lighting to the subject," he said, adding that from there his work ramped up. "I was getting high-end looking things from this studio setup." Within a year, he went from bribing college students with pizza in exchange for their time as models to paying for studio and equipment time at a local photographers' gal- lery. Eventually, Dr. Safran opened his own studio. "I started pushing myself. I believe in this 10,000 hours thing— the more you work, the better you get. I started shooting as much as I could. … I would go after surgery and on the weekends," he said. Dr. Safran's focus was never on photography as a business, howev- er, always the art of it. As such, he rarely charges subjects for any of his work. "I decided that to get really cool pictures I'd want to shoot cool subjects, so I started reaching out to people in the art community, actors, dancers, circus performers, models. Whenever anyone would come to Syracuse … I would try to grab them," Dr. Safran said, adding later that taking money off the table reduced the stress on subjects who posed for him, allowing both the model and the photographer to "get into creative spaces that you want." continued on page 82

• Cover