Grape Interview with Local Photographer Matthew Reamer

Your pans, angles, and filters are very unique; do you plan ahead for shoots or is it a spur of the moment feeling that leads to your cinematic approach?

I like to have an idea of what I want going into a shoot, but I never storyboard. When I start shooting and am actually at the set, or whenever we are filming, I find different angles that I had not thought of prior to the shoot. It is all very fun, I enjoy what I do a great deal, and I think that is what drives me to create the best work that I possibly can. Fun, and love.

You've shot some pretty interesting subjects, everything from cigarette smoking baby dolls wielding pocket knives ("Chucky") to nude male models cradling canines ("Speechless") - what's your favorite thing to shoot?

I shoot anything that catches my eye, or that pops into my head and I think, "Hmm, this could be awesome, visually and conceptually. Let's try it out". A lot of my pictures just feel into place though, I see it, I shoot it. I never really plan on taking the photos, or video I take, It is all there already just waiting for something to hit the shutter.

If you had to narrow down all your work to just one favorite picture, which would it be? Is there a particularly awesome story about it?

Every piece I do becomes my favorite piece, until my next. I am still progressing, in my opinion. I look at stuff from a year ago and think, "Man I could have done this different, and this, and this". I am my own critique. It sucks sometimes though, I will get so bummed on a piece, that I don't even want to edit it.

There's a zombie apocalypse and you have to flee Richmond, but you only have time to save your best friend or your camera - which do you choose?

Well, my best friend is my girlfriend Erin, she is my buddy. Always there for me, and over all the best person I've ever met in my life. And I have always thought the best cameras are your eyes. Storing all it seeings into the big memory card called your brain. It is amazing how your eyes and brain react with every other scenes when you hear a story, tell someone an event that happened earlier that day, hear a song, smell a certain smell. It all brings back stories, film that your eyes have captured and stored in your brain. Every aspect of the event. So, I would choose Erin, and leave the camera.

Check out Matthew's work here

Interview by J. Lawrence Frashure

Follow him on Twitter: @JLFrashure; or head over to The Hollow Corners 

and watch his first novel take form before your eyes.