Born to Notice
Hi, I’m Erin Ninehouser.
I feel most like myself when there is too much happening at once.Give me a camera and put me somewhere in the middle of it: backstage before a show, inside a packed festival, at a protest where the energy can change in seconds, or following an artist so absorbed in what they're making that they've forgotten I'm there.
I'm watching body language, light, relationships, the small changes that tell me something is about to happen.
Then I wait.
After more than a decade behind a camera, I've gotten pretty good at recognizing the moment when someone stops performing.
You can see it happen: shoulders drop, attention moves away from the camera and back toward whatever actually matters, someone laughs differently or reaches for another person without thinking about it.
That's the part I want.
My path here hasn't been particularly linear.
I've spent much of my adult life working in organizing, advocacy, public education, and community storytelling, eventually founding a nonprofit to counter misinformation. (Shoutout HearYourselfThink.org and my fearless husband, Dave!)
I still think about how stories shape what we believe about our neighbors, although these days I'm more interested in what happens when we stop trying to explain everything to each other and get close enough to actually experience it.
Photography gave me a way to do that.I can tell you an artist cares deeply about her work, or I can show you what happens to her face when she's making it.
Some things become more convincing when you can feel them for yourself.
Over the years I've photographed musicians, artists, creative businesses, protests, festivals, and plenty of moments I couldn't have planned if I'd tried.
The subject changes, but my attention lands in the same place: I'm drawn to someone who gives a shit about their craft, their community, the thing they're trying to make possible.
I know how vulnerable it can feel to care that much.
Maybe that's why I never want a shoot to feel like I'm extracting something from someone.
Before I can photograph your work well, I want to understand why you've chosen to give part of your life to it, what gets you out of bed in the morning, and what you hope someone understands after encountering what you've made.
Then we can forget about the camera for a while.
One of my favorite things anyone has ever said after working with me was, "You made me feel like I did something special."I've carried that sentence with me because it gets closer than anything I could write to what I hope this work does.
I want someone to encounter an image of themselves and recognize the thing they've been too close to notice: the command they have of their craft, the ease that appears when they know what they're doing.
The pictures matter, of course. I'm a photographer.
I obsess over light and composition and timing, and there are few things I love more than realizing I was standing in exactly the right place when something happened.
But I also know the image is evidence of something larger.
These days, I'm expanding that work through film and education, giving myself more freedom to follow the stories and projects that make me curious. And when I don't have cameras hanging from my shoulders, I'm learning to appreciate a quieter kind of attention.
Lately, one of my favorite places is the upper deck of our house, watching the wind move through the tops of the trees. Our cats are usually somewhere nearby. For someone who has spent years watching for the moment when everyone else settles into themselves, I'm getting better at recognizing it in my own life, too.