Humans of Homewood

You can’t just walk up to a guy on the street and stare at him, no matter how intriguing his face is, but if you have his portrait photo, you can study it for hours, according to Bob Tedrow, long-time proprietor of Homewood Musical Instrument Co. and an avid camera bug.

 “It allows you to look a little deeper into a person than you would at first glance,” Tedrow said. “It’s almost voyeurism.”

“There’s nothing more fascinating than the human face,” he added.

Tedrow indulges this fascination regularly by making stunning portrait photos, most in black and white, of Homewood residents and visitors and posting them on an entertaining Instagram account, Humans_of_Homewood.

The page, which has been up for about a year, gives Tedrow a place to show off the photography he loves and allows viewers to share his quest to capture unique human personalities. It is also perhaps an effective visual way to help further tie together the already close-knit community of Homewood.

 “It think it’s entertaining and fun for the people in the town to see who is in our town — people at the grocery stores, people at the park, people at businesses,” Tedrow told a visitor to his shop. “I think it enlarges our sense of community and helps visualize our little section of town.”

Tedrow, 62, has been making pictures since he was 10 years old, when his mother gave him a used Kodak Duaflex camera.

He got the idea from his Instagram page from another online project. “I had heard about the Humans of New York, but I thought Humans of Homewood had much better alliteration, so I started doing this,” he said.

And he does not have to go out in search for subjects, most of whom have visited his shop.

“I wait for them to come here,” he said. “A lot of these shots are taken right here, on this rug by this window, which is a gift from heaven, lighting-wise.”

In addition, word is spreading about how much fun it is to have Tedrow take your picture.

“People are calling me now to take portraits of them,” he said.

Tedrow used his laptop to show his visitor a few examples from the Instagram page, including a shot of Jason Burns, owner of Burns String Instrument Repair, which is located in the same building.

The shot shows Burns at a workbench, leaning over an instrument in deep concentration. “You can see his connection to his work,” Tedrow said. “This picture tells a great story.”

Tedrow points out a shot of a young boy sticking his finger in his nose. “I did not pose this,” he said. “I just waited for it to happen.” The boy’s mother reacted with “a mixture of great amusement and mild shock,” Tedrow said, laughing.

People seem to like Tedrow’s efforts. “People are typically flattered or at the very least highly amused at their portraits, and I think a lot of them are extremely proud to have their picture taken,” he said.

“It makes people feel good when they come in here and Bob wants to take photos of them,” Burns said.

And sitting for Tedrow at the shop was fun, according to Becky Estes, a Homewood resident who, in her photo, wore a black dress and held a violin. “He made me feel real comfortable,” she said. “I don’t see myself as photogenic. He makes you forget all that.” 

Judy Wade of Helena, one of Tedrow’s mandolin students, posed for him holding her instrument and wearing a straw hat. She said in a telephone interview that her portrait sitting had a “spur-of-the-moment quality.”

“When you are in there, you don’t have an idea of what you are doing to do until you sit down, Wade said.

David Brower, a Vestavia resident and veteran filmmaker, prefers being behind the camera, not in front, but said that Tedrow made his sitting “pretty painless.”

“It’s a stunning portrait, even if it is of me,” Brower said.

The use of black and white for virtually all of the photos is effective for portraiture, according to Tedrow. “Color can be distracting,” he said. “Black-and-white photography allows you to focus on contrast, shadows, depth.”

 “It’s almost like you can see the true soul of a person when it’s in black and white,” Estes said. “[Tedrow] has such a unique way of capturing people.”

In taking a good portrait, the “light is as important as the subject,” Tedrow said. “Light and shadows allow you to see and study details that you don’t see every day.”

In fact, Tedrow admits that he has “an obsession with lighting subjects properly” and has studied all the master portrait painters. 

“I have copied them like a monkey,” he said.

Tedrow has a Fuji XT1 digital camera but eschews the automatic settings and uses it more like a film camera to get the effects he wants. “

Because I have this obsessive nature, I need to do things by hand, like I set the exposure by hand,” he said.

That obsessive nature is the reason for the success Tedrow has had with photography, not any “particular talent,” he said.

 “Time plus tenacity equals talent, so I think whatever you pursue, if you pursue something in depth and you can summon a mild obsession, then you can do things at least as good as an average talented person,” he said.

To check out Humans_of_Homewood, go to Instagram.com/humans_of_homewood. Tedrow accepts submissions of photos. To do so, tag them #humansofhomewood and, if Tedrow likes your work, he will repost it.