In my own photography, I found it very difficult to achieve the same effects. I think that Curtis must have had lights that he could manipulate in order to make deep shadows, which was not equipment I had access to. It was also a very grey day when I had the camera checked out, and so using natural lighting outdoors was extremely difficult, and I found it better to work indoors. I also found it difficult to photograph people in their natural environment, largely because they moved around a lot and so it was hard to focus the camera and tweak the other settings. Curtis had a reputation for staging a lot of the photos, so staging some of them made this problem easier, but shooting photos involving large groups could not be staged (because I don't know that many people with free time here).

I tried to capture a 'craftsman' at work (here at CMU many of our craftsmen create digital work), large groups of people studying (feasts of knowledge?), a portrait (of my best friend, who kindly offered to pose for photographs), and one of the campus "rituals" (a rugby game).