BUZZ BOOK: Shooting the truth through photographs

Photographer Steven Bollman first started taking pictures when he was a 12-year-old growing up in New York City. A shy kid, he started with objects before upgrading to humans. “I remember taking a lot of pictures of leaves and butterflies around my house,” said Bollman, who now lives in Emeryville, Calif. “As I got older, I started to realize that photography was a wonderful tool to express what was going on with you. I was the photographer for my high-school track team, and it became a way to relate with people.”

Bollman has self-published a book of his work called “Almost True” — the title refers to a misheard title of the Elvis Costello album “Almost Blue” — a collection of 34 years of pictures represented through 81 images. The photographs are grouped into nine categories. “There’s a sequence that addresses murder and justice and is shot in Haiti. Another is about walls, about barriers between humans,” Bollman said. “There’s one of a couple, a man and woman, and their body language is so telling, they’re in two different worlds.” To aspiring photographers, he says that the key to success is being aware, and having the camera (or phone) on you at all times, ready to shoot. “99.9 percent of what you take pictures of are not successful shots, but they let you work out the ideas,” he said. “Sometimes you’ll hit it. If you get a great shot once a year, that’s actually pretty good. That’s something really lasting. We have to consider it like all practice.” “Almost True” is available for purchase at f8books.com/almost-true.