On Huron
The daughter of my close friends Brian & Kenda plays softball, and found her way onto the All Star team. Unfortunately they did not win, but they had a damned good run. The team to which they finally lost didn’t really have a team, just a ringer of a pitcher. Their games were played in Rogers City on Lake Huron. This shot was taken about 100yds east of the ball fields. Perfect weather day for landscapes I think….
As always, click the image for a larger view.
An Accident.
This photograph is from about 2 1/2 years ago. I held the process for this photograph close to the vest for a long time, but I did share it eventually.
I dicovered this effect quite by accident. I was taking an alternative process class, and I had a stack of work prints that I was experimenting with in the darkroom. I was getting ready to begin work on the final project for the class. All of my film had been developed and I was ready to get started on the prints.
I had a several baths of various chemical laying about and was running prints through different processes splashing here and splashing there and just seing what does what when mixed with this and that. This print as originally created was woefully under developed. The negative was fine, but I printed it the developer had been exhausted and came out a flat gray. The darkest tone in the print looked like an 18% gray card.
Normally I would have tossed it in the trash, mixed up fresh developer and started again, but I kept it because I am a packrat. I dropped the print into a copper toner bath. I left it there for about 20 minutes but it just wouldn’t get dark enough to look like anything worthwhile. It was friggin pink. It looked like a pepto-bismol/easter egg nightmare. I figured it was a loss, so I pulled it out and was going to toss it in the trash. But before I did, I decided to drop it in a bath of exhausted lith developer just for shits and grins and to see what it would do. The image disappeared almost immediately. I chuckedled to myself and said, “so thats what it does.”
I walked away and moved on to something else, forgetting about the print (well, blank sheet of paper) in the lith developer. about 15 minutes later I walked by the lith bath again and noticed that the image was slowly returning. Lith printing is slow and infectious anyway, so I should have put two and two together.
I dropped what I was working on and tended to the now reemerging image. 40 minutes later, this was the result. Because I left the print to sit unattended, the paper floated in the lith bath and redeveloped unevenly and created a pleasing effect.
These tones are beautiful. I love these little accidents and am quite happy that I fell backward into it. This is still one of my favorite prints. It also helps that Beth is a knock out.
2nd best
I really have been trying my level best to post something new every day since I “rediscovered” my photoblog, but this last weekend really was a whirlwind (yes, I know it is now Tuesday – it was THAT busy). I photographed a wedding on Sunday for the nicest people you could know and Mr Murphy followed them (and me) at every turn. The poor bride lost her shoes and delayed the wedding by nearly 50 minutes, the sky threatened rain all day but luckily did not deliver…just managed to provide a banal sky for her outdoor wedding and photographs.
This photograph I call “2nd best” because the original idea was to have the groom and his groomsmen standing to the side whilst the 5ish year old ring bearer (an adorable tow-headed boy) took the breaking shot at the table. Unfortunately the bartender won douchebag-of-the-day for not allowing the boy to be in the photographs. Yes, I know, the room was a bar, but it was not a bar open to the general public, nor was there a single soul in the place and the whole thing would have taken less time to shoot than it did to argue with me about it.
The bride & groom like this shot and are happy with it, I just know that it would have been a cut above if I was able to shoot what I had envisioned.
Non Traditional Family Portrait
A couple months before I moved back to Northern Michigan (during my last semester of college) I began making regular trips up north. It was during these trips that I decided that “I missed it up here,” and began looking for a place to make a nest. I had been beckoned back up by a former high school classmate that wanted me to come up and shoot a set of family portraits. Word spread and soon I was making a trip north every other week and was dragging my entire studio set up from home to home creating portraits for friends, and then it spread to the friends of friends, then to strangers.
This photograph was created during that first trip last October. This brood is the Cleven Family. Kenda & Brian did not want traditional family portraits. I thought about it a bit and remembered an assignment given my photography professor (Ryan Flathau).
In class had previously discussed Henri Bresson’s idea of the Decisive Moment, that exact moment where everything within the camera’s frame was perfect. It was a fleeting moment that, if not captured in that instant, was gone forever. Being a studio photographer (and an infinite control freak) Bresson’s notion garnered little interest with me. But, I’ve learned that even in the studio, there are those moments that slip away and cannot be recreated, especially with children. The assignment Flathau gave to his students was called the Indecisive Moment, or a greater collection of several decisive moments.
As soon as the idea popped into my head, the refinements and changes flowed like a river and I had every shot planned well prior to my arrival. The set up was pretty simple. I placed the camera on a tripod, set up my lights as desired and took an overall photograph of the empty room. Then I proceeded to take another sixty three photographs of that room with the occupants doing various things. The idea was to combine the best images to tell a story and show the passage of time with a single frame. Brian & Kenda appear only once in the image, but each of their two children appear five times each for a total of ten children doing nothing that they are supposed to be doing.
The photograph is still an untitled piece, but I still enjoy it. Kenda has a print of this image that gets paraded about whenever someone new comes around that has not seen it. That is really all a photographer can ask for.
Male Portrait
With the bulk of my clientele being women, families, or children, I rarely have an opportunity to photograph male subjects. I photograph men, but it is usually a couple or family photograph. I’ve noted with my new born shots, I like to put the baby in the arms of the father. Don’t know why, I just do. Yesterday, John & his girlfriend came to the studio at the behest of John’s mom. She commissioned a set of family portraits of all of her children and their families. During the set I was able to talk John into this solo pose. He was reluctant, but humored me. I’m glad he did because his mom loves the shot
…go me.
As always, click on the image for a larger version…
Kristen
I had the distinct pleasure of photographing Kristen about a month(ish) ago. I say pleasure because it really is an absolute joy to photograph someone who really enjoys being photographed. As a portrait photographer it is not uncommon to have a family come in at the insistence of one party (usually mom) or another and have the rest of the family come along begrudgingly. It doesn’t automatically mean that the photographs will be piss poor, but it does present its own set of challenges.
There was nothing begrudging about my set with Kristen. She was excited and happy to do it, and that is nearly a guarantee of non piss poor photographs. She is a photographer herself, and I am sure that lent itself to the success of the shoot at least in some measure. Her charming personality and striking good looks were also considerable factors..
She told me she isn’t fond of her profile, but personally, I love it. She has strong features and emotive expressions. The photos I have of her in profile are among my favorites of the set.
I love the multiple ear piercings. In general, I like piercings on women, so long as it doesn’t look as though they fell face first into a tackle box.
I also love the colors in her necklace and they way it draws attention to her neckline.
I have no Earthly idea what this tattoo is supposed to be…kinda looks like the side view of a butterfly, but I like the lines of it, and, at least for me, adds to her sex appeal. It is a bold and courageous location for a woman to be ink’d.
Tattoo’d girls…
I do have a pretty serious weakness for girls with tattoos. Cheri’s back is very nearly entirely covered, and it is lovely. She is well toned and quite fit too, and that lends an additional charm to her ink.
The second photo of this series (the selective color shot) presented a bit of a problem for me as the tag of her jean was sticking out and I did not catch it during the shoot. The tag covered the turtle’s left foot and a portion of the tribal design to it’s left. The artist that created her tattoo is just that; an artist. The work is nearly perfectly symmetrical. I was able to simply copy the right foot and tribal, invert it, and paste it over the portion covered by the tag, and then made very few minor adjustments. The ease with which I was able to cover the pants tag is a testament to the tattoo artist’s skill.
I’m not a sellout, dammit.
No photograph with this post, just me running my soup cooler. I was thinking about my post a few days ago when I was lamenting not being able to photograph my own vision, and the more I think about it, the more I think that simply isn’t true. My vision goes into every photograph I create. It doesn’t matter is someone else asked me to create the photograph for them. People come to me to create their photographs because of my vision.
I remember my college professor once saying that professional photographers, those who create photographs as a means of putting food on the table have to be willing to compromise from time to time and be willing to “sell their soul just a little.” I suppose there is some truth in that, but as in everything, black and white are not critical absolutes in life. A certainty in one situation is not a guarantee of a direct translation or application to another situation no matter how similar.
My studio has been open for six months now, and if I honestly believed I was a sell out, I would close shop, get a job at a gas station and take pictures on the weekends for free. But, I just spent the last four hours sorting through the photographs that I have taken since I opened up in January (because my website is in dire need of an update), and I am finding myself having a good measure of trouble picking which photographs to include in the update.
Between January 4th and June 6th, I have taken over thirteen thousand photographs with my digital camera alone. Granted, not all of them are winners, and about half of them are culled from the herd before I even show them to the client. But, after my sort this afternoon, I still have close to 300 of what I would call “winners,” photographs that I am happy to show to anyone. Perhaps 100 or more of them I would cheerfully enter into an exhibition…5 of them I already have plans to do exactly that.
So, I may very well be a portrait photographer for hire, squeezing friends and strangers for their hard earned dollars, but I am still quite satisfied that I am just as much an artist as when I was in college. My vision is in every photograph I create because it takes my vision to create it. My subject matter may have changed between then and now, but I still treat every subject with the same eye.
I still like photographing women sans clothes, but weddings, children, and puppies present the same opportunities for the exploration of light, line, and beauty.
Expressions
I admit it, I’m a sucker for pretty faces and wet hair. This was the last photograph from the set, and ended up being my favorite. There were others that are “sexier,” but this one is sensual without giving anything away. It has “that look.” I think that expression alone can make or break a portrait…this one certainly is not broken.
Lost & Found
I like this image mostly because of the heavy shadow on her face conceals her identity. She could be any woman…or all of them. I enjoy the mystery of the image, even though I know full well who it is (I was there, after all).
I was deleting old files this afternoon when I came across this one. I can’t say that I forgot I had shot it, If I see a photograph of mine, I immediately recall most of the particulars of the set, but I had not given much though to these images in more than a year and a half. I didn’t do much with them at the time I created them as I had become distracted with other projects and classwork.
Moya
Moya is the 4th newborn I’ve shot since opening my studio, and the 3rd to poo when undiapered. She is crowned with the distinction of being the least cooperative of all of them thus far. She had absolutely zero interest in being photographed and did not take kindly to the strobes. Eventually, I just turned off the flashes and used the modeling lights on the strobes. Even though this little princess has achieved Diva Status by the age of 14 days, I still managed to get plenty of good photographs for her mother to select.
This particular image was shot with the modeling lights only. I don’t remember the aperture offhand, but it is obviously large, probably somewhere between 2.5 & 4. I do remember pushing the ISO to 800 in an effort to get the shutter speed up high enough to catch the little wiggle worm. In post processing, I did add “film grain” to mask the color noise produced by the higher ISO.
The Stowaway.
Been a while since my last update…
Since my last update, I have finished college (in December) and have moved away from Battle Creek. I returned to my native stomping grounds in Northern Michigan (just north of Petoskey).
I’ve opened a portrait studio in my home town. Things are going reasonably well. Business is picking up steam and I am gaining a steady client base. The downside is that I have had precious little time to create any art for the sake of art. But I have been able to create some beautiful and artful portraits for clients…which is most likely what I’ll share here most often.
I have had a couple of opportunities to photograph my own vision specifically for myself, and am making a point to find the time to do so. Shooting for other people is rewarding, and I do put my own vision into the work, but the truth is, the needs and desires of the client do put some limitations on said vision.
This photograph I shot for a solider that is about to deploy overseas. This is her second deployment to a combat zone. As it turns out, she and I were in Iraq at the same time in 2003.
She wanted photos of herself and her children before she left. The idea for the shot just popped in my head as we discussed her session, and she was all for it. I think it turned out well…I wanted a “Norman Rockwell” feel for this image and I think the post processing made it work out as I envisioned.
Got me a new model.
Meet Shanna Banana.
Asking someone to pose for your camera can be about as nerve racking as asking someone for a date. Funny thing is, I never back down from asking someone to sit for me…humph, go figure.
Shanna is brand new to my portfolio, as of yesterday, as a matter of fact. I was skulking about on MySpace (oh shut up, you probably have an account, too), when I found her profile. I found her to be rather pretty and full of spunk and attitude. I like those qualities in my models. It translates well in photographs. I suppose it is the faceless anonimity of the internet that makes it easy to approach strangers. I told her she was beautiful, and that I would love to photograph her. We traded a few emails, and voila..2Gb of photographs.
It was a good session, and we both had fun. Odds are, you will see more of Shanna.
Shoot the moon…
Photographing the moon can be tricky, especially if you live in a city with a lot of amient light during the evening hours…and especially if you don’t have a terribly long lens.
A short lens means you have to crop the photo, and you loose resolution. Try to make a print from an image you’ve cropped back to 3 megapixels and it falls apart like paper mache.
My friend Joi has a 650mm-1300mm lens that she let me borrow a while back, and frankly I didn’t know what the hell I was going to photograph with it. It isn’t exactly a top of the line lens, the glass is pretty cheap, and you’re stuck with one aperature at 650 you get f/8 and 1300mm, f/16. But it isn’t like you’re going to be shooting sports with a 1300mm lens unless you freeze time and you want to see if the pitcher has put any snot on the ball.
I don’t live in a high rise apartment building surrounded by other high rise apartment buildings so I can’t use it to photograph my neighbors snorting coke off of a hooker’s ass.
So, whats left. Well, the moon. The moon will do.
I shot this just before sunset at 650mm. At f/8 in the failing light with an ISO of 100, the shutter came in at one second. The lens is heavy, and while my tripod is quite stable, it still pushed down a bit, so it had to be stabilized as best I could. It seems to have worked as I don’t see any motion blur or lens shake in the photo.
I was hoping for some clouds, and I waited about for around 30 minutes, but mother nature wasn’t having any of that. Perhaps I’ll try again when the weather is a little more cooperative.
Moments before sunrise…
I didn’t get much sleep at all on my hiking trip to North Manitou Island. My tent mate spent most of the night tossing and turning…and hogging up most of the room in the hooch leaving me with my face pressed up against the wall. The upside is that I was usually awake well before sunrise.
This shot was about 15 minutes before sunup. To the naked eye, it was still pretty dark, and only a sliver of light was visible on the horizon. The exposure was a little over 7 minutes at f/22
Been a while….
…since I posted anything new, so I thought I’ll find something worthwhile from recent shoots. I think this one is from early June. Peace is the model’s name, no shit. Not a nick name, but her Christian name as it appears on her birth certificate. Unique…I’ve never met anyone names Peace…clearly her parents were hippies. She was an odd duck herself. Pleasant enough, just odd.
My point of view…
The title of this post does not refer to my point of view as in what I think on a particular subject, but rather what I actually see when I look into a camera, my perspective.
A single lens reflect camera has a prism with two mirrors that “right” the image in the view finder. When viewing what the lens actually sees as you would with a view camera, the image is inverted both vertically and horizontally (upside down and flipped over). With the waist level view finder on this RZ67 there is a single mirror that inverts the image upright, but it is still flipped on the horizon…left is right, right is left. The right brain fights with the left if you’re not used to it.
But I love these medium format cameras. The lenses are so crisp, and the negative so large (granted not as large as the view cameras) you can pull so much detail out of everything. There is just something cathartic about turning a lens and bringing something beautiful into sharp relief.
Michael & Alex
I was speaking recently, with an old classmate. I had been browsing photos of her children. She remarked that her son was very photogenic, but that her daughter didn’t like having her picture taken. But the truth is that both of her children are very photogenic…one of them just happens to be a ham and makes it easy for the photographer.
Photographing children can be difficult sometimes. I’ve found that the best kid photographs are the ones where you didn’t try to pose the child, but rather the ones where you just let the kids be kids and create their own moments for you to capture.
This is especially true when photographing children you don’t know. Kids have been drilled and drilled about “stranger danger” as well they should, but it does make a photographer’s task tricky. As I’ve mentioned before, child portraits aren’t my favorite thing, but if the money is green, it still puts food on my table just the same…so ya do what you do and you do it the best you can. The first trick is to try to establish a connection with the kids. This can be hard to do when you only have a brief period with the kids to photograph them, but you do what you can. An outwardly friendly relationship with mom and dad in the children’s presence helps. I tend to be pretty rough around the edges and children to do not naturally take a liking to me. So if you’re like me, then you gotta ham it up a bit. It might feel phony and ridiculous, but the younger the child, the more likely they are to buy it. Just don’t do anything lame like rub their heads or call them “slugger” They are people…just smaller. Treat them accordingly.
An uncooperative child does not mean you will not get good photographs. Just look at the work of Jill Greenberg and you will see what I mean. She intentionally made children cry for her work called “End Times.”
Let the child do what the child wants to do, and don’t try to compete for their attention too much. If you can get the child to look at the camera from time to time, great, if not, great.
The biggest thing to remember is that you have to work fast. Think like a sports photographer. Those moments are fleeting, so shoot shoot shoot. You’ll probably dump about 80% of what you capture, but you should be able to pull out some real gold.
Also, kids have short attention spans. Don’t keep the kid in the studio or in front of the camera all friggin afternoon. Even the biggest little ham will tire of it on short order. 30-40 minutes is probably pushing it with most kids.
Desert of Maine
Yup, there is a desert in Maine….look it up.
…womanly.Anticipation
This is the second (actually the first) photograph of the diptych I submitted to the West Michigan Art Exhibit…the one that was not accepted.
After
I managed to get this one into the West Michigan Art Exhibit last year. It was part of a diptych, but the second half was not accepted.
I missed out on the exhibit this year due to financial restraints. Kinda bummed about that, too because the juror’s preference was right up my alley.
I coulda been a contenda…
A piece of Emily
I’m not sure why, but I really enjoy photographs with a lot of negative space, and this one has a pretty good dose of it.
The negative space itself becomes part of the subject matter. It competes for attention. But, not much can take attention away from Emily. I really like the curve of her arm as it blends into her torso and leave the bottom of the frame.
Efergoh 