The other kind of senior portraits
Over the holidays I spent some time with family on the East Coast, and one of the things I wanted to do while I was there was shoot formal portraits of my parents. Like all of us, I have a lot of pictures of my parents but they’re all very casual. I wanted to make some real portraits, with an eye towards black and white prints, that would really capture them as they are. Yes, as my mother said when she saw them, “who are those wrinkly people?” – these photos show age. My parents are in their 70′s. They show character as well, and time, and travel, and a lifetime of experience. That’s what I really wanted to capture in these images.
Site migration…
I’ve moved the site over to a new web host, but now have to rebuild a lot of the content – so all the images are currently missing from posts and the portfolio. I’m in the process of adding everything back in but it’ll take a few days…
Recent work
Seattle is a limited market for aspiring models – there’s a small fashion industry and some local runway work for Nordstrom and the the like, but overall there’s not a tremendous amount of work to be had. If you’re from the Pacific Northwest and serious about pursuing a career in the biz, the path is to get some national exposure and move on to a bigger market. In any case, it’s always interesting to work with people who are interested in seeing what it’s about and helping them put together a portfolio of images to help get them on their way. Here are some images from a test shoot last weekend with Cari. She’s never done any modeling and this was her first time being shot professionally.
Santa Fe Workshops – Portraits
I took a little break to do some learning last week – spent 4 days in Santa Fe at a portrait workshop taught by Austin-based photographer Michael O’Brien. Michael has photographed everyone from Bill Cosby to Willie Nelson, and has a distinctive style of portraiture and lighting that he shared with us over the course of the workshop. It was a fantastic 4 days – learned a lot, pushed myself creatively, and overall was really impressed with the quality of the Santa Fe Workshops experience. Some of my best shots from the workshop below.
Golden Gardens Wedding
An October afternoon for a beach wedding in Seattle? Rain is a safe bet, but for this wedding we got beautiful weather, chilly but clear once the marine layer pulled back. It was a joyous, intimate ceremony of laughter and friends – beauty all around. A pleasure to photograph.
Sean and Cara – Tyee Winery – Corvallis, OR
Sean and Cara were married at the Tyee Winery in Corvallis. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and a beautiful, fun wedding, and I was delighted to get a chance to shoot it with Tahoe-based wedding photographer Nicole Miller. Here are a few of my best shots from their day.
Seattle Skate Park
Couple of shots from Saturday night at the skate park in Seattle Center. Lot of fun shooting these guys and they totally went for it to give us some great action. Took a shooting board to the ankle and can’t really walk right now but that’s another story…
Santa Monica Beach
A couple of shots from a recent weekend trip to Santa Monica – the two shots of the pier are high dynamic range (HDR) created using Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro plugin for Photoshop.
Gabrielle
This month marked another big inflection point in life – after 2 years away from the corporate world, I decided to get back on the hamster wheel and resume the furious spin. I found a great job and I think it’s really going to be something I like, but it was a hard decision. Bottom line, being an artist is romantic and cool, but it doesn’t pay the bills…
The tradeoff to being a working photographer was doing a lot of photography that was, well, work. Shooting tons of events that all started to run together and all you shot was “grips and grins” without any creativity involved was turning my passion into a chore. I did get the opportunity to see and do some interesting things, as well as meet some great people, but I’m not going to miss parts of that particular job.
So now I get to choose what I shoot. I’m going to continue to shoot weddings and build my business there, because I really enjoy wedding photography. I’m going to keep shooting portraits of all kinds, because I love working with people and making them look their best. I’m going to continue to make beautiful images, because it gives me a profound joy that is different than any other passion I’ve ever had in my life.
In that vein, highlights from a recent shoot with Gabrielle. Enjoy.
