Inessential Stuff

This is Aaliyah.  She was born on February 16, and these pictures were taken ten days later.  At the beginning of the shoot, she was tired, but wide-eyed, and she clearly didn’t want to sleep.  There was too much world around her, too many sounds and sights, and that strange man with the big camera was something new and peculiar, too.  I rubbed her back a little bit (which  took me back about 6 years and 8 months) and she eventually fell into dreaming.

Here is a short slide show of photographs of beautiful baby Aaliyah.

Wallace, Idaho was filled with treasures:  the alleyways, the brick buildings, the fire escapes.  But for me, one of my favorites was the Mining Supply Company buildings.  There were several of them.  And all of them were painted, from top to bottom, in a rich rusty-red.  The effect was remarkable, and really accentuated all the lines of the buildings.  I loved the geometry of it. I shot and shot and shot some more.  Here are some photographs.

Big and big-boned. Patient. Slow-moving. Tolerant even when toddlers pulled on his tail. And sporting the world’s longest, most splendid whiskers. A perfect lap cat. Not pushy. But always glad to accommodate an empty lap. Easy-going. And, in the right situations, given to spectacular love attacks: glassy eyed, purring, rolling around, when thisclose was not close enough, reaching some level of ecstatic bliss only he knew. With an epithet of “Big Fat”, on account of his size. But mostly on account of all that loving. Big Fat Cello. A very fine cat. 1994-2010.

I like lines.  More than color, more than light and shadow, what I see in an image are lines.  Wallace, Idaho had lots of great lines:  bricks and mortar, the pattern of windows, the shapes of buildings sandwiched together, and the lines their rooftops make against a blue sky splotched with clouds.  Here are some photographs of some of the lines of Wallace.

And this is part one.  Wallace, Idaho, of course.  I made a day trip to Wallace, having heard it was a quaint town.  I parked on the north side of town, and then crisscrossed my way, on foot, systematically, through the streets and alleys.  The town was quiet.  Not many people out, in spite of the unseasonably warm weather (about 40 degrees in February).  Many businesses were closed, either seasonally or for good.  I also hadn’t known that Wallace was the Center of the Universe.  Now I know.

It’s a beautiful little down.  Resting below tree-covered mountains.  Sleepy streets.  And fantastic buildings:  brick walls, transom windows, fire escapes.  So this is a bit of Wallace in photographs.

It started with a modest 70 cars.  The next year featured over 500 cars.  But this year, well, this year topped them all.  Over 1000 cars raced in a thrilling, competitive fury to see who would be crowned the Fastest Car in the Third Annual Hot Wheels Extravaganza!

The track was constructed and carefully calibrated, and the cars were ready to race.

And in the end, one car stood above all others.  Was it a Track Star?  A car on FTE wheels?  An Acceleracer?  Maybe last year’s winner?  No indeed (though last year’s winners all finished in the Top Ten).  The winner of the Third Annual Hot Wheels Extravaganza was none other than  . . . (ready for it?) . . . the RD-10 Ace Racer.  I know!  It’s super exciting!

This is Matt.  I did senior pictures with him and just had a great time.  His mom had described him as “very thoughtful, introspective, intelligent, philosophical, a musician and an artist.”  I didn’t spend enough time with him to verify all those things, but from what I DID learn about him, it all seems to be true.  Though I might add that with that killer smile, he might also be a bit of a heartbreaker.

Here is a little gallery of some of my favorite pictures from the senior portrait session.

I had been wanting to do a shoot with a band for a while, but I didn’t know where to find a band.  As it ends up, Tim Wallace (second on the right), whose wedding I shot several years ago, is now in a band, and they wanted some band pictures done.

So, this past Monday, on a cold, windy, drizzly day, the band got together and we did some pictures.  They rock, so they wanted to convey that in the images, but they were polite, gracious, and pretty excited.  To paraphrase Ed Sullivan, “Level Zero has five of the nicest youngsters we’ve ever had before our camera.”

To learn more about them, check out the facebook page of Level Zero.  And, of course, check out their promotional photographs!

Pullman isn’t THAT far away. Still, when traveling across the Palouse to do a shoot, I figure we might as well make it worth it and go all out. Fortunately, this was exactly Courtney’s thinking as well. So we made a day of it. Indoor shots. Outdoor shots. Industrial shots. Landscape shots. We shot for about four hours, with only a coffee break in the middle to warm up.

And yes, it was fairly cold, which makes Courtney’s effort all the more spectacular. Some shots seem quite summery, with a cotton dress and bare feet, but that is misleading. While she was moving gracefully in bare feet, I was blowing on my hands and bundled in a bulky sherpa fleece. She insisted it wasn’t that cold if you just put your mind elsewhere.

Oh, by the way, she’s also proof that beauty and brains go together: she’s a doctoral student in engineering at Washington State University. Anyway, here are about fifty images from the day.

I had talked to Nirvana for, literally years, I think, about doing a shoot.  We finally made it happen.  And then, once it happened, it was entirely different than planned.  I was thinking of doing a shoot with a car, but I wanted some good scenic buildings and background for the car.  I thought some of the old buildings in the Hillyard district of Spokane would be cool.  But once we got there, I liked the buildings as a background without the car at all.  So we just did that.  Plus I had just purchased a new (old!) chair as a prop, so we had to test that out, too.

At the end of the shoot, we happened upon a gentlemen who took us on a mysterious little venture into an awesome building where he invited us to do a future shoot.  And so, something to look forward to!  Until then, here are some of the photographs from last night.