Inessential Stuff

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.

For some reason, this shoot sort of slipped through the cracks.  Kylie and I did our third shoot together back in July, and I’ve had these images sorted out and ready to post, and then they never got posted.  So I’ll post them now.

It was, as usual with Kylie, a fun, relaxed shoot.  She chose the wardrobe thinking blue would go well with the green of the fields.  We stopped by an abandoned building on the way to the fields, then shot until after dark.  We also lucked into some noctilucent clouds.  So productive was the shoot, that the image you see at the right now is in my home studio.  Click this way to see the rest of the shoot.

We had scheduled a shoot a couple weeks in advance, so we simply lucked out on the weather.  It had been 0ver 90 that day, but a storm was rolling in.  That night would bring thunder and rain and the next day the highs would be in the low 60′s.  But for the evening, when the shoot was scheduled, the weather was perfect:  not too hot, but with spectacular clouds, as the storm came closer and closer.

I’ll post some pictures of the scenery later.  For now, here are a few of the portraits we got.

I’ve known Taryn for over a year now, and done a number of shots with her:  in fields, in the studio, in abandoned buildings with skunks.  And she just keeps getting better and better.

She’s gotten used to me, I suppose, and is more confident. She can be playful about the whole thing, and not take it very seriously, but then slip into serious, somber poses that are just gorgeous. But best of all, her movements are like a dancer’s:  long, graceful, elegant.

Honestly, I don’t think I captured her grace.  I hope to photograph her in that dress again.  Give it another go.

In the meantime, here are the results of the latest shoot.

Madeleine C and I had planned on doing a shoot for a long time;  I had wanted to do a shoot with her for even longer.  When we finally started firming up some plans, Madeleine mentioned she had purple dreadlocks.  So I thought we should run with the purple:  maybe get some eggplants or a cabbage.

Ends up Madeleine C grew up on a farm and loves her vegetables and had been wanting to do a kind of vegetable shoot for a while.  So even though the shoot kept getting delayed, and her hair was no longer purple, when we finally did schedule a shoot, we made it a vegetable shoot.

If you ask me, Madeleine C was born in the wrong time period and totally missed her calling as a silent film star.  Expressive in a thousand different ways, she slipped from terrified to flirty to shocked to dreamy effortlessly and within moments.  She emoted so strongly with with turnips and brussle sprouts, one can only imagine what she could have done alongside Rudolph Valentino.

I’ve done several shoots with Ronnie for her clothing line Glamarita.  We did another, with one request:  the models didn’t want to shoot outside (too cold).  So after throwing some ideas around, Ronnie suggested her mom’s house.  It ends up her mother is an artist, who sells large canvases all around the world.  And since a number of these large canvases are around her house, either finished or in various states of completion, it made a fun place to shoot.  Here are a few of the images.

Here’s another photoshoot with Valerie (and a cameo by Taryn).  We decided to do a sports-themed shoot.  Mostly boxing gloves, but a bit of baseball, too.

And, of course, it is always fun to play around with the lights.  I really liked how the image at the right turned out, for instance.  But finding some really dramatic lighting is kind of double-edged:  on the one hand, I think, wow, that looks cool.  On the other hand, I think, man, I should have been using the lights like this the whole time.

Live and learn.

Valerie was great, as usual.

Last Saturday, I shot two very disparate events:  the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation’s conference, and a fashion runway show, The Runway Renegades.

The show featured a number of different designers (more information is available at www.runwayrenegades.com), but was the brainchild of Ronnie of Glamarita, with whom I had done several shoots before (here and here).  You may recognize some of the same models, as well, from those previous shoots.

Here is a gallery of the garments (and models) on the runway Saturday night.

I haven’t posted in a while because it’s the middle of wedding season, which has been keeping me busy.  Still, this last week, I managed to work in a shoot with Christalle.  We had shot before, in miserable, cold conditions, so it seemed proper and right that we should shoot on a glorious summer evening.  We shot in the evening, past sunset, and into dusk.

I’m a Walla Walla boy–grew up with wheat fields behind my house.  Maybe that’s why there is something about wheat fields that speak to me.  But put me in the middle of rolling wheat fields, under a massive sky, and I get a sense of the infinite.

So anyway.  I had been wanting to do a shoot in a wheat field.  Results here.

So after Kelsey and Doug’s wedding–after the ceremony had ended and the portraits were done–the newlyweds and their families stood around outside the church, talking, joking, celebrating. While I was taking pictures, I found myself smiling. I enjoyed watching Kelsey and Doug interact. They had an easy, playful manner along with a clear affection. It occurred to me that they would be perfect for an idea I had been thinking about for a while: a “trash the dress” shoot.

So on a whim, I asked Kelsey if she had any plans for the dress. She said she didn’t. They were about to run off to their reception, then honeymoon, but I said I’d email them a proposal.

When they arrived back from their Hawaiian honeymoon, jetlagged, she wrote back (at 1:40 AM!), eager to give it a try. They were as excited about the idea as I was and were game for whatever I suggested.

So a week later we headed out for Bear Lake, north of Spokane, at around 6:30 in the morning. We shared the lake with a fisherman or two and many singing red-winged blackbirds. Kelsy, Doug and I all went into the lake–not as cold as we feared–and we had a great time (photographic proof here). I know that sounds like a standard line, but it was an experience that I’ll carry with me for a long time, and every one of my memories will be happy ones.