Inessential Stuff

Click right this way for another gallery.  This is Taryn, and we did this shoot at the same time as I did the shoot with Valerie.  Thus, the same field, same lighting.  The difference is in their different personalities.  It was the first time I had worked with Taryn, and I thought she was great.  We are definitely going to shoot again.

(For those of you who might be offended, be aware that this gallery contains images that contain.)

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.

One day last June, I was driving around the back roads and I discovered this beautiful old house, abandoned, in the middle of no where, desolate and lonely and kind of spooky:

It was about an hour away from Spokane, but I knew right then that I wanted to do a shoot there–late evening, maybe towards dark–play around with some off-camera lighting.

I also knew the look I wanted:  desolate, bleak, hopelessly lonely.  I even had some ideas for props:  old suitcases, maybe a hat case.  My wife was able to procure those from the theater department at her school.  I just needed a model.

I was after a certain look:  someone who could look haunted, abandoned, cold, as if she had been waiting for a ride, but the ride had never come, and here she was, years later, stuck in time, still waiting.

I had one shoot set up.   But the model never committed to a time.  Then another model was interested, but had to cancel at the last minute.  I thought Elly might be perfect, and we had a shoot set up, but then something came up and the shoot was postponed for several months.

But finally–finally!–the day came.  I was afraid the weather might be inappropriately cheerful, but we “lucked out” by scheduling what turned out to be the coldest day in a couple of weeks.  On the hour drive out there, we rain pelted the car.  And then we arrived.

No house.

Maybe I hadn’t remembered right.  I drove up and down the road.  But I was sure I was in the right place.  Finally, I called my wife, who looked up at the old images I had taken, and the time-stamps on them, and I was able to determine that I was very, very close indeed.  But there was no house.  And then we saw it:  a bit of rubble around a foundation.  The house had been razed.

The light was dying.  We were an hour away from Spokane.  More rain seemed on the way.  So we improvised.  I knew of another abandoned house, another 30 miles or so away.  So we drove like crazy to get there.

And we pulled off this shoot.

It was cold, especially with the wind, and Elly was a super-trooper who only asked for a single coat-break (the high-resolution images reveal goosebumps throughout).  She was patient while I fidgeted (in my warm fleece) with the lights.  And she delivered exactly what I was hoping for.

So all’s well that ends well, I suppose.  But wish they hadn’t torn down the house, just the same.

We went to a tunnel on a rails-to-trails bike path outside of Cheney. There, we spent a couple hours, mole-like, underground (or at least under the road) trying out poses and lighting.

Shoots have different moods: some are more technical, some more formal, some more casual. This one made the pulse race. It was alive and dynamic, with lots of creative energy. I think we both had the sense that we were capturing some good stuff.

Of course, in the end, I’m a perfectionist, so the shots never quite as good as I want them to be. Still, I like what we got, and the shoot was one of those moments when I feel tremendously alive.

We wanted to do some locations shots. Some pictures in a field. Maybe a dilapidated old barn or house. And we wanted to find a suitable grain elevator–one where we could climb up the side ladder and get dramatic shots from the top.

So Kylie and I (and Bonnie and Marcus) headed west from Spokane, then north a bit, off the highway. We went through some tiny towns. We passed a few grain elevators and some fields and then, in the distance, in middle of no where, we saw a towering cluster of grain elevators.

There were fields around it, suitable for pictures. There were dilapidated houses. There was even a picturesque little pile of junk. The grain elevator was huge.

We spent several hours there and took a good many pictures.

(You may notice none of the pictures are from the top of a grain elevator. That’s because, uh, well, you see, I was totally un-scared and most definitely would have climbed, being brave and all, and, ummm, yeah–did I mention the grain elevators were enormous?)

One of my weddings this weekend was in Pullman, and afterwards, I drove up Highway 195 back home to Spokane.

The wheat fields, along the rolling hills, are gold on top, still green at the stalk, and swathes of green swirl through the gold where the sun doesn’t burn quite so bright or for quite so long.

The day was ending, the sun low on the horizon, sending shafts of light almost horizontally across the land. The sky was blue, with thin clouds, whitish, then melding to grey. Little towns sprinkled the valleys, each clustered around a grain elevator, reaching into the sky.
Then more wheat fields. Then tilled fields, abruptly dark with soil. Then crops of barley. Around every corner, over every hill, another scene, each as beautiful as the last.

I wanted to stop. I wished the sun would stop. I wished I didn’t have wedding pictures to process or a family waiting at home or no more room on my flash cards. I wished I could simply stop. Take out my camera. And allow myself to disappear in those fields, those hills.

I drove home. A couple times, I pushed the power-window button down and lifted my camera, not even bringing it to my eye, keeping one hand on the wheel, rushing past at 60 mph, and fired off a picture, like a tourist on a bus.  I took only a few pictures.  Two are here.  I left a million behind on Highway 195.

It’s foggy.

It’s cold.

It’s windy.

It’s snowy.

It’s dark a lot.

I go out to take pictures now and then.

Here are some from the winter so far.

Eastern Washington back roads. Dust and potholes. Scrubland. Red-tailed hawks on fence posts. Rolling hills, sudden gullies. Dilapidated barns. Abandoned houses. Under a massive timeless sky of pale blue. Images here.