It had been way too long since Hattie and I had lost shot. As I typed that it dawned on me just how long its been. I think our last time shooting together was when she first moved back to Philadelphia and we shot for Temperance.
Its been over two years since I last shot for that project, and I think Hattie was one of the earliest people I worked with for Temperance, an...
I just posted the other day about how every trip I plan to LA I end up finding so many people that I want to work with that I get completely overwhelmed, and end up hardly shooting at all. It was until I really thought about it that I realized that Portland is basically the exact same thing. Living in Seattle I think I was doing a trip down to Portland every other month, sometimes more, b...
2019-02-14 11:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been posting a lot about this transitional period I'm in with my work, so I wanted to take today to go back, and post these four shoots that sort of highlight how things came together with Temperance.
I usually think of Journey to the End of The Night ending because we decided to move out of the building that it was shot in, but I had already started to phase it out before the move....
I'm still hoping this will not be my last shoot up at my favorite waterfall here in the North West. Nicole and I have tried on three occasions to make it here, but each time ran into a complication that prevented us from making it. I've probably been back 10 times without her, which she is not entirely pleased by.
But if this had to be the last time I can not complain. ...
Why is it hot as hell in the bay? Everywhere the weather is changing. Okami and I have driven south, but up in altitude on a quest to shoot with datdeerdoe among a small forest. A quest we definitively accomplished, but now we are onto look two, and trying something that I love, but also that I hate...shooting with bright as hell direct sun as backlighting.
I am not a p...
Down by the creak we are in the depths of winter, but still the Autumn colors cling to the shore. Each storm brings the water up 5 or 6 feet further. The creak becomes a stream, and then a river. I can see the places I know to be ankle deep in calmer times roaring 7 feet higher than they were before the storms rolled through. Our nature is always changing, growing, reced...
2019-02-10 02:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
One last walk through the backyard I came to love over two summers, a trip to pack boxes, and empty the home we made ours for two years. One last shoot in Seattle.
In the movie of our lives I suppose Nicole and I do one last shoot in our place, before packing all our shit up and moving down to Portland, but in real life maybe the perfect ending is working with an incredible creative...
2019-02-08 04:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
I've always liked to work in series, but when one series ends there is the inbetween times. For me a series usually is built on constraints I place on myself that help in exploring ideas and collaboration. A view point, a space, a way of processing. Maybe it seems contrary to logic, but I feel more creative when I'm working like that than when I'm free from constraints.
We walk out the front door to blackberry brambles, ferns, and Douglas Fir trees that have been here for a hundred years or more. The light on sunny days is beautiful in the shade of our monstrous trees, and our first guest is here for my first shoots in Portland.
Its winter, so we do not stray far from the house, but we don't have too. The forest is everywhere, and I still fi...
Summer in the North West is such an incredible time of light, and growth. So despite not having all the space I longed for in Seattle, our little backyard still made for an incredible place to shoot as the plants grew and overtook us on the long days.
My afternoon shooting with Gothlet was just magical. She's an intensely inspiring creative I have followed for years. Fr...
The next couple days I will be enacting the changes to my Patreon to make this a better experience for everybody!
1. Bigger files, no more watermark
Starting in February I'm ditching the watermark. I've never loved watermarking my images, but I had issues with people stealing my work over and over again, that said I'm just tired of it, so its going. ...
10 years a road warrior.
In 2008 I worked briefly as a retoucher for a senior picture studio in York, Pa. I was fired after a month. It took me about a month to automate their retouching needs down to two actions. This is no coincidence.
Following that the great recession came, and I found myself desperate for work. I applied to a temp agency ...
Portland is already feeling like it was the right choice. I know every place you live or visit will have its honeymoon phase, which Nicole and I are clearly in here on this next part of our journey, but the amount of incredible shoots I have had, the amount of growth and potential for growth I am seeing in my work has been amazing.
There are so many incredible people to collaborate ...
2019-01-23 05:36:29 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm coming off a whirlwind week of shoots with new people in our new place, and I'm looking at an edit list that I'm excited to tackle. I haven't felt this sort of creative freedom in a little while. I've talked about it a bunch, but moving to Seattle was incredible for a number of reasons: I started wet plates, our access to nature on the west coast is incredible, and the light in ...
2019-01-14 20:09:55 +0000 UTC View Post
The light falls dappled through the green leaf covered trellis above us. I'm on my way to Brazil, but couldn't help but take advantage of a 3 day layover in San Francisco. The plan was fly from Seattle to the bay, and relax before our whirlwind trip to South America.
But I am not one that relaxes very well.
So I'm off to a house in some coastal forest with Okami and DatD...
2019-01-08 00:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Ending Temperance was somewhat freeing, but I feel like since I finished it I have sort of been adrift. The creative process for me is test out a million different things until something sticks. The journey from one series to another can be a long one, and lack of certainty when it comes to continued access to a place makes it all the more difficult to commit.
But I thi...
2019-01-06 23:09:43 +0000 UTC View Post
When I first started Patreon I had a couple on going series that made it easy to create my tier levels, but with the move to Seattle, the end of Temperance, the move to Oregon, and the many changes my work has undergone my tiers just don't make that much sense anymore.
So this month I will be overhauling the structure. I figure that if the tiers are confusing for me, they are proba...
This is the very first place I fell in love with in Philadelphia. It was 2006. For the first time I was living in a real city, and I walked with my classmates until we found a bridge and forest. We would return at all hours of the day to shoot landscapes, hike, and explore. It felt even until I visited for the last time in 2017 as if it was our private escape.
The trails ...
2018-12-28 00:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
I've started traveling more often with a single image in mind. Spending months on the road with Nicole and improvising when we arrived on location for years was incredible, but when I started teaching in Iceland and on the Olympic Peninsula I was given an unexpected gift: the challenge of answering questions on why.
"Why do I like this spot? Why do I like t...
2018-12-26 04:36:12 +0000 UTC View Post
How did I get here. Its September of this year, and I'm on a plane to Rio where I will be for three weeks of the most intense, most remote travel I have done for creating. Two years ago an incredible photographer reached out to me about attending our Arctic Nude workshop in Iceland. Her work was absolutely breathtaking.
Flash forward and Tielly is presenting her ...
Traveling through California I've come to love escaping LA for Malibu. So when I had my first chance to work with Janice I was really excited to get on the 1 and take her, and Franco to one of my favorite places to shoot.
There is just something about the calmness of getting out of the city, and seeing how in just an hours drive the landscape opens up, people disappear, and you can ...
2018-12-21 00:00:59 +0000 UTC View Post
I will always love the way shallow water ripples around a person in photos. Frozen still there are just so many textures we can capture on its surface. I was always looking for the little things when I lived on the East Coast. The landscape was smaller, but absolutely beautiful in its own right.
The greens, and blues of clinging to the branches from summer bounced around H...
There is just something so magical about the last light high up in the mountains. It makes the world and everything it touches glow before it disappears and fades to blue. Bae drove down from Denver to the small mountain town where I was staying with family. That morning I woke up in my uncles home, a house made of straw, it snowed six inches, I snow boarded, and by noon everythi...
2018-12-14 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm not a hot weather person. So you'd think multiple trips a year to Las Vegas for photos would be my personal hell, but here we are. Two or Three times a year I'm flying from my little north west home down to Vegas because not only is it pretty comfortable in the winter, but it also hides some of the most beautiful desert locations in the country.
This last trip I made down wa...
With the death of Tumblr and Zivity I know have nearly a decades worth of work that will be forever disappearing from the internet, and I've decided to give that work a new home here on Patreon.
One of the number one questions I hear is how did you get your start...which is pretty much impossible to answer. Like all things you start off small and you work your way up to your bigger go...
Its my last month in Seattle. My last month with this backyard.
The last light of the day here is magical. The tonal qualities and direction look like something I would normally use 3 lights and reflectors to create, but its just the way the tree branches, and sunset come together. I shot these photos of Okami all the way back in February I think. It was a time I was stru...
2018-12-05 15:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The forests near us in Seattle are just something so special. There are so many ways to explore shooting nudes in nature, so many things to explore. An image can be made special by the shapes a model creates, the flora that surrounds them, the geological formations, light and the way they all interact.
Jessamyne and I last shot in 2008. How 10 years passed between our sh...
2018-12-02 05:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
I will miss this backyard, I've never lived a place with such perfect natural light. It felt like I could step out the door, and 8-12 hours of the day was like shooting with my light set up for Temperance except a room 10x the size.
Even as it shifted in color and contrast there was always a spot to create something beautiful. I had been trying in vain to set up some artificial ...
The first place I fell in love with near Seattle was Discovery Park. Tricia Mack took me there for our shoot when I was traveling through Washington for 50 Models 50 States, and despite the fact that I was crouched in stinging nettles for nearly all of our photos I was enamored by this park.
Having lived here for two years now I still find new amazing spots all through out the park when sh...
2018-11-15 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Almost a year ago now, we spent a weekend doing a little stay in town artist retreat.
We all arrived and spent two days shooting photos, hanging out, eating and relaxing...something I think most of us rarely do. The thing about being a freelancer especially in our world is that there is always something to do. Emails, social media, website updates, prints to ship, more ...
2018-11-10 15:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post