More Administrative News

This summer has been… crazy. In oh so many ways. Suffice to say I’ve been doing almost no shooting for the last couple of months. That will be changing soon, with some jobs coming up that will have me delving into my old model roster. Some personal shooting with my current models and some new recruits as well. In the meantime, I have been tied up with some more backend things, including a lot of fuss over a hard drive that crashed with a few jobs on it, and trying to get the website mess sorted out.

One bit of personal that I’ll sneak in, one of my favorite models, Zak, and his wife are expecting. This led to a silly bit of confusion a couple of weeks ago. I was pre-writing draft posts for some things that will be coming up over the next few months, and once I knew the sex and name of the baby, I wrote one saying that she was born. And of course I clicked “Publish” instead of “Save”. The post is gone now, but apologies to those of you who saw it and got confused.

Right now I’m planning a trip to Columbus for the end of the month, though it’s very tentative. It’s well over a year now since Ani had her last “official” portrait, so that needs to be done before long.

Business-wise I’m pulling back from the paid portrait/event/wedding side of things. This is to give me more of a chance to concentrate on editorial and advertorial photography as well as return to my fine art roots. As soon as “real life” settles down a bit, I’ll be returning to some of the large projects I had begun in the winter and spring. These will involve a lot of non-commissioned (well, technically they’re self-commissioned) portraits… if anyone out there wants yours done, now is the time to ask, since it’ll basically be free.

78 Rules

Photographer Ivar Gravlejs has created a satirical work, Useful advices for photographers. Helpfully, reblogging site The Gawno Magazine has compiled them onto one page titled 78 Photography Rules for Complete Idiots. Don’t fall into the same trap as some of the commenters – this is SATIRE, and not true rules for making photographic art. Or even for taking snapshots for that matter, although I know some people that would do well to take some of the advice to heart.

Some of my favorites:

20. It’s better to photograph clouds, when there are clouds.

26. Problematic of bird photography; try to catch the decisive moment, like when the bird is still there.

32. When you take a picture of a sunset, it is better not to miss the sunset.

45. When you photograph it is better to look in the viewfinder not the lens.

52. If you want to photograph a flower, it’s better to photograph the flower.

58. It’s better not to photograph if you are drunk.

Browse the whole list. Trust me, if nothing else, it’ll give you a good laugh for your trouble.

Checking In…

A quick note to reassure those of you who have been asking – I am not ill, nor have I given up on the blog… my aunt flew in from Colorado for the first time in eight years so I spent a lot of time with her, and then right after she left I hopped in the car and headed back to the Keys. My grandmother’s health is what could be described as marginal right now, and my parents have decided to move back to Pensacola for a few months to be close as decisions may need to be made in the near-term. That means this time in the Keys has not been about fun or photography but packing and cleaning, since their house will still be on the market while they are gone. My back is not happy with me.

It doesn’t help that in the middle of all this, we lost our Internet connection last week after a big storm sent a power surge through the generator and fried the modem. I’m only just now getting back online, catching up, and considering some blog posts to make about my experiences down here. One thing I can tell you is that I’ve decided to make Exteriors & Interiors a series (not so much a project, just a new collection I’ll expand from time to time) and several photos from here will be included. Depending on how busy the next few days are (my aunt and uncle just drove in to help take stuff back to the Panhandle) I may have a sneak peek of a few of those later in the week.

Best to you all.

New Portraits: Lilly

Lilly is an adorable little girl who asks no more out of life than that she be allowed to observe and experience it on her own terms. Including even Ani, I have never seen a toddler so pleasant and easy-going. It’s a real joy to have a child like Lilly play a significant role in my life, and it doesn’t hurt that she makes quite as good a model as any 16-month-old out there. The portraits above were made last Thursday during a trip to Robertsdale, AL, where my dad and aunt visited their childhood home and we made a pilgrimage to the family cemetery. In fact, the two close-ups are taken inside the cemetery and the middle one is just down the road from it. When Lilly decided she needed to explore this deserted country road for herself, I just had to hang back and grab this shot – in my mind it was originally titled “Running Away from Home” but my aunt suggested “Starting Down the Long Road of Life” which somehow seems far more appropriate.

New Work: Exteriors & Interiors

Last week I did a few informal photos at my day-job office, located in my boss’s home. She lives in a beautiful house in the historic East Hill area near downtown Pensacola. She also has a custom-built pond outside filled with koi. Here are the best of the bunch:

The ghostly apparition in the third photo is Maggie, one of Pam’s two sheepdogs. More from Pam’s home when/if I do a formal portfolio.

Another Ryan Pfluger Print Sale

Those of you who love Ryan Pfluger’s work as much as I do are in luck – he’s having another print sale, and it looks like this one will be the best yet. He’s offering eight portraits from a brand new series for only $50 – shipping included!

It will be a unique set of 8 head portraits from the project which is now entitled “the view”. Each set will have unique writings as well as a unique assortment of the portraits themselves. It’s really the nicest of all the sets I’ve done, and something I’m really excited for people to have. All prints are 5×7 and it’s a limited edition of 25.

More details are on Ryan’s blog here.

Unfortunately I’m strapped for cash right now, so unless there are still some sets available in a couple of weeks – and frankly I’ll be shocked if there are any left by this weekend – I won’t be able to add this special set to my small but growing collection of Ryan’s prints.

As long as I’m writing about him anyway, I should mention that Ryan’s been updating his web site, to add new work from the last few months. Both the Portraits and Fashion sections of http://ryanpfluger.com are overhauled so far.

More Echoes

Today was essentially the last day of shooting for the first phase of the Echoes of My Grandmother project. I’m going to break now for a few days to assess the future of the project, and make some conceptual decisions on the direction I want to go. One of the images I tried to create today was one I’ve had previsualized for weeks now. As so often happens, it didn’t work out. It’s entirely possible that I composed the photograph wrong, and for sure I’ll try to fix it before finishing up. That said, it’s possible I won’t be able to fix it. And if that’s the case, it’s fine. I’ve got the photo out of my head now, and I can move on.

Two images today. A Lighthouse in Pewter and Roses in Ceramic is one of several possible images featuring Grandma’s Royal Doulton, and Pastime, from earlier today, pays tribute to one of Grandma’s favorite hobbies.

Another Echo

Today I discovered my grandmother will be returning from the Keys earlier than I had expected. When my aunt and uncle pick her up Friday, they will head straight home, so as to be here for Easter. This is going to put a rush on the project, and I intend to work on it for a large part of the day tomorrow.

Although I took several photos today of various scenes, there is only one that worked out perfectly. This is often the way it works – I’ll take several photos, come home and examine them for what worked and what didn’t, and then I’ll go back and come away with several great shots. The one that worked, I am very proud of.

I have had a diptych of two rephotographed images in my mind since the start, and I’ve only been trying to decide which two to use. Today I decided it would be one of my grandparents from 1966 (incidentally the year my mom turned 16), and one of my grandmother’s parents. I did a number of variations, trying to find the right setting and the perfect lighting to avoid distracting reflection from the glass. This last was a major problem, so finally I removed them from their frames. How to present them? I used a small piece of tape to post them side by side on the wall.

The effect is not at all what I was going for when I originally envisioned this photo. (For one thing, it’s not a diptych.) Nonetheless, I find the simplicity of two formal 8×10s tacked side by side on a section of wall really exciting.

This is the image as it stands now, very tentatively titled “Two Couples”. The placement of two photos, with each pair of sitters looking away rather than towards the camera, was an intentional stylistic choice I made for a number of reasons. For one thing, when they were switched they still looked past the camera and the effect was even more jarring. For another, the arrangement as above mirrors the arrangement of the respective burial plots.

Oh yes, and why the tattered copy of her parents’ portrait instead of one that’s been retouched and restored? Because this is the photograph that sits on the piano in the living room.

Some Informal Portraits

I mentioned earlier that I had to work on a few portraits. These are a set I did very informally a few days ago of a boy born just a few weeks ago to the couple whose wedding I did back in January. He is my goddaughter Ani’s cousin, and so of course we had to get one of the two of them, even if she is still in her Iron Man pajamas. (I actually feel this is somewhat appropriate – one of the formal portraits of Ani as flower girl with the bride featured Ani wearing the Iron Man mask from her Halloween costume.)

I say these portraits are informal because I used no lighting aside from on-camera flash and we didn’t do much in the way of special clothes or backdrop – he’s wearing what he had on when he dropped by the house and we used a blanket on top of his carrier to give a solid background. The effect is more a snapshot than the formal portrait I would do in a controlled studio setting. Depending on my schedule later this spring and into the summer, it will probably be a few weeks before we do that type of portrait with him, and that’s even assuming that his parents want me to.

Anyway, without further blather, let me introduce you to Baby Rob.

Speaking of Ani, I still haven’t done her birthday portrait… but just for fun and because I didn’t post it before, here’s her Christmas portrait.

This is much more formal both in composition (a 3/4 with receding backdrop) and lighting (natural afternoon). But the excited pose, the huge grin and that t-shirt make it a lot more fun, which is what I was going for since I knew she would be wearing one of her more formal dresses to have her picture taken with Santa. I fell in love with this shirt the moment I saw it (I would give you the source, but it’s no longer available) and I’m so happy that it worked on her.

Working on the Back End

I should be out shooting today, but it’s cold. That’s actually a laughable comment, it’s only 59 degrees out, which a month ago would have seemed warm… but today, particularly with the wind howling, it seems very cold, and it has me wanting to curl up in bed under my electric blanket and watch TV.

So instead of going out and creating images, I’m staying home and working on some of the back end of photography. This is the stuff that’s not fun and artistic, in fact can be mind-numbingly boring, that I tend to let pile up and then go through in concentrated bursts once a week or so. There’s very little editing to be done, aside from a few very basic portraits, because I’ve been doing a good job lately staying current with editing.

So… I’m applying for grants, organizing my databases, plowing through the blogs that I subscribe to but don’t read daily, and making contact with models and editors I haven’t spoken to in a while. But the real challenge today is bringing some definition to a few of the series I’ve been developing lately.

“Echoes of My Grandmother” — This series is based loosely on work by Kate Hutchinson. So I have to be very careful about it not looking too much like Kate’s work. This is difficult because her images are so beautiful and I want so badly to make mine look like hers… but then it’s just a redo of her photographs, and not my own work. This is creating complications in the conceptual side of the series. Right now I have nine photos “completed”, which means they’re edited the way I want them and they’ve been tentatively titled. I now have to go through them, and decide on more images I want to create, which can be edited down into a few more. The goal is to end up with between twenty and thirty “completed” images, which I’ll then have printed and edit down to a final series of ten to fifteen images. Since my grandmother returns from her time in the Keys next week, I have only a few days to complete this part of the project. Then I have to decide whether I want to include portraits of her, and complete them.

Next up is the series on religious buildings. I have to name this series, and almost as importantly, write a statement describing the series. As far as a name, “The Architecture of Faith” keep resounding in my head, but I’m not sure I’m sold on it. I’m using it as a working title, but I’d love to hear any ideas my readers have. As far as a description, what I want to do with this is explore religious structures in the context of the buildings being an act of worship – in other words, the beauty of the structure and facade as a tribute by the congregation to the glorification of God. There’s a long history here that I’m going to have to overcome (or at least, deal with in some way) if I want something cohesive to come together from this.

“Panhandle Luminaries” is a project that will gather portraits of influential people from politics, civic life, the military, educational institutions, etc. in Northwest Florida. This has been percolating in my mind since at least September, and I’m at the stage of putting together a list of participants to invite to have their portraits done, gathering funding, and finding a home for the completed archive.

There are a few other series in the works, including one dealing with figure studies that I’ve hinted at a few times. I’m still figuring out exactly where I want to go with that. I’m also in the early stages of a series examining Santa Rosa County, Florida, where I live, and I’m considering some kind of project dealing with the TVA, which will celebrate its eightieth birthday in 2013.