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- Portfolio / Photographer Clint
- 2025-03-23T07:45:34+01:00
- 2025-03-23T07:45:34+01:00
In The Elemental
Pain occupies a unique place in human life. A thing to be avoided and a thing mythic in its nature to overcome. A thing to be nurtured in our hearts and that drives some of humanity's greatest accomplishments. The broken heart or an isolated soul suffers constantly.
In conversation with a pair of artist friends, welcomed into their studio and enjoying the muted light of a rainy afternoon, I mentioned that I held some pride at navigating a painful situation as best one could and one of my friends observed that an aversion to pain was often more dominant as we age. I am unsure that such is truly the case.
So many friends suffer the slings and arrows of age with dignity or resignation. And I know a good number who still retain a sense of adventure, particularly in romance, despite the possibility of pain. My own thought is that when some possibility presents itself one should simply go wholeheartedly and do the best you can. Make no mistake, the red flags are not a parade in your honor, crimson banners that wind and beckon. There was at one time a restaurant in Seattle called The Doghouse who featured an inspired drawing on their placemats of all the ways a person could wind up in the proverbial doghouse. An appreciable percentage were redheads.
The Archive Reveals All
My start in photography was very very backwards. I had no experience or real training other than having toyed with point-and-shoot cameras rather unsuccessfully. To this day I am not a "good" photographer.
The initial impetus was seeing aerial dancers rehearsing through some decorative lighting at an art museum gala. We were using high-definition glass gobos of winter branches for an autumnal effect and the shadows wrapping around the aerialists were entrancing. I had recently had corrective surgery on both eyes and it struck me that I could recreate this look to get a better picture than my phone was going to give me. Three days later I was at my local camera shop buying an entry-level Nikon and a wonderful 105mm lens (which turned out to be too long for the space I would use it in). My day job in production (mainly sound, lighting and projection, all playback oriented) did give me some understanding of noise floors, gain structures and the like. I kitted out a spare room in my warehouse with a ring of truss and theatrical lighting and became obsessed with losing and finding models in the patterning. The focus was, literally, less on the people than the technique and I certainly confused the hell out of the sensor on my poor little camera. I quickly discovered some features I wanted and moved up to a mid-range Nikon and then a full-frame. And then I moved outdoors.
The difference between nutso patterning and portraits in natural light could not have been a wider gap. It very much laid bare that I had learned the exposure triangle backwards, among other oversights. One that is jumping out tonight as I look through the archive is that I had some fundamental misunderstandings of the Nikon focus system. I'm still not impressed by Nikon's NX Studio software but I re-downloaded it in order to access the "show focus" feature. This particular day my D750 was set to AF-Area multi-point and it wasn't until nearly a year later that I realized I needed to swap over to single-point, which immediately did away with the stubborn habit of auto focus choosing the wrong damned thing to focus on! There were other instances of consistent misses but this particular shoot, with one of my favorite people who had made a point of coming to my state to work with me....well, it was a bitter evening when I got home and was able to look at these images full size. They looked FINE on the back-of-camera view (I also hadn't yet learned to zoom in and check, a shortcut that I very much appreciate).
These are, I suppose, how one truly learns a work flow. I've never quite been able to ditch handheld in favor of a tripod -- I want to be more active in choosing angles, to drop down to my belly to see what it looks like from there. And I'm not usually overly concerned with sharpness itself -- I use a lot of vintage manual lenses or lenses designed to be troublesome and I like the result. But there are times when something needs to be sharp.
As painful as it is, I spend a good amount of time on even the worst of shoots. And I don't throw them away in disgust. It's not just to rub my own nose in my mistakes but to come back and see the lesson again every so often. To think about the lesson and then wonder at it a bit and see if I'm drawing the right conclusion. And every so often, as tonight, I find a gem or two that survived my blunders.
This Is Why
It's been two summers ago that Eva and I loaded an entire Suburban's worth of camping gear and groceries and all the stuff of modern glamping and headed south to intercept our friend Lucy. We had guessed correctly on the amount of luggage she was carrying (almost none) and I had a set of camp-gear for her already. I had spent most of the Spring scouting locations and campsites and came up with some genuinely wonderful places. The thing about all of it is that isn't so much the place itself as giving a mood or just being part of the vibe of the day. This particular location I had stumbled across one morning and had returned to several times. It seemed as if the bird-watching grandmothers from the RV camp didn't hurry their morning coffee and that there was some little window in which we would have the lighthouse and beach all to ourselves. And so it was.
In the moments AFTER the trip, loaded up with a short week of pictures, I didn't particularly notice this batch. But tonight I made one little change and BINGO it jumped off the page. I will tip my hat to the two drift boat fishermen who floated silently off the lighthouse for the 45 minutes or so that we were there. They were quite respectful. I do wonder how often they have returned since in hopes of a repeat performance.
Thanksgiving Dinner
The irrepressible Joey Darke joined me for the holiday week in a rustic setting. An unexpected snow storm descended as she arrived so we spent the next three days simply exploring the space and seeing how many places we could get her upside down!
More and more these days I begin to see model photography as some kind of documentary of the tribe of traveling models. Their migration around the world intersects their photographers and the resulting creative output is shaped by the journeys and experiences of both. Our job as photographers is to create a setting that perhaps reinforces or undermines their mood or role. Each model is a restless creative force, needing only a little suggestion or a particular box to work within. Joey is no exception and I've seen her modeling change over the past few years, our semi-annual meetups always standing out as new and unique experiences.
Masks and Mavens
Sirena landed in the art model community with a splash, dazzling the desert at workshops while vagabonding across the continent. I was excited to meet her, already being familiar with her work, and there was no warm-up time needed at all. For years I've resisted shooting the same concepts repeatedly but it's fascinating to see similarities and differences between models given the same framework. As the outdoor season in Oregon comes to a halting end, it was fun to have a great shoot and explore familiar territory with a new person who brought real joy and verve into the moment.
Contact
- #pale
- #redhead
- #oil
- #natural light
- #sleeping
- #nature
- #figurative art
- #model photography
- #naturallight
- #piano
- #feathers
- #hips
- #dramatic
- #portrait
- #lowlight
- #form
- #pose
- #silhouette
- #sunset
- #stark
- #legs
- #shadows
- #corner
- #modelphotography
- #figurativeart
- #experimentalphotography
- #portraitart
- Info Photographer Clint
- 2025-03-23T07:45:34+01:00
- 2025-03-23T07:45:34+01:00
Obsessively breaking the sensor since 2016 with an overwhelming desire to see YOU.