Recent Work
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Recent Work

I have fallen behind when it comes to blogging, but still wanted to update it periodically. Here’s some of my favorite work from the last six weeks…

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Multiple Exposure Portraits with Roarie Yum
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Multiple Exposure Portraits with Roarie Yum

My studio is located within @thefort614, which is a 130 year old warehouse on the south side of Columbus. It used to be the home of the Seagrave Company, which used the space to manufacture fire engines and other rescue vehicles, for over 60 years. Every square inch of the building has a glorious patina that can’t be faked. The cracked plaster, distressed flooring, and sun-faded glass is something especially rare in this fast growing city, populated with new builds…

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Multiple Exposure Portraits with Rigid Textures
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Multiple Exposure Portraits with Rigid Textures

Last year I explored fluidity quite a bit in my work, and this year I’ve been gravitating towards rigidity. To create these images I wandered around taking photos of a range of textures, which I used as a base layer to make in-camera multiple exposures in two portrait sessions.

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Processing Trauma: Photo Shoot with Covid Nurse
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Processing Trauma: Photo Shoot with Covid Nurse

Meris is a nurse that witnessed profound trauma during Covid. She kept a journal as a way of processing all that she experienced, which included journal entries and collage art. When she asked me to take her portrait and mentioned the journals, I suggested that I could photograph some of the pages and use them to make in-camera multiple exposures (seen below)…

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We Are More Than the Sum of Our Parts: A Photographic Pushback Against Artificial Intelligence
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

We Are More Than the Sum of Our Parts: A Photographic Pushback Against Artificial Intelligence

Many AI images look are impressive at first, in a too-good-to-be-true kind of way. Interiors brag gravity-defying architecture, or scenic terrains depict features that have never before been seen on this planet. However, there is inevitably an element that seems off when viewing these images. They are too perfect, and lack the tactility and weight that feels believable, a phenomenon referred to as the uncanny valley. This begs the question, are AI images a success or a failure? Are they successfully creating visions of an ideal human or world according to some programming and an amalgamation of stock imagery, or are they a failure in coding, with the author lacking the awareness to include nuance and imperfection in their vision? Its these details that, I’d argue, that inform us that a person or a place is real…

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Kinstugi and the Art of Self-Care: Adult Survivor of Childhood Abuse
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Kinstugi and the Art of Self-Care: Adult Survivor of Childhood Abuse

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing a broken vessel with a precious metal, such as gold or platinum. A repaired vessel isn’t the same as it was before the trauma, nor is it diminished. The essence of the original vessel is still there, but golden scars now trace the lines where the fracture occurred…

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Warped and Fragmented Portraits of Rachel
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Warped and Fragmented Portraits of Rachel

I had a blast playing around with a range of different prisms, refraction panels, and ring lights last week with @rachelluree. As always, these effects were created in-camera, with the only post work done being color grading in Lightroom.

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Fluid Portraits Commission by Unsplash+
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Fluid Portraits Commission by Unsplash+

These images were all created using in-camera effects. No Photoshop was used— only color grading in Lightroom.

I was recently commissioned by Unsplash+ to create a library of fluid portraits. Last year I began working on a new body of images where I explore fluids and in-camera multiple exposures. My Canon 5DIV allows me to select an image from my memory card and overlay it on my viewfinder, when in “live view”, which allows me to intentionally compose multiple exposures. Even though I know more or less how the fluid and the portrait will merge, there is always a moment of surprise when the final image pops up on my screen. As you can see in the gallery below, the same fluid shot will produce wildly different results depending on how the subject is light, the clothes they’re wearing, their hair, the complexion of their skin, etc. This makes each image a one-of-one.

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Less Is More: Slowing Down with Sondos
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Less Is More: Slowing Down with Sondos

Lately I’ve been intentionally slowing down the pace in which I engage life. Though I’ve never been good at being still or meditating, I have found lately that stillness is what I’ve been craving the most. My favorite pastime these days is to sit in what others might call silence and listen to the sounds of the world around me. Crickets chirping; the wind moving through the trees; jets passing overhead; neighbors listening to a ball game on their porch radio. If I can manage to stop thinking about each individual sound, I can start to hear them all as one, and accept my place within it. 

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