In January of 2018 I met up with the fellas from Underoath in Los Angeles to shoot photos for their yet-to-be-released album, Erase Me. My friends at Tension Division were designing the album and merch and basically every facet of the upcoming album cycle. Not only did I need to shoot individual photos of each member using several different in-camera techniques such as multiple exposure, shutter drag, and projector for the album art, but I also needed to shoot promo photos for Spotify and images for an upcoming issue of Alternative Press. The shot list was aggressive for a one-day shoot but I had the added challenge of shooting all this in the living room of an Airbnb while Brandon, the creative director, was remotely directing everything from their home in Ohio. It was a tall order but I was up for it…
Read MoreBehind the Scenes Photo Shoot with Ronnie Radke of Falling in Reverse
Last month I photographed Ronnie Radke of Falling in Reverse at his home in LA. I set up a makeshift studio in his dining room and we knocked out six scenarios in just under three hours…
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Playing with Bold Colors and Silhouettes
All Things to All Men
This shoot with Dustin had a bit of something for everyone. I used a projector for most of the scenarios, using it in combination with a range of different camera techniques. I made in-camera multiple exposures, using different blending modes. I explored using slow shutter speeds, both by moving my hands as well as zooming my camera lens. Finally, I fired up a fog machine and projected different images through the smoke. There really are endless ways to use such a simple tool…
Read MoreOld Man Gloom
It’s always great when I get a chance to reconnect with Jim. We worked through a range of creative scenarios in this shoot. I shot his reflection with a broken mirror. I shot through a distressed air filter. I played with mylar. It was my first time splattering water onto the mylar, and found that the warped nature of the material in addition to the water added a nice graphic novel-look to the images. These techniques are all part of a new video series I’m currently working on, titled The Creative Portrait. Keep an eye out for the first episode, dropping soon!
Read MoreIt's Always Sunny with Sonny
Last week I shot with Sonny and we did all the things. I started with a single, un-gelled “hard” light and then began ratcheting up the complexity. By using a range of different cucoloris (cookies) I created organic-shaped shadows on her face. By adding a cyan-gelled background light I was able to give the feeling of her being outside on a sunny day. We went on to play a range of different shadow-makers and color which worked perfectly with her long braids and flowing outfits.
Read MoreStrata VII
It’s been a while since I’ve explored the Strata series. The reason why I started this experimental series almost a year ago was in an effort to take my portraits into a more painterly realm. Digital can be so hyperreal and “accurate” and I often find it quite boring. I want tactility. Grit. I experimented with shooting through different substances, such as honey or coconut oil. I shot through different types of plastics, using everytinhg from saran wrap and bubble wrap to light panels from the hardware store. I explored different ways of capturing reflections by using broken mirrors and mylar. My goal was discovery. I want an element of chaos and surprise in how I create photographs, and so I set up a series of controlled photo experiments to see what came out of it.
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Zoom Drag
This was a fun, quick session. A simple setup— just one light and a projector— with a dramatic result. I was experimenting with zooming my lens from 35mm to 16mm as I simultaneously panned the camera during the long exposure. The strobe on the background kept her silhouette intact while the projector and camera movement created the wavy, fluid lines.
Read MoreRJD2: The Fun Ones Photo Shoot
In late 2018 my buddy RJ (aka RJD2) approached me about shooting the cover art for an upcoming album he was working on. He didn’t have a concrete idea about what he wanted to do but suggested possibly involving his Delorean. He was specific about the images not being about the car itself but rather capturing elements of the cars shape and incorporating them into creative portraits. I was intrigued but really couldn’t visualize what the hell he was talking about. Eight months later he hit me up and told me he was ready to shoot. He said that he had a garage that he’d just painted white that had a 14-foot ceiling with trusses. His plan was to suspend himself upside down above the open doors of his Delorean, and seemed confident that he could rig himself adequately with a climbing harness and some ropes. When I suggested that it may be easier to just shoot him and the car separately and composite them he was aghast. Ok, we’ll do it the hard way.
Read MoreWildfire
I am starting to work more with motion. While part of this decision is strategic (I see a massive shift to video in the commercial and editorial industry), a big part of it is passion. I’ve been obsessed with films since I was a kid. Back in my college days I worked third shift at a video store for just over a year and watched 3-4 movies a shift, catching up on decades of classics. Film is just so immersive for me. It takes storytelling to a whole new level. I love being able to pair image with sound and create a deeper experience for the viewer.
This is a quick piece I put together a couple of weeks ago with Rachel Luree. I concepted, shot, and edited it in less than an hour and am super excited to push more into this new chapter of my craft.
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Creative Portraiture Workshop: Columbus
My sold out, two-day Creative Portraiture photography workshop took place a week ago and we had students travel from three other states to make art at my Columbus studio. We began by covering different qualities of light (soft vs. hard) and how to intentionally create different types of shadows. Next we covered a bit of color theory and how to use cookies (cucoloris) with gelled lights to create colorful shadows. For the rest of the weekend we covered a vsat range of techniques, such as making multiple exposures; creating prismatic effects with a broken mirror; shooting through different materials; photographing warped and colorful reflections with mylar and prismatic window film; using shutter drag; making custom shapes and images by way of projector. It was a jam-packed whirlwind of a weekend but we all came away feeling inspired and ready to go back into the world and create.
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Seasonal Affective Disorder and Hunting For Light
Lately I’ve been hyper-focused on light and texture. I can get seasonal affective disorder (SAD) pretty bad in the winter when the days are shorter and days or even weeks can go by without the appearance of the sun. When the sun does decide to make an appearance it feels like I’m awaking from a coma. I notice qualities of the light that I would likely otherwise ignore the rest of the year when sunlight is plentiful: how the light looks like water through an old window; the shapes that it creates when it hits a living room armchair; how it moves across nearby buildings until it hits a window and bounces into an otherwise dark corner of my room. It’s magical. I’ve recently taken to carrying a mirrorless camera around with me to make sure I’m ready when the sun hits.
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Vibrant Vivian
This was my first time working with Vivian. I kept the session relatively simple, focusing on capturing the vibrance of her personality. I started off by using the prism film with just window light. Then I added red and blue-gelled LEDs that I used in combination with window light. I finished by giving the images a grainy, saturated film look to make them feel older.
Waiting, Watching
When I was teaching at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops last August I had the fortune of sitting in on a presentation given by Tony O’Brien. During the talk he discussed his photo series, Light in the Desert, wherein he spent a year living with and photographing monks in a monastery. He described how he had waited seven months before he even picked up his camera to take a picture. He wanted to earn the trust of his subjects before attempting to capture their image. It absolutely blew my mind. That level of patience and intentionality is unheard of. No one had directed him to wait that long. No one was watching him to make sure he captured his subjects with honesty and integrity. It was apparent to me that this is the way he lives his life and in turn also carries out his photography work. All that is to say is that I’ve been working a lot on modeling my life after a slower, more intentional way of living…
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Trash Talk
These images were created during sessions with three different models. I love the variation between each of them. The textures are just so stunning. I can’t decide whether I like this series better in black and white or color. I suppose it could also work to go back and forth. Thoughts?
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Gettin' Weird with Jade
Fantastic Plastic
Chyna popped by my studio last week to update her digitals. Of course I couldn’t let her get away that easily...
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One Man's Trash...
This marks my third shoot with Melissa this year. Though she now lives in NYC, she was in town for the holidays and asked if I’d be interested in doing a plastic-themed shoot. In preparing for the shoot sent me a few images from a recent Vogue Portugal fashion story that implemented single-use plastics into their shoot. I really enjoyed how they repurposed trash into the creation of something new and beautiful. I knew that I would want to take a different approach to the idea by capturing the texture of the materials and experimenting with creating more abstract portraits, and so I asked Melissa to “rescue” a range of plastic from her life over the next week and bring a range of options with her to the shoot…
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Rae of Light
Rae is a dancer with Balletmet and a frequent collaborator with me. She’s as willing to experiment as she is talented, which means we always come away with a great range of images. We started off by creating fragmented portraits courtesy of my broken mirror, before moving on to creating golden images with slow shutter speeds and mylar reflections.
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Finding Inspiration at the Hardware Store
Over the past year I’ve been pushing my images into more abstract, painterly directions. As digital images seem to be moving into a realm of hyperrealism, I find myself longing for gritty tangibility. Since I have always more in the get-it-in-camera camp, I have been experimenting with a range of techniques and materials to try and achieve the look I’m after. I started off this past spring by adding substances such as coconut oil and honey to glass and then shooting through it. After that I moved on to shooting with imperfect, fungus-covered lenses to get a hazy, dreamlike quality. Next I tried my hand at capturing distorted reflections in mylar. Most recently I explored what broken mirrors can add to an image.
All these experiments have worked together to inform my process in terms of optimal focal length, aperture, and light quality/direction when working with multiple planes, layers, and reflections. Now that I better understand how to manipulate these mediums I can walk through a hardware store, for example, and visualize how certain materials would look when photographed and lit a certain way, which is exactly what I did last week…
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