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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New Work: Nov. '24 to Feb '25
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

New Work: Nov. '24 to Feb '25

I used to be better about blogging regularly, but life happens, and the more I fall behind, the more daunting the task is of catching up. In an effort to at least loosely keep my blog followers informed (few as they may be), here’s a batch of new work that I’ve made over the past two months…

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My 2024 Photographic Recap
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

My 2024 Photographic Recap

I continued in my exploration of photographing different liquids, and soon ventured into working with epoxy resin…

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Images From the November Creative Portrait Workshop
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Images From the November Creative Portrait Workshop

Last week I hosted another one of my Creative Portrait workshops, in Columbus, Ohio. Students came in from Toronto, Portland, Asheville, and San Francisco to learn some of my lighting and camera techniques. Big thanks to @westcottlighting for providing the strobes, transmitters, and light modifiers, and to @nanliteusa for providing the LEDs.

My next workshop is January 25-26 and is at a discounted rate until December 15. There are only five spots FYI. More info, here.

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Y2K Lifestyle Shoot for Unsplash+
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Y2K Lifestyle Shoot for Unsplash+

I was recently commissioned by @unsplash to create a body of work around the theme of early 00’s tech and fashion. I was born in 1980 so this was my era. I already knew how to approach shopping for props because I was basically buying everything I always wanted but couldn’t afford 😂. I was heavily influenced by the aesthetic in Gregg Araki’s 1997 film, Nowhere.

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Jordan Larson X ESPN
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Jordan Larson X ESPN

Back in April I was given the opportunity to work with 3-time Olympic medalist Jordan Larson @gov1007 for @espn. In the pre-production call with the creative team, I suggested a couple of techniques I could use as a way of capturing her power and grace…

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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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Identity: A Commission by Unsplash+
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Identity: A Commission by Unsplash+

The team at Unsplash reached out to me to commission a body of work around the theme of identity. Identity is such a broad, subjective concept that I ultimately used several different technical approaches to create the portraits…

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Photo Shoot with Ballerina Dancer
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Photo Shoot with Ballerina Dancer

I rarely go into a shoot with a fixed notion of how I want it to go, or how I want the images to look. I often base my techniques, color palette, and post processing on what the moment dictates…

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Shelby X Creative Portrait Workshop
Nick Fancher Nick Fancher

Shelby X Creative Portrait Workshop

I had a blast hosting a sold out workshop at my studio this past weekend. Thank you to my students for coming from places as far away as Boston, Seattle, and the Cayman Islands. Shout out to my incredible models (@yesandso seen here) for making it easy to turn these techniques into moving art.

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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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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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