Nick Fancher 8/19/21 Nick Fancher 8/19/21

Images From My Creative Portrait Workshop

This past weekend I hosted a 2-day Creative Portrait workshop at my studio. In an effort to keep the atmosphere intimate and allow for a lot of hands-on time for students, I capped the workshop at 5 students. We covered a range of techniques such as using flags to shape light; color theory; making and using snoots; long exposure portraits; and lighting with projectors. We packed a lot in, as you can see below…

Nick Fancher 7/22/21 Nick Fancher 7/22/21

The Boy Who Was Struck By Lightning

When @mengesdesign was 8 years old he was struck by lightning. That random fact immediately came to mind as we looked over the first two images from our latest collaboration…

Nick Fancher 7/12/21 Nick Fancher 7/12/21

Creating Dappled Light with a DIY Reflector

What if I told you that i only used one light to create this image. It’s true. I used one of my favorite lighting modifiers— a DIY reflector…

Nick Fancher 7/5/21 Nick Fancher 7/5/21

Water Drops, Light Painting, and Lens Fungus (Oh My)

When Lily arrived at my studio I decided to start off with some colorful water drop portraits before getting into the light painting…

Nick Fancher 5/23/21 Nick Fancher 5/23/21

What Nightmares May Come: Exploring Prisms and Mylar

I’ve worked with prisms from time to time over the years and enjoyed the effects that they offer but never really fell in love with them. Last week I decided to see what would happen if I used a prism while photographing mylar. The beautiful nightmarish images that were produced are the closest visual representation of a panic attack that I’ve ever seen. Now I’m in love.

Nick Fancher 5/21/21 Nick Fancher 5/21/21

Americana / Film Noir with Skrizzly Adams

One day last year (what is time) I worked with @alexhaldi of @pawncreative to create art for the new @skrizzlyadams album cycle. We shot a bunch of smoky images on location at a bar to match the classic Americana aesthetic of the artist. My assistant @sethmosesmiller helped me position a snooted speedlite up near the ceiling for the first setup, which created a shaft of light in the smoke. For the second setup we wanted to imply sunlight coming through the window blinds but since it was in fact a rainy morning we had to fake the light with a projector. Less is more, more or less.

Nick Fancher 5/17/21 Nick Fancher 5/17/21

A Fixed Point in Space Over Time: Photo Shoot with Ballet Dancer Kristie Latham Zurmehly

In my art my go-to techniques all center around the passage of time. Take this shoot with Kristie, for example. I made long exposures and multiple exposures in order to observe how she moved through a fixed point in space over time, which I otherwise wouldn’t be able to see with my naked eye…

Nick Fancher 5/12/21 Nick Fancher 5/12/21

Vesperteen Promo Shoot

My buddy Colin Rigsby has a music project called Vesperteen, and he reached out to me to do a shoot last month. Colin and I go way back. His wife was friends with my wife before I ever met her. I attended his wedding, did several shoots with his old band, House of Heroes, and shared many great moments over the past two decades. It was great to catch up, shared some laughs, and create some beautiful art. We created a wide range of vibrant, kinetic images in promotion of his new music…

Nick Fancher 5/6/21 Nick Fancher 5/6/21

What is Time?

I did some more time explorations in my latest shoot with Katy. I began with the same technique I explored in my last session, shooting long exposures with multi-strobing lights…

Nick Fancher 5/3/21 Nick Fancher 5/3/21

The Descent: Capturing Movement with Dancer Sophie Bolton

Whenever I am planning a shoot with a dancer I face the challenge of coming up with fresh ways to capture their movement. Sometimes I put my camera on a tripod and use a long exposure to capture their fluidity. Or I might have the dancer stand still while I move my camera, which creates a similar-yet-different effect. Or I might fire a strobe multiple times during an exposure in order to crisply capture how they move through a space. In this shoot with dancer Sophie Bolton I opted to do it all…

Nick Fancher 4/16/21 Nick Fancher 4/16/21

The Many Ways to Photograph a Dancer: Shoot with Ballerina Caitlin Valentine

I’ve been working with dancers for over a decade and I still struggle to come up with fresh ways of capturing their movement in a way that conveys their power and grace. But this challenge doesn’t keep me from trying…

Nick Fancher 3/30/21 Nick Fancher 3/30/21

Evanescence: The Bitter Truth Photo Shoot

Back in November I drove down to Nashville to photograph @amylee for her upcoming @evanescenceofficial album, The Bitter Truth. I set up a makeshift studio in her dining room and knocked out a broad range of images for the album art, various magazine spreads, and images for streaming platforms…

Nick Fancher 2/25/21 Nick Fancher 2/25/21

This is Water

For decades I’ve adored 4AD album art from the 80s and 90s. The genius team behind the photography and design was Nigel Grierson and Vaughan Oliver, who operated under the name 23 Envelope. They were responsible for iconic album art of This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, The Pixies, and many more. Over the years I’ve tried over and over again to mimic some of the effects that I saw used in their photography, but my experiments always came up short. Much to my delight, my latest photographic exploration is the closest to their aesthetic, by far…

Nick Fancher 2/19/21 Nick Fancher 2/19/21

Cyberpunk Flapper Girl and Other Photographic Mashups

It’s a rare occasion when I do a team collaboration on a personal shoot. I typically prefer to work directly with the model, having them bring their own wardrobe and arrive with their hair and makeup already done. It not only saves time and is easier to coordinate but I also love the challenge of coming up with a cohesive theme for the shoot, basing my techniques, lighting, and color palette on the items that they brought with them. That said, when I do get to work with a great team such as this, I can see how the images really elevate…

Nick Fancher 2/16/21 Nick Fancher 2/16/21

Color and Shape Collab with Larry Robertson

Larry Robertson is a clothing designer, stylist, poet, and many other things. Everytime we collaborate we walk away with fire. He came by my studio yesterday and brought with him a bunch of outfits. We vacillated between shooting and chatting, discussing life, creativity, and navigating the ever-changing world…

Nick Fancher 2/10/21 Nick Fancher 2/10/21

Playing with Bold Colors and Silhouettes

This was a fun, quick little color study with Erin Hurt, who did her own hair, makeup, and wardrobe styling. I wanted to focus on color and silhouette, so I had her select items with interesting shapes, like suit jacket or an A-line dress…

Nick Fancher 2/5/21 Nick Fancher 2/5/21

Exquisite Geometry

This was my first time working with Amber. In preparation for the shoot I told her the same thing I tell all of my models: bring 4-6 different outfit options and have hair and makeup ready when they arrive. Once she arrived we looked through the items that she brought and decided a direction for the shoot based on what we had to work with. I love the improvisational element in test shoots. It can really take my shoots in new directions. It makes me wonder if this is what it feels like tobe a jazz musician, going in loose and riffing off the other collaborators…

Nick Fancher 1/28/21 Nick Fancher 1/28/21

Collaboration with Sustainable Fashion Designer Malvar = Stewart

Celeste Malvar-Stewart is a fashion designer that specializes in using locally-sourced, sustainable materials in the garments she makes. I’ve collaborated with Celeste several times over the years and the thing that I especially love about our shoots is how open she is with the way I interpret her garments. She simply hands me a garment bag filled with delicate treasures and tells me to style and shoot them however I please. I am someone who thrives in situations like this— just improvising and figuring it out as I go. The more I plan ahead, the more anxious I get at all the possible points of failure. If you don’t have a concrete plan you can’t be held responsible if you deviate from it…

Nick Fancher 1/22/21 Nick Fancher 1/22/21

How to Create Practical Effects in Photographs without Photoshop

Lately I’ve been exploring different ways to manipulate my images after the fact. Since I’m not great at Photoshop creating realistic effects in Photoshop and don’t like the absence of “happy accidents” when working on a digital file, I prefer to print the images and then physically modifying them. So far I’ve explored crumpling prints, poking holes in them, submerging them in water, and lighting them from below before re-shooting them…

Nick Fancher 1/11/21 Nick Fancher 1/11/21

Plants and Plastic with Chyna

I’ve collaborated with Chyna a dozen times now, and we’ve since become friends. She recently came by the studio and we chatted about work, life, and plants, among other things. I had recently propagated one of my plants by splitting it into two pots, one of which I gave to her. Before she left I asked if she would want to do an impromptu shoot with her new green friend. After snapping a few frames with the plant I convinced her to let me shoot some colorful long exposure images…