Last week I shot with frequent collaborator Rachel Luree and made a range of ghosty images, including some digital pinhole images. If you’re unfamiliar with pinhole photography, it’s essentially any light-tight object with photo sensitive material inside and a tiny hole which acts as the aperture. An entire room can then be a pinhole camera (see camera obscura). I’ve made pinhole cameras out of LEGO, oatmeal boxes, film canisters, and cigarette tins. While each iteration has offered unique results, exploring digital pinhole has been a quicker and easier experience by far.
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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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…
Read MoreColor and Shape
I kept it simple and fun for this shoot with model Rachel Luree: crisp shadows, complementary colors, playful poses.
