Inspiration

During my time at Hallmark I was blessed to have been taught by Gregory Heisler, if you don’t know who Greg is look him up. Greg taught me so much about Location portraiture and is truly one of the greats in that field.
I found inspiration through Greg and also through his mentor in photography, Arnold Newman. The Father of environmental portraiture. My time learning from him has taught me to see in a way more geometric, composition driven way. These are two pictures I made this past weekend. My thought process in taking both was, I think, heavily influenced by Greg and by Arnold Newman.

These two pictures are of my Uncle, whose Poetry book will be Illustrated by 25 of my pictures! These were taken during the shoot for the author’s biography section on the back cover of his book.
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This is of my friend, We found this amazing abandoned house/ abandoned outbuildings.

ImageMakers!

If you see me around anytime soon I’ll probably look like I’m super stoked. It’s because I am. A year and a half ago or so, I taught a group of about 15 kids in my hometown of Shawnee, Oklahoma, the basics of photography. The kids were amazing and took some great pictures! One of my students even won a national competition! Pretty big deal! you can view it here. As most of you know I just graduated from one of if not the best photography school in the country, The Hallmark Institute of Photography, and right after graduation started working at the Boy’s and Girl’s in South OKC. This fall I will be teaching an even larger group of kids! We still don’t have cameras however, so if you know anyone who would be willing to donate, let me know. Here are some portraits of some the kids at my club.

Phase 5

As most of you know, I have graduated photography school! I am now a working professional photographer, hard to believe its been almost a year since i started this life changing journey! I’ve been very busy lately at my new job so I haven’t really had time to blog at all. I will be teaching a photography program for grade school kids at an inner-city Boy’s and Girl’s Club in Oklahoma City. I’m stoked! In the meantime I’m supplementing my income by doing freelance jobs. Most recently for a friend of mind, Kayla, who is running for Ms. Oklahoma, and needed a portfolio made. I love jobs where the client really trusts me to make something beautiful happen. I was amazed at the level of photographs we got out of the shoot. We shot for 10 hours on a hot Oklahoma saturday, which I do not recommend, but Kayla was a trooper and overall we did five different hair and make up combinations and shot in 8 different locations! I hope you guys love the images I’ve finished so far. Which isn’t even close to the complete job. Like i said, I’ve been busy. More to come but here are some of my favorites!

Final Portfolio

My phase four will end in a little less than a month. My time at Hallmark has been amazing. I want to share my final portfolio with you. This body of work has taken me roughly a month and a half of constant work to complete. Alot of effort was put in, so please tell me what you think.

This is Larry. He is my Low Key shot.

This is an APS, originally my Low Key.

This is my family portrait.

Another APS. David Ducane, a fellow Hallmark Student. check his work out here.

This is Joey. I shot him for my child assignment.

Time Cover for one of the Elective Assignments.

Couples Portrait.Environmental Portrait of Jerrod Beck. Check out his myspace. great musician. myspace.com/jerrodbeck

Another Additional Personal SubmissionThis is Claire. She’s amazing.

This is Jessica. She’s also Amazing. This is my High Key shot.

This is Peggy. Who runs The Soup Kitchen in Greenfield. great lady.

Warm on Cool. My advertisement. please note this is not a real ad. just a student project. TWLOHA is a great organization, check them out.

Color Still Life.This isn’t a real add either. just a school assignment. I’m gonna send it to TOMS though. see what they think.

Reflective Metal. The Post production on this was insane.

Glass.This is Mel. another Hallmark Student. check her work out here.

another APS. taken at the Boston Tea Party. Where i saw Sarah Palin speak!

my enviromental Still Life.

Poster Design

Another APS. Visioning Bear Circle Pow Wow.

my Photo Doc. series.

my Interior, Chicago Airport.

Cd Cover/Insert Design.

I did two other assignments, a fake self promo, and a promo Cd cover design. but i won’t bore you with those. Let me know what you think please!

Visioning Bear Pow Wow

I’m nearing the due date for my final portfolio! (this friday), and I’m super busy getting everything ready to be shown. I should probably stayed at school editing and printing all weekend, but I had the luck of getting to photograph a local pow wow, and i couldn’t waste such a great opportunity. It was a great time, fun, dancing, music, amazing artwork and crafts, I’ve always been fascinated by Native American culture, and growing up in Oklahoma, I was always surrounded by it. But here in western Mass it is a lot different, The people here were much more loose in the way the pow wow was put on, it was a very relaxed atmosphere. There were only three dances i couldn’t photograph, and i even was allowed to photograph the Drummers, which is usually against the rules. The Pow Wow was not only put on by the visioning bear circle but also the New England Center of Learning for Women in Transition, An advocacy group for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. The Day started with a ritual called smudging. This is the circle keeper, Strong Oak, holding the smudge bowl.
Being smudged is an important part of the Pow Wow, before entering the sacred circle, you must be smudged, being smudged purifies you, thus making you clean enough to enter the circle.

This is a double exposure, all done in camera, of the head dancer, and Strong Oak’s smudge bowl.

After the smudging comes three Sacred dances that I was not permitted to photograph. They are considered Sacred. they cannot be recorded in any way at all. After this came the intertribals, in which everyone was allowed to join in and dance in the circle. This is whats called the Jingle Dance. there is a very cool story about how the Jingle Dance was started, you can read it here.
A very important part of the powwow is the drum. the drum is the heart of the Pow Wow. it is what keeps the pow wow going. I’m very thankful to have been able to photograph the Drumming and the drummers.

This last picture is the one I will be using in my portfolio. Both of the pictures used in this image were taken during the intertribals, i started with these two files.

This is what I got when i overlayed the two and did some masking and tweaking…
Its’s great when you go expecting little or nothing and you get this. I think this picture is a culmination of everything I’ve been taught about native american culture. The Spirit of the culture, The joy of the people themselves, and the unity with nature and everyone around you.
Thanks for reading!

Low Key

One of our assignments for our final portfolio at school is to take a low-key portrait of a man over the age of 30. I’m very very blessed to have been able to photograph some extraordinary people for my assignments, and for my low-key I convinced Larry from my church to let me photograph him, He’s a great character and a awesome guy. These are just a few of my favorites from the session. I was inspired to do this type of work by Greg Heisler, one of my instructors and world-renowned portrait photographer, please check his work out here. Click on the pictures to view larger.

Pictures as Stories

If there’s one thing I’ve found to be more important than anything about photography in my nne months at Hallmark, It is that a photograph, can often be more than just a photograph. I have always love being able to tell stories visually, but I’ve been exposed to so many great photographers, Including my Instructors here who are able to tell such powerful stories with their Images. I’ve had many amazing conversations with them and this is what I’ve come to find out. When we read something in the newspaper. there is far less impact than if we were t see a picture of the same thing. If someone is to tell us the story of their life, we would no doubt be interested, but if they were to give us an album of pictures documenting their life, we would be far more interested in that story. Picture are dynamic when we are not. Pictures speak when we cannot. I had the wonderful opportunity to shoot my Pastors here in Massachusetts, Captains Joshua and Sunny Simpson. I wanted to show the impact they, as the Corps Officers at the Greenfield Salvation Army, have on the community as well as the small church family. I was overjoyed when we were able to convince the entire congregation to participate. I hope that in this image you can see the story of these two. The lives they touch.

After shooting this I was asked to shoot a young boy who also goes to church at The Salvation Army, what I got was this portrait. I think they both tell a story about the people there.

Thanks for reading!