40... And Counting ~

We count down our time in decades, I guess because we have ten fingers. This is what I'm counting down now. A simple reflection: It was in the spring of 1973 that I apprenticed at a portrait studio in Cheyenne Wyoming, and am proud to look back on a career in professional photography that has spanned, for better or worse, these four decades.
Thousands, certainly, of portraits; many hundreds of commercial assignments, and more weddings than I care to count. But what I remember most clearly are those first couple years at that studio, living and breathing photography every hour of every day, and acquiring the skills and techniques that I would continue to hone in studios and darkrooms for many years.
Mercifully, there aren't many pictures of me from those days, but of the few I can still find (and admit to) this one by my friend and classmate Terry McCarthy is the one I most enjoy sharing. And that was my dad's Nikon Photomic F.  That was one sweet camera!

My own humble little possession when I began was this Nikkormat FTN and a plain old 50mm lens, which I bought used in Casper Wyoming for about a hundred bucks. I think I must have run a million rolls of film through it; in any event I completely wore it out and gave it an honorable retirement. I was addicted to Tri-X (and Edwal FG-7) along with venerable Ektachrome 64.

We had large-format cameras of all sorts at that studio, and medium-format ones as well. All these were new and wondrous to me, portals to incredible worlds of art and creativity. Eventually I saved up all my nickels and dimes and bought this Mamiya RB 67 and a couple lenses.  I had that baby for years too, and even wore that one out. I guess I'm a little hard on my gear, but then again, these are tools, not art objects. I sometimes wish I still had them, but it's mostly digital now and that technology has taken my career to entirely new places. No regrets.




Would I do it all over again? In a heartbeat! Photography has taken me to fascinating places, to meet incredible artists, and work with wonderful people.  And it brought me here.

My favorite writer Douglas Adams once wrote, "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be".

Amen, brother.

Let me know what your great memories are!

Dave

Have iPhone, Will Travel ~

Here's a project that has captured my time and my imagination. Call it what you will: Found Art, Street Expressionism, or what my friend and business colleague Dave Carsten calls it, POV art. Point Of View. Indeed, it is how you look at it. Just some peeling paint? Graffiti on a trash bin?

What I do know is this, that yes: beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but you have to look for it and see it.

This is why our smartphones have become a valuable expressive tool; even though we're photographers, we're not always carrying our cameras around. Heck, when I was apprenticing in the studio so many years ago, I did carry my trusty Nikkormat with me everywhere. I couldn't shoot enough, and every spare dollar I had (depressingly few, but I was all of 21!) went to ensuring adequate supplies of Tri-X and Kodachrome.  I did this less and less as the years went by and other worldly pressures began to bear down.

So now I'm inspired, by my trusty iPhone and my inspirational friends, to get out again to look, to see, to be immersed. My studio partner Whitney, as usual, is a motivating force to be reckoned with. And our mutual friend Bryan Welsh, from Moments In Time Photography in Hillsboro Oregon, has definitely kicked us both into a higher gear. Besides being a considerably talented photographer, Bryan is also an impressive motivator and public speaker. Whitney turned us on to #finding_inspiration, an Instagram hashtag, as a place to find and submit our iPhone pictures. You should check it out.

We've used our blog posts as ways to suggest photo challenges (and my apologies that this site was down for so long) and I offer this one to you as well. It has no end time, no prizes, but it's the biggest one yet, and one that I will give to myself every day:  Get the heck out there and look, see, feel, live, and ... take the shot. Share it here or on Instagram. 


It'll make you feel good, and we'd definitely love to see what inspires you.

Later, amigos!

Personal Projects ~

So Whitney & I did something last week that we try to do occasionally, and this was to schedule a day for personal projects at the studio. You get so busy with your everyday work that sometimes you just need to re-charge your batteries and try out new things: styles, lighting, subjects -- wherever your heart, brain, and soul take you.
Plus, we opened this up as a "drop-in" experience for anyone who wanted to drop by and participate.

Did anyone takes us up on it? Well, not this time around, although there were a number of people who definitely wanted to, but couldn't get away for it (a Wednesday afternoon) so we'll keep scheduling these in. But boy did we have fun!

We played with every style of lighting we could muster up, which is considerable: strobe, continuous, and even plain-old available. Which is hardly plain at at; the whole north wall of the studio is a roll-up door, so we can enjoy the best northern-light quality you can imagine. Whitney often uses that for her portraits of children, and used that with her image you see on the right. My image above was taken with my Elinchrom strobes.

Bliss Studio's intern Stacie got right with the program. A very talented artist and photographer, it was really fun to see her approach to lighting and posing, too.
Which, come to think of it, is the real benefit to the drop-in philosophy: sharing tips and learning new things goes both ways.

This is one of the images Stacie made and shared with us. She was exploring lighting and angles we hadn't noticed before. The most fun I have in the studio, when I get the most energized and feel the most creative, is when I have a group of people at a lighting workshop. Sometimes people who are learning have the most to teach.

And of course, post-production technique can (or at least should) round out the vision you began forming in your mind when the camera was in your hand. These two pictures illustrate that, as well as really showing how two people can interpret the very same subject in such different ways. This is Whitneys image of two sunflowers on the right, mine is below.

We both use Photoshop CS6, and we both really enjoy using OnOne software too. But all of that is about the same as saying we both use a darkroom.

We have this discussion all the time, and perhaps you should too. Does the use of post-production software enhance your vision and interpretation, or define it? It's a tough call, and the line separating those can be pretty vague sometimes. My own philosophy of photography and the "painterly" manner in which I tend to interpret  my subjects is something that began to form even back in the black & white darkroom, where at times it could take weeks to make the exact print I was looking for. Does photoshop merely speed up this process, or fundamentally alter it?

Your thoughts?

That'll make a great discussion for our next post! That, of course, and some of your photos.

You know where:  dhuttphoto@comcast.net.           And drop in next time!

Later, amigos!

Drop-In Studio -- What An Idea!! ~

Have you ever wanted to just pop into a nice photo studio, get a little hands-on instruction, and have some fun? And not pay a fortune?
Well, Whitney & I have thought a lot about this, too. After all, we're at the studio most of the time, sometimes doing commercial work, and sometimes just working on personal projects. So we thought we'd just swing open the doors and offer a drop-in, open studio on a regular basis.

In fact, we're going to be offering it every other week, so you can make plans around it. We'll start it out on Wednesday, Sept. 12 from 1 to 5 pm.
Here's how it works: Whitney & I will be there working on some flower arrangements that day (and other kinds of projects on other days), so bring in your camera and work right along with us, practicing with the lights, arranging still-life compositions, metering, the works. You can even bring some of your own flowers and still-life subjects if you want, and come away with some great shots. It's a great way to get some practice and some individual attention. Stay 4 hours, stay a half-hour, it's all up to you. The cost? A measly $20.
Just helps us pay the electric bill!

This is a drop-in studio experience, not commercial studio rental, so we ask that you not bring a client or shoot a commercial job. Just you (& friends!) having some fun, gaining some great experience, practicing new skills.
So drop in on the 12th between 1 and 5! Questions? Email me at dhuttphoto@comcast.net. Or Whitney at info@blissstudio.net.
Or text me at 503-449-0662.

Or grab a Starbucks and just pop on in and surprise the bejeebers out of us. We're going to be there anyway. Might as well join us!

Oh yes, where are we? Bliss Studio, 7693 Cirrus Blvd in Beaverton (near Washington Square), Go the the Directions link on my website for easy directions:
www.davehuttphotography.com

Hope to see you there!

Selling Our Photos on Etsy ~

It was one of those odd twists-of-fate sort of things: Whitney posted a recent picture she took on one of her Etsy crafts sites...and sold it! It was just a spur of the moment thought, but it's from these kinds of inspiration that opportunity often comes. So it was off to the drawing board (so to speak) for us: Whitney, of course; her husband Dan Harlacher, and me.
Our site is called Fifty Fifth Avenue Arts (www.fiftyfifthavenuearts.com), a name that reflects the fact that we all live on (you guessed it...) 55th Avenue in beautiful southwest Portland!

Like so many professional photographers, we all have tons of images, outside our regular commercial output, that rarely ever get out of our computer files and see the light of day. So if nothing else, this is a really fun way to showcase that work, and eventually the work of others.

For me personally, it's also a way to explore new software and hardware. This summer I upgraded my 4 year old Macbook to the new Macbook Pro 15" notebook and Photoshop CS6; these, along with OnOne Photosuite 6.1 have given me the opportunity to see and re-examine some of my work in entirely new and delightful ways. We all need ways to refresh and recharge (as well as the photo challenges Whitney keeps dreaming up for us!)

The pieces we sell on our Fifty Fifth Avenue Arts site are all 11x14 for $59, with options for different sizes and finishes. We're also in the process of putting together some 3-piece collages made from our iPhone photos. If you look back at a couple of my earlier posts here, you can see how impressed I am with what those can accomplish!
So when you get a free moment, check out our site & let me know what you think. And I hope you keep sending me your photos, too. There's nothing I love more. In fact, let me ask you a question: if you step outside -- way outside -- your comfort zone, what kind of images do you create? Those are the ones I want to see. And I'll post them here next time.
Get busy.

Later, amigos!

dhuttphoto@comcast.net

Visiting the Photography "Holy Land ~

Last week I visited the George Eastman House in Rochester NY -- something I had dreamed of for most of my nearly 40 years in photography. It's more than just a huge collection of cameras and photographs - one of the largest in the world - but more importantly, it's a preservation, and celebration, of the people and technologies that shaped our profession.

My daughter Sara had just completed her Masters Degree there at the University of Rochester/George Eastman House. She spent her entire first year at the house, where she obtained her museum certificate in Film Preservation, and then completed the academic course work on campus. What a great opportunity for her, and it gave me this once-in-a-lifetime chance to get an insider's tour of the GEH, its museum and its archives.

The camera on the right, for example, is the very first one produced by Kodak. It's amazing to look at it and touch history, and imagine the kind of revolution it created in photography. We have a direct visual link to our past because of this and the finishing process offered by Kodak. Ordinary people made extraordinary images of their lives, and those who saw the art in it -- Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Steiglitz, Strand, Dorothea Lange and so many others -- were my inspirations.

It was good to feel like a kid again and get that rush of excitement that made me pursue photography in the first place. 39 years later, I'm still energized and amazed by it, even though I now use a computer instead of a cold-lighthead enlarger. Museums don't just preserve the past; great ones, like the George Eastman House, also point the way to the future.

Share your experiences?     dhuttphoto@comcast.net

Let's Go For A New Photo Challenge ~

Time sure has a way of getting away from you, especially if you're like me and would rather spend it outdoors instead of in front of your computer. My studio partner and photography motivator (as in, "get busy!") reminded me how long it had been since our last photo challenge, which was to produce a photograph that somehow embodied the concept of soft. The topic this time around? Stripes. 
I have always found that the simpler a concept may sound, it's that much more difficult to actually realize. It's easy to look at the word stripes and think t-shirts and zebras, but we're looking for something deeper and more subtle.

The staircase photo above is my initial entry. I love to work with lines (stripes?) and geometric form; and, as with a lot of my recent work away from the studio, this was taken with my trusty iPhone 4s. And I really like this photo on the right; it's Whitney's submission and is a terrific image with strong photographic elements and a touch of whimsy. It has that special "HDR" look that I like so much.

So get out and try on some new ideas and ways of seeing things. Anything goes. No rules, no limitations. Just inspiration.

It's nice outside. Think I'll go out and shoot.

                                                       Send me your shots!  dhuttphoto@comcast.net

Later amigos!