In the digital age, it’s easy to get into the mindset that we see and experience all photographs on a screen. We have to remember, though, that this is photography, not cinematography. A screen is not necessary, and in fact actually undermines the entire concept: the photographic print has always existed as an independent artistic object, real and tangible. It is the final vision of the artist. This is a collection of my rodeo portraits (several of which have not yet made it to the website!) all beautifully printed and matted and ready for a portfolio review at Jackson Fine Art. These photographs are real. You can pick them up and touch them and see the surface of the paper, and even smell the varnish while it drys (days…). It’s so exciting to create, to photograph, yet it’s easy to forget that what matters is what becomes real, not just another pile of ones and zeros sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting to be lost to history. Obviously, I am a huge fan of how photographs can be shared globally over the internet. It allows us to see and experience so many images that we may not have the time or the resources to view. But somewhere that photograph needs to exist as a real, tangible object, or the chances are that one day, it will simply vanish.
Hello, It’s Me
Apologies for the extended absence from blogging. We have been working feverishly to finish our new website and blog, and, like so many things, it’s taking a bit longer than anticipated. The new site will provide a very comprehensive look at what we do in the studio, our location portraiture, dog portraiture, Sprout Club, family portraits, everything. The blog will also be a part of the website, rather than a separate entity, so it’s all good. In addition, we are completely reframing and updating all of our wall displays for the studio. I keep moving the furniture around, too, trying to get the perfect feng shui arrangement. Our electrician Larry is here today setting up all of the new lighting, and the phone is ringing off the hook with commercial projects, so we are moving at a hectic pace trying to keep up with everything. I put in about 12 hours a day, pretty much every day. Unfortunately, getting these various projects across the finish line always takes longer than I anticipate when I start 25 different things at once! See this post for a fuller explanation. One super swell project we hit last week was to photograph Ms. Victoria Stilwell of Animal Planet’s “It’s Me or The Dog” for all her new marketing pieces as well as her new line of Positively branded dog products, soon to be launched. I’ll post some of those images when I finish the retouching. You can see some of the endless bitz and pieces that go into a studio portrait. In the back is David, one of the four dog handlers who helped us manage all of the dog units for the shoot. Victoria’s dogs, Sadie and Jasmine, are real sweethearts. Jasmine likes to camp out on Sadie, and Sadie likes to be camped out on. So, until next time, dear reader! We’ll see you soon.
Hammers and Lutes
The German composer Johann Mattheson is said to have remarked that if a lute player lived to be 80, he had surely spent 60 years of his life tuning the lute. In this painting by Rubens, you can see why someone might make such a statement: Many years ago, buried deep in a painful renovation of a house that really should have been either gutted or leveled, I modified this witticism: if I spend ten years renovating this house, I will have spent half of it looking for my hammer! It turned out to be a 5/2.5 split! Lute tuning and home renovations are both best left to professionals. As you know, we recently moved our Atlanta portrait studio into a new space, and being the DIY guy that I am, I set about staining the concrete floors, installing new base moulding and a bunch more stuff that really should have been left to a professional. The problem with DIY projects is that you are almost guaranteed to NOT get what you actually need whenever you make a trip to the hardware store. Thus, each project requires 3 or 4 trips to the hardware store, and each trip adds an hour to the total project time (when you factor in stopping at CoffeeBucks each time you pass by). My total number of trips to either ACE or Home Depot was really insane, something like 33! Updating the axiom: if you spend two weeks on a DIY project, you’ll spend one full week at Home Depot, about six days looking for your hammer, and one day to do the actual work!
Tillmanisms
“Walker, does Harry Potter turn all of the bad guys into bacon?””No, Tillman.””Darn.”
Merry Christmas
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, What happiness befalls me When oft at joyous Christmas-time Your form inspires my song and rhyme. O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, What happiness befalls me – O Tannenbaum, anonymous English variant In a delightful annual ritual one of our neighbors posts a lovely Christmas tree at the end of her driveway. For eight years, we have driven by this simple display and found in it a quiet perfection, a true spirit of Christmas amidst all the giant inflatable snowmen. Over those years, I have tried many times to photograph this tree and capture what it is that makes it so special. Photographs can never quite tell the true story of its beauty, but let’s try anyway. Merry Christmas to you!
Since You’re Gone
Since you’re gone, the nights are getting strange Since you’re gone, I’ve thrown it all away – The Cars Well, I haven’t thrown away everything, but I have been to Goodwill three times this weekend, each time with the Swagger-Wagon filled to the top with toys and clothes and all kinds of things we no longer need. It feels so good to purge the excess in life. Hopefully Kristin will agree when she returns home from Paris to find our house looking like a Danish apartment.
Tillmanisms
“Mom, when can we start watching movies with salty language?” – Tillman, 6 & 11/12
Louvre; or Goodwill?
Kristin just emailed that she was at The Musée du Louvre; I just got back from dropping off a bunch of stuff at Goodwill. Not fair.The boys are being great, and so far I’ve been using the time to seriously clean house, throw away or Goodwill a ton of stuff that had been clogging up my physical and mental spaces. It’s always healthy to let go.I even cleaned the refrigerator!
Paris, mon amour
Yesterday, Kristin flew off to Paris for five days with her cousin Merriah and a few other friends. When we were checking the chart for her seats, it said she was in business class! I was laughing that she’d have a tipsy, fifty-something businessman next to her, buying her drinks and attempting to schedule romantic ron-dez-vouses with her on the Champs-Élysées.Unfortunately, I was looking at wrong seating chart. She ended up with the little people in coach, next to a guy with bad breath who farted, repeatedly, in his sleep. You have to suffer if you want to see Paris.Meanwhile, I took the boys to Ikea where we found an Eiffel Tower of our own. Bitty Bear struck a fitting pose:Me and the boys for five days! As Nancy Reagan used to say: “Stop the Madness!”
Why Pay More?
Boy, competition has really brought down prices for cremation, hasn’t it? Seems that, like Starbucks, there’s a new crematory popping up on every corner. I think there’s one opening down in Underground Atlanta. That place is really hopping! I must say that, as far as undertakers go, the proprietor of this particular crematory is quite fetching. She may even prove a small step forward in reforming the stereotype of undertakers as emaciated Harry Reid lookalikes: She is certainly much easier on the eyes than the undertaker who haunted my childhood dreams, Angus Scrimm in the 70s horror-schlock film Phantasm: