Mount St. Helens as seen from the Oregon side of the Columbia River.
Mount St. Helens peeks up on the horizon and across the river during this morning's shoot. #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
Playing with fire. Featuring: Alex.
#portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer #model #portraitphotographer #photography #lifestylephotography
#portraitphotography #pdxmodel #portlandmodel
Wearing only a crown of yellow flowers, Olivlia poses nude on the shore of the Columbia River.
A Simple Nude of Olivia Preston (Playboy Cyber Model) on the shore of the river - #artnude #nude #glamournude #simplenude #pdxphotographer #mac-photo #art #nude #photography
Grand Canyon National Park just after sunrise.
Grand Canyon North Rim just after sunrise - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography #grandcanyonNP
Ocean squal off Key West - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
Looking for trousers. Featuring Ellie.
#portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer
#portraitphotographer #photography #portraitphotography #western #cowgirl #oldwest #boudoir #sixshooter #oldwest #photoshoot
Striated hills in Badlands National Park
A scene from Badlands National Park in South Dakota - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
A view from Sequoia National Park - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
Just a Simple Nude of @jessaraymuse.bsky.social - #artnude #nude #glamournude #simplenude #pdxphotographer #mac-photo #art #nude #photography
A Simple Nude of Selene sitting on a log in a magical forest of light and shadow.
A Simple Nude of Selene - #artnude #nude #glamournude #simplenude #pdxphotographer #mac-photo #art #nude #photography
Serious business. Featuring Belle.
#portlandmodel #pdxmodel #portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer #starwars #starwarscosplay #cosplay
#starwarscostume #xwing #xwingpilot #rebelalliance #cosplayphotographer #cosplayphotography
#pdxphotographer #originaltrilogy #lightsaber
Steam rises from several hot pools in Yellowstone National Park.
Steaming pools in Yellowstone National Park - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
See is a cat give it like. That's my rule. Featuring Ellie.
#portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer #model #portraitphotographer #photography #boudoir #cat #pussycat #blond #sheerdress
Sunrise from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Sunrise from the Grand Canyon North Rim - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
An unseasonably sunny day with Kay and Sarah. I had shot with Kay before, she was the girlfriend of a friends nephew, so almost family! I was mildly horrified when she called me early for our shoot and asked if I had a sweater -- she had gotten into town dressed for warmer climates and no extra clothes. Sarah was smaller and had instantly become one of the most sought-after local models. I thought the two of them would get along splendidly, which turned out to be true. The Dad-bong that spends its life in my kitchen got a sudden and thorough workout that would have left me on Mars but the girls seemed to treat it as just the course of a normal morning. The expected overcast gave way to brilliant sunshine and while I loved the patterning of a lace curtain I had hung trying to balance Sarah's blindingly white skin against Kay's perma-tan was a new challenge for me. The point was to put them together but damned if it wasn't near impossible. There were moments, though.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I remember this mostly as an amazingly frustrating lesson in skin tone variation. LOL. Like most failures it looks better in retrospect. #muse #tones #sunlight #stonergirls #pdxphotographer. More in the alt-text.
Having shot our way through a bit of fashion and some playful things, we returned to the reason for the adventure. Nudity and doughnuts. M eyed the bin of powdered sugar and said, "later". The first bites were deliberate although not tentative. That wasn't really her style. But it didn't take long for filling and glaze to be everywhere and the shoot became progressively more hectic. I was traveling with a pretty basic kit and it was clearly more than I could handle. At the time I didn't know how to really approach editing and a lot of this night has sat for years, lost in darkness and blur. I didn't start using Lightroom until the pandemic gave me a forced vacation and six years later I actually feel pretty comfortable on the lite version. Still don't understand the legacy product one bit. We were pretty low light in the old boat. I enlisted every lamp in the place but shutter speed vs blur was a huge problem. It was difficult for either of us to curb our enthusiasm enough to slow down. Like most mind-blowing shoots the mere fact that this was unfolding in front of me was almost too much to deal with in the moment, let alone track ISO and f-stop. I didn't have any fast lenses, which would have helped.
M became more and more feral as she tore through the box of doughnuts yet somehow remaining mostly poised and keeping her makeup together. Have I mentioned how impressed I am with her? LOL. She's incredible. The best part of revisiting SOME shoots is to remind myself that I did OK or even better than I thought at the moment. I'm pretty hard on myself immediately after a shoot. My models are badasses and I am constantly trying to keep up with them. Can I perform MY job as well as THEY perform THEIRS? Not likely. When I look around I realize that almost all of my friends make me feel like a slacker at some point. Kurt is a globe-trotting computer geek who turned his day job into a vehicle for playing DJ gigs all over the world and burrowing into a world-beat music scene that has given him amazing experiences. Chet is a studiously perfect guitarist who has toured the world on the frets but is also a network/IT sort and a self-taught master of multiple production disciplines. Larry is just a goddamned FREAK who is 150% freak at all times, like an acid-addled muppet who just ate a box of chocolate-covered espresso beans. Everywhere I look people are working far harder than I am. But these adventures....I wouldn't trade them for the world. I adore meeting new people and finding ourselves....DOING THIS. Squatting naked on the rough wooden planks of a repurposed river scow with jelly filling plopping off a knuckle. How OFTEN will we ever do THIS again?
Whew. It took me longer to scroll through the shoot than it did to do it in the first place. Time to get to other tasks. I went out with a friend the other night and we made a beeline for the front of the stage. The band was running a small club tour as a shakedown for what I assume will be a mid-afternoon-slot at summer festivals and it was awesome. There had been a moment where my inner-introvert tried to talk me out of DOING THE THING but there was no way back and I was fully committed so there was only forward. Imagine if we could all just pry ourselves out into the world and experience the most amazing and creative things we've ever done, even just once a month or every other. The last ten years have stocked me with a few dozen "once in a lifetime" experiences. Some more sublime than others. Sometimes it's enough to sneak into the hot spring pool at midnight with a bottle of wine (careful, please, don't leave broken glass for others) and bob around like a satiated cork staring into the Milky Way above you. Sometimes it's standing on top of a 12' ladder to get a picture of 200 of your closest weirdest friends, screaming at them like some kind of Prussian film director, waving your arms and snapping the perfect group picture before everyone strips off their clothes and runs into the forest to cavort for the rest of the day. Sometimes it's having someone wonderful burrow into your side and fall asleep on you as you drive through gloaming mountains that stick out of the desert like enormous wizards hats topped with snow, knowing there is a secret forest in the barren landscape and she will wake to a sparkling mountain lake surrounded by aspen. More, please.
How it started.....and how it ended.
More in the alt-text.
#muse #donuts #messy #roadtrip #onaboat #pdxphotographer #charlestonsc #BKeDSHoP #ravenous
Fishing. Featuring @dianajeano.bsky.social
#photographer #portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer
#redhead #redheadmodel #artmodel #hardlighting #nudeart #artnude #model #flashphotography
Summertime is a beautiful feeling. My backyard is blooming. #muse #happiness #naturalworld #pdx #pdxphotographer
This might have been one of the first tries at this mask and, as these things usually go, it remains one of my favorites. Lynn (let's call her - she's now a lawyer somewhere fighting the good fight) took to it like she was born for it and I kinda liked the incongruity of the blonde ringlets peeking out from behind. Per my usual at the time (who am I kidding....STILL), I threw in some stripey lighting to make it even more confusing. I've talked about this before but I've never found the perfect way to say it. I really want to make a NICE picture. I find something wonderful in the people I work with and I want to emphasize it and jump up and down and go "look! look! you're beautiful! LOOOOOOK!!!!" And then part of me is all "you dork - she KNOWS she's beautiful, let's fuck it up!" and I DO think that's more interesting in the long run. I go back and forth. I want something weird and strange and provocative but I also want something gentle and intimate and gorgeous. These really seemed to balance those impulses pretty well. Part of the dichotomy is just the nature of nude art. Let's dress a girl up in lingerie and let her feign an orgasm on a hotel bed. Right?!? Or maybe not. I had a blast with my first attempt at a hotel shoot -- we played it up with a fur coat and then threw reels of recording tape all over and that, too, hit a balance between WTF and HOT. It's hard to avoid "hot" sometimes. I love working with "amateurs" (such as pejorative word) because the enthusiasm is really all you need. And I've had great luck with amateurs from the Red Robin hostess to friends of friends. But professionals bring so much and so rarely don't show up when you've rented a bunch of gear and a space that it's often way simpler to go that direction.
The thing about professionals is that they are typically TYPICAL. Often beautiful, perhaps strikingly or uniquely so, and quite often quite fit. I'm a broken record on my admiration for the touring art model tribe. Yadda yada yada -- they're awesome, smart and terribly interesting. Truth be told, though, I get a much bigger ego boost working with amateurs. Lynn here is a good example. She wasn't a model but was headed off to grad school and seemed to want to dive into her own body for a bit. We shot a half dozen times over the course of a summer and then she was off into the wilds of the world. The Red Robin hostess was without a doubt one of the sweetest humans I've ever met and I have great hopes for her to retain that outlook in the face of the world. These forays into photography are forays into friendships, quickly intimate and intense, maybe a lot of giggling involved. I really value them because they are a shared adventure. A way to give people a look at themselves they may not otherwise have and a way for me to reimagine how I interact with people.
The unexpected and its benefits. More in the alt-text. #patterns #primitive #noir #concept #obsessions #masks #pdxphotographer #figurativeart
A multitude of boats docked in a harbor.
Boats in a harbor (Sardinia, Italy) -#landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
Did I buy more Queen records? Why yes. Featuring Alex.
#portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer #portraitphotographer #photography #portraitphotography #portlandmodel #pdxmodel #shorthair #queen #freddiemercurycosplay #flashgordon
Geena Marie strikes a pose while nude in the Trail of Two Forests area of the Mount St. Helens National Monument.
Geena Marie – a Simple Nude on moss-covered lava rock in Mount St. Helens National Monument - #artnude #nude #glamournude #simplenude #pdxphotographer #mac-photo #art #nude #photography
Selene stands completely nude on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.
A Simple Nude for Saturday with Selene on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River Gorge - #artnude #nude #glamournude #simplenude #pdxphotographer #mac-photo #art #nude #photography
When I moved to Portland I was still 20. Math apparently not being a skill at the time most bouncers glanced at my ID and let me in. I was wearing a leather jacket and had hair to my ass so maybe they thought I was cute. The result was that I spent my next decade as a city boy, a club kid. Sleep all day, rage all night. We always started or ended at Satyricon before heading to wherever the best party was going to be. Running through the Thrifty Thriftway at 1:55AM throwing cases of beer to each other to beat the 2AM sales cutoff. The cashier there knew me as "Heavy Metal Dude". I was a frequent customer at that hour. In 1997, a bunch of things converged to get me out of the city. A supportive girlfriend gave me a place to sleep while I started a production business, my first PA system covered by thin duvateen to hide the stains and cigarette burns from a corporate client. I made more money (not a lot) working one day a week than I had at a full-time job the previous year. I promptly went camping Sunday through Thursday most weeks. My camping trips instinctively headed east into the desert. LSD and wide open skies, clear back roads and a cold beer. I took copious notes, mostly little jots on worn maps that say things like "NO!" or "HERE". I have a huge list of places to return to and spend more time in. There's something spiritual about the desert that I like. Not necessarily an impulse to loneliness -- I like it best with a friend or two and a dog. Oregon is so stunningly gorgeous at the edge of the Great Basin. The more remote and dry it gets the more stark the beauty.
In college, Eugene was nestled in so much nature that it was impossible to ignore. We fled the town and our studies as often as possible.....more in the alt-text. #roadtrip #adventure #oregon #desert #pdxphotographer @earthyeva.bsky.social
Ellie. Featuring Ellie.
#portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer
#portraitphotographer #photography #portraitphotography #western #cowgirl #oldwest #boudoir #sixshooter #oldwest #photoshoot
Tualatin Valley with low clouds and the Oregon Coastal Range in the distance as seen from Bald Peak.
Low clouds over the Tualatin Valley as seen from Bald Peak - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography
Ever fiind it hard to reply to work emails while on vacation? Lumi found the perfect way to get in the right frame of mind. Come to think of it that laptop has probably been wrapped in a towel ever since...I need to dig it out and see how it's doing....eeeeeeeech.
Perhaps I'll run the laptop through the dishwasher to clean it up. I definitely want to revisit this idea but it's going to have to be warm enough for me to lay out on the sand for the right angles. Even better, I can wade out into the surf to get a better perspective from over the breaking wavelets.
Remote work. Indeed.
There's a hint of warmth in the air. Let's see what shows up in the alt-text. #summertime #summervibes #californiagirl #roadtrip #oregon #pacificocean #pdxphotographer. Lumi was a trooper to dive back into the chilly surf for these last shots.
Nettie Featuring: Nettie.
#portlandphotographer #pdxphotographer #model #portraitphotographer #photography #fairskin #redlips
#portraitphotography #goldenhour #ravenhaired #outdoorphotoshoot #park #naturallight
At the time of this shoot I was suffering from a complete and total mis-comprehension of the Nikon focus system AND hadn't quite gotten the relationship of noise floor and ISO. I've since switched to single point focus, rather than broad-area AF which repeatedly disappointed me by picking something other than the "obvious" (to me). Never give a machine a choice, particularly in low light. One takeaway from the first couple years was that while I made some egregious errors, things still print well. I TORTURE myself over the noise floor but the images still look good at 24" on paper. The clear takeaway is simply to quit zooming in on the damned computer. The blue of encroaching sunset filtering through the roof is gorgeous when printed. Also looks amazing when I toss it onto a big screen. As always, I find I learn and internalize more lessons than I did in the moment. Particularly back then. At the time, I was excited with a new location, seeing Lucy again and our first trip together, the wide-ranging conversation we were having, freezing our asses off as the temperature dropped but stoked about the delicate light....I don't know that I do any better today -- I'm just excited to catch what I can and figure it out later. A few minutes later we lost the last light and retreated to a warm farmhouse nearby. As always, I am so very grateful to Lucy for the ongoing education and her enthusiasm for the voyage.
A bit of a rabbit hole this week with @lucyartmodel.bsky.social. Across a double-handful of locations, what could I have done better? More in the alt-text. #learnnewtricks #olddog #muse #inspiration #education #perspiration #oregon #adventures #roadtrip #artmodel #pdxphotographer
Another shot from Zion National Park - #landscapes #outdoorphotography #pdxphotographer #beautifulEarth #photography #zionNP
