Brief but really good-looking test shoot with Mico Tanner.
He’s quickly becoming one of Portland’s more demanded male models. By his own right, Mico is very professional – and not only is he a personable guy to work with, but he can move-on-demand and take direction very well!
Like some noble yet stern golem– it’s sheer size blotting out the sun- a windmill keeps it’s vigilant watch over the countryside.
Windmills are a great resource. It’s so amazing to see hundreds upon hundreds of them congregating around the Columbia River Gorge… So many, and yet you almost can’t even hear them unless you’re standing really close. I have a tendency to look for faces in inanimate objects and I couldn’t help but notice these hungry wheat/windmill faces all around…
I really enjoy looking out over Oregon’s endless seas of grasses. It almost induces a fugue state at times, as if adrift at sea… Beautiful, mesmerizing, and incredibly vast.
This was one of the more foreboding estates we came across. I saw the line of trees from afar, and it took a while to wind our way through the hills before we came to this house. It seemed strangely vivid for a such a modest, abandoned building. Right behind it, all the planted trees appeared to lean in the same direction, as if pulled by a force that we couldn’t see. One of the trees had collapsed through the back half of the house.
This was shot with a Lensbaby Composer- which is a remarkably creative lens. I like the Lensbaby for food photography as well, but the smooth depth of field control really adds emotion to landscape shots like this one.
On the top of a gently sloping hill sits this beautiful schoolhouse. It’s very windy on this hill, and the grasses threaten to take over. The flagpole can be seen from pretty far away, but this area is deceptively hilly. Many times we came around some bend or hilltop and suddenly, what was so remote and isolated is filled with what sometimes feels like ancient civilization… Modern ruins.
This is the front door of the same house as seen in #6 – Little House in the Canyon, #7 – Home Sweet Homestead, and #10 – Keep the Shade In.
I have no idea what actually happened to cause such a rip in the front door screen like this. But it has the remarkable resemblance of a cartoon-character silhouette of a devilish shape, horns, mustache and all!
Behind the little house in the canyon, a lone tree stands against the backdrop of a blue-grey sky, mid-trunk deep in a sea of prairie weeds. The grayed and brittle lichen-covered tree has a sort of quiet desperation about it; like the abandoned homestead, the tree is a victim of the elements that once nourished it. Just as the home, the tree still stands…it’s jagged and broken branches still reaching for the sky, in a futile (yet beautiful) plea for rain.
Great test shoot with the talented model Gabrielle Jones. She has recently moved from the Portland area to warmer climates and I wanted to get SOMETHING done with her before she left. As you can see, she’s awesome. Takes direction well, but also freely contributes to the camera a wide range of looks, expressions, and poses. Keep on eye on this one- She’s on fire! Great thanks to Jayda Klingerman for assistance, styling, and for the four-arm effect! Great work all around…
Spotted on a portion of fence that was still standing in the overgrown front yard of the little house in the canyon; a bright swipe of chartreuse-colored lichen, which stood out in lovely contrast against the aged and bone-dry fence posts.