Occasionally, I have to reach into the archives and pull something out for this photo of the week project. This was taken a few weeks back when I was on my family’s organic orchard in Coachella CA. I wish I had time to shoot every week, alas, I do not, but I am also happy to get to show this image as otherwise it may never have seen the light of day.
I have been staying alone in my childhood home in Basalt, Colorado for the last ten days. Surrounded by my past, I decided to look around the house and use props available to me to create this image. The dress I wore to a cousin’s halloween wedding years ago, and the trophy is some antique, team sportsmanship, horseback riding trophy that was on my parent’s mantle piece. I’m sure someone won it at one time or another, but I don’t really know its history.
The dress is really over the top, and between watching the Oscars this week and the trophy, I just knew I had to portray the runaway beauty queen. Unfortunately she finds the world is a cold, cold, place.
Thanks to Brooke Shaden for the texture… what a wonderful blizzard it makes! #shadentextures
A few years ago, I walked three weeks of the camino Santiago in Northern Spain. All I carried for a camera was a little Cannon g12, but it served me well and proceeded to kick the bucket just after the trip. While walking, I tried to stop in each of the little towns, as well as the big cites and do a little sightseeing. Somewhere, that I cannot recall, I visited in an ancient church that was being renovated. The day was rainy, but the light was beautiful. To protect the weathered old statues, workers had covered them in a protective netting. There was something so eerie and haunting about these figures. This week, I took these images as my inspiration. Rather than netting, I chose fabric, but the result is similar.
A few weeks after I moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I was in desperate need of some time away from the city to breathe fresh air, get away from people, and feel that I was in nature. Thankfully, I had just made a new friend, Carrie Haugh. Carrie was in the final stages of acting in a short film that would go on to be an official entry in the Guanajuato Film Festival. The last scene they needed to shoot was a dream sequence that takes place in a flowering lavender field. Although, there is a lot of agriculture in this area of Mexico, it is mostly known to be a hot and dry climate. One is much more likely to think of towering prickly-pear cactus trees than French lavender fields. Alas, this place is always full of surprises.
After forty-five minuets of barreling down a Mexican freeway in an old van with questionable steering and brakes, we pulled onto a dirt road and followed the signs to an enormous lavender farm. For various reasons, Guanajuato is a state from which men emigrate heavily to find work in the USA. The sad side effect being that whole towns are left with only women, children, and the elderly to continue to support their community. Rather than allowing these pueblos to sink even further into poverty and ultimately disappear, an NGO out of Albuquerque, New Mexico is bringing in The Lavender Project. A wonderful program, these co-op lavender farms have created a fantastic renewable source of employment and income (Please visit their web page to find out more: http://thelavenderproject.com/). The products they make are divine and they have a chocolate-lavender soap that smells so good I could live in it.
It was such a relief to step out of the car and inhale the fresh lavender plants drying out after a light rain. The film crew went to work and I was left with several hours and a field of my own in which to play. I even crawled over the fence and into some of the aforementioned prickly pear cactuses to take photos. It really is stunning to spend an afternoon in a place as surreal as a lavender field and I can assure you my need to “get away from it all” was quenched.
For some reason, I have really been slacking on writing this post. It has been almost a month since I took these images and still I have not put them up. Maybe it is because I am not really sure if I like any of these images, or maybe I have just been having too much fun and writing my blog feels like homework. Regardless, I have since done new work, so I have to get this out of the way.
These images were taken at three different Mayan temple/city complexes on the Yucatan peninsula, Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, and Tulum. At this point I have taken images at six different temple locations and although some of the images have come out well, it is really difficult to dodge the tourists, get images with out ropes and signs, be barricaded from getting close to or climbing on the ruins (yeah, yeah, I know) and thus, I never feel very satisfied when I leave. One thing I have learned is that my best images happen when I am completely alone, no assistants, and no audience. When I am in these locations, my mind just reels with “what ifs,” aka: what if I had this all to myself, what if tripods were allowed and I didn’t have to hide mine from the guards, what if I could be here at night, etc. I know that on special occasions such as equinoxes, they allow adventurous tourists into the ruins at night, but excepting this, I think I am over shooting in super touristy ruins.
That being said, I did get up early enough to avoid the hoards of tour busses and get a few nice images. Lately, I have been trying to explore some different ideas with my work, so you will see some of the same and some new looking stuff. I was too lazy to give this a hard edit, and after all there were three different shoots involved so there are lots of images to look at. Special thanks to my assistant who knows who he is. As always, click on an image for a larger view, and please share! Much love — Janelle
It has been about four months since I last made any new images. This winter, I have been living in the snowy Colorado Mountains and I find that when the weather is cold I have no interest in creating new work. Fortunately, this post finds me traveling through the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. I arrived on the full moon, landing in Cancun and immediately taking a ferry out to Isla Mujeres. During the day I partook of the usual beach stuff, highlighted by a snorkeling trip to the Under Water Museum. This place is absolutely amazing and a lot bigger than I expected, there were sculptures all over the place, and a lot of surprising ones I had not seen in any photos of the project. My biggest regret is not being a diver, as the sculptures sit about thirty feet under the ocean surface and snorkeling just does not do the artwork justice. For more info on this incredible place, check out: http://www.musacancun.com/.
By night, I have been out under the full moon on the rocky seaside cliffs, evoking La Serena. Fitting, as I am on the Island of Women. The motivation for these images came while dancing to Cuban salsa, at La Terraza, a great local bar. I met three German sailors there who were living and working on The Stahlratte: www.stahlratte.org. This is huge steel sailboat run by a non-profit foundation, and by far the largest sailing vessel docked on the island. Anyone can sail with them as they circle the Caribbean, but it is a work/live situation not a cruse ship. From my tour of the boat and meeting the staff, I imagine this might be as close to feeling like a real pirate as one could find these days. With sailing on my mind, and hearing stories of vessels breaking up on the rocks surrounding the island, I was inspired to play the roll of the temptress on the cliffs.
In the first images, La Serena beams a light into the night, mimicking a lighthouse and falsely directing ships. Later, she sings out to the sailors, enchanting them and luring them to their demise. It felt so good to be shooting again, and to also have a little narrative in mind while I was working. I do feel a bit rusty, and I am test-driving my brand new Nikon D7000. So far so good but I kind of wish I had not left the manual at home. The images I am getting look gorgeous with this improved sensor, but I have to be careful these days, as my images files are three times larger and my computer’s hard drive is going fast. I have about ten more days in the Yucatan to shoot new work, cenotes and Mayan ruins here I come. As always click on the image to see a larger version.
After the council of The 13 Grandmothers, my friend Terra Celeste and I went to Yellowstone National Park for the first full moon in August. Upon leaving Grandmother Margaret’s home, we were asked to take an offering to the Medicine Wheel in eastern Wyoming. This location is one of the oldest sacred spots in North America and may have been built over 10,000 years ago. Different indigenous tribes have been coming and doing sacred ceremonies there for so long, no one is exactly sure who built it in the first place. The meeting of the Grandmothers was a very intense experience, and it was really nice to complete the ceremony at the Medicine Wheel, with an offering of tobacco and prayers.
As we continued our journey, through the park to the town of West Yellowstone, we saw an owl, a pair of coyotes, and a buffalo, all wandering in the middle of the road. After arriving, we had quick dinner, checked into our hotel, and headed back into the park to see how geysers and thermal water look under a full moon. August in Yellowstone is high season, and you can expect throngs of tourists unless you head out in the middle of the night. With the exception of a few other photographers, we had the place to ourselves. If Yellowstone is a magical place by day, it is far more amazing by full moon. As we walked around the geysers, moist steam rolled off the thermal pools and punctuated the chilly air; intermittently enveloping us in shifting clouds of blinding, white, warmth.
Over the next two nights, we shot for several hours in the park and came up with some really nice new images. I would love to return to Yellowstone, as I feel like there is so much more we could have done. I love the color and texture in the park, from the vibrant blues of a full moon sky to the rainbow colors of the pools. Although, I think they do work in most of these shots, one of the hardest things about shooting in the park are the walkways. It was a real challenge to either incorporate them, or to hide them in the images. Regardless, I am very happy with what happened during this shoot. I think that a few of these photos really need to be viewed big, so please click on them to enlarge.
This summer, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a photography workshop at The Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado. The workshop was called “Finding Your Vision,” and was co-led by Arno Minkkinen: prolific self-portrait photographer, and Jonathan Singer: technical genius extraordinaire. Having these two team-up was really wonderful, as Arno is a master teacher and conceptual thinker, and Jonathan has an ability with Photoshop and printing beyond compare (as well as a brilliant mind).
Our class was comprised of twelve students whom have varying levels of experience. As one of the more advanced students, I was really happy to find that the experience level of the others hindered no one in the class. We all got our time, and we all had the opportunity to learn and grow as photographers (even though a week is a very short time to get anything accomplished).
If you have read some of my previous posts, you may have noticed the growing frustration I have had with my work. I have been feeling a bit stuck, like my work is not maturing or developing. It was for this reason I decided to take a workshop. After sharing some of my images with the class, I was given a private meeting with Arno in which to discuss possible new directions.
Arno himself is quite a poet, and his critiques are certainly an extension of this philosophy. I find Arno’s style of teaching really helpful for my creative thought process, as it leaves me loads of room in which to learn and explore. Out of our discussion came this: most of my previous work was either performance art or opera, and now it was time to give the viewer front row seats to the theater! This means that rather than feeling like the viewer has stumbled upon a performance, or is witnessing a spectacle so large he can only marvel, he is there with you, invited. Up close and personal.
I can’t say that I have firmly grasped and embraced this in my work yet, but I do feel like it is slowly drawing me somewhere I was not before the workshop. Yes, I still do opera and performances, but I am also trying to get closer to the camera, to sit in the discomfort of the situation, and to move the work into new realms. I am excited to see where this takes me over the next year.
One of the new elements added to my work during this period, was finally using my 10 f-stop neutral density filter. This allows me to take long exposure photos during the day. After years of only working at night, it opens up a lot of time to shoot and practice. The filter also mimics the conditions I have in full-moon light and forces me to work through some of the issues I have found so troubling. Since the workshop I have been using this filter a lot, and I am thrilled with the outcome of some of my newest images.
But rather than jump ahead, I am going to show you a few of the images that came out of this workshop, leaving the “ghost horse” series for the next post, as it deserves attention all its own. Keep in mind that each image was part of a particular assignment so they may feel quite different from the work you have previously associated with this blog.
For more info on Arno Minkkinen: http://www.arno-rafael-minkkinen.com/
For more info on Jonathan Singer: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Singer-Editions-LLC/116575908398381
For more info on The Anderson Ranch: http://www.andersonranch.org/
Concluding The Sacred Door Trail opening ceremony, a group of us headed to Weston Pew’s stunning family-ranch that nestles up against the Bridger mountain range just north of Bozeman, Montana. The week spent there was a much-needed decompression after the spiritual intensity of the previous few days. We spent our time resting, singing along with guitars on the porch, eating home cooked food and going on a bunch of outings. One of these outings was on the fourth of July and included rafting down the Yellowstone River, eating a picnic lunch, and singing and dancing the night away at the Bank Bar (a local cowboy watering hole), in Wilsall, Montana.
During this time there was a full moon and though I was pretty spent from camping, I found time to take a few photos. My previously mentioned partner in crime, Melanie Malia, helped me wander out into the moonlight to take some photos with the Pew’s lovely grey horse. Just as we were starting to get our rhythm, “Bill” the notorious beast of a dog, came and did a fine job of chasing the horses away. As everyone who was there can attest, the name “Bill” on the ranch is generally said at full volume and followed by some sort of accusation or negative…. “BILL… NOOOO BILL… NO BILL… BAD DOG BILL… STOP THAT BILL… BIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!!!”
Once Bill was content with the horse situation, he lay down in the road and happily watched us finish the shoot. As I have mentioned before, I have a very hard time working in full-moon light. The conditions are very similar to working in daylight and present a huge challenge when working alone. It’s a bit like being on a fully lit stage with no script, set, or props, and told to just do something cool. Inevitably, whatever you do ends up feelinging a bit contrived and awkward. Personally, I feel this way about these images, but I have also had some good response to the work, so I feel like I am close to something new. In the next post I will go into some of what I learned in my workshop with Arno Minkenen… as I try for a breakthrough.
Back In Madrid, I think I could live here. This is such a sweet city. I have been out on the Celtic coast of Galicia for the past week, surfing with my old friend Marilyn Poon at the Seeker Surf Camp. It felt so good to be in the water again (even if we did have to wear full wetsuits). Getting into Madrid was such a temperature shock today. Galicia is pretty cold and windy for the most part, and today it was really a gloomy drizzly Irish day. By contrast, Madrid is hot, I mean really hot, I think it was around 35c today. This temperature thing really played into how few images I made while I was at the coast, not to mention I was totally exhausted after surfing all day. There was also the daylight factor, as Galicia really does not get dark in the summer until 11:30 at night. By that time, we were eating dinner and falling into bed, dead to the world.
I was feeling pretty lousy about not making any images, so last night I grabbed Marilyn, just at twilight and went out to the beach right in front of the house. This big sandy beach is in the tiny town of Valdovino, and although that is what most people call this beach, its official name is Praia de Frouxeira. The tides were swinging really high and low, and we just happened to be out there during low tide, so we were able to get some really nice images with the reflections in the tide pools on the sand. Not to mention that we were able to get really close to the tiny island of Percebelleira. Known for this strange edible barnacle, the Percebes, or “pinky finger.” I missed out on trying this delicacy, but maybe when we are back up north in the Basque country, I will run across a few.
It felt good to be on the beach, and it was actually the warmest night of all. For which I was very thankful. I think we got some really nice images, and I am happy with the outcome. I even reverted back to what I have now deemed the “ghost dances.” I have had some resistance to these images, but I am really drawn to them. I like getting out there, dancing and moving, it feels so natural and yet ritualistic. They are not nearly as static as some of my images, which have a different kind of rooted strength.
Tomorrow my sister comes, and I have no idea if I will be making many more images on this trip. We shall see. (P.S. If you don’t already know, just click on the images to get a full sized view)
