Halle’s Smooooth Words o’ Wisdom

In the past 2 years Oregon Business Magazine has used 3 of my photographs on their covers. My last post was about the January 2010 cover and included here are 2 from the recent past. It’s always a thrill to be on the cover especially when it’s unsuspected as was the case with the portrait of Craig and Seth the founders of Toonlet. The NE Portland building that served as the background was recently demolished. It had some cool street art that I miss:

One of my favorite things about Mt. Hood Ski Bowl besides the lack of lines at the upper bowl chair, the WPA era warming hut and the overall friendly vibe is the proximity of Mirror Lake. Enough said.

The feeder outside our kitchen window froze solid during the last arctic blast. The Hummingbirds seemed to protest by chirping loudly and incessantly. Food must be scarce for them this time of year so we attempted to regularly thaw the feeder and place warm sugar water in it from time to time.

My oh my the skiing was good off Alameda Ridge in NE Portland this evening:

When you know in advance that you’re shooting in a large modern art gallery the stress of making an office complex cubicle look interesting fails to manifest. Location means tons in real estate and photography.

For this portrait of Elizabeth Leach I gave myself a challenge before even entering the gallery: I didn’t want to shoot the dealer with any of her current exhibition. The story is after all about the dealer and her business and not necessarily her stable of artists.

The first spot to catch my eye was the storage room with its long tall row of paintings, drawings, and prints that reminded me of photographs of delightfully crowded old school Parisian salons and art galleries.

EJ stood in for some tests and we had things just about right in this one.

For the 2nd shot we used Elizabeth’s ginormous office door with Hap Tivey’s light sculpture maquette in the background.

Ouch! That’s what a first exposure without any tests can look like. To make things look better the gridded spot’s power was dialed down, extra diffusion in the form of a hampshire frost gel was added, the spot was pointed more to the right so as not to hit the wall so much, and EJ took a few steps back to leave the door in the frame.

I first heard and learned this phrase upon hearing a song with the same name by the Louvin Brothers.

I ran across a scene the other night downtown which brought the phrase to mind only with a slight twist: Old Hickory on the Epoxy:

Ej’s got a new blog.

With the close of each ski season I wax but don’t scrape my skis. Scraping can wait until Autumn.