Rich Burroughs and Avarie LaRae. Outtake from my story in Fixation Magazine issue #2.

Rich Burroughs and Avarie LaRae for Fixation Magazine issue #2, Boundaries.

Avarie is an awesome newer model that I hope you will be hearing much more about in the future. She is wonderful to work with.

The printed version of the magazine is sold out but you can get a high quality PDF for only $5 here.

Rich Burroughs and Jennifer/Option Model Mangament

I was looking through the digital images from my last shoot with Jennifer and it reminded me of some from our previous shoot. If you follow my work you might remember a shoot I did with her and Echo together. I shot some images of Jennifer alone for a bit after that. It was October and the light was lovely.

She’s an extraordinary model.

Verronica Divine and Rich Burroughs

I shot with my buddy Verronica again last weekend. She’s become one of my favorite models and also a really good friend. We work very well together, she’s open and comfortable doing our shoots.

I’ve been wanting to try some new things with my digital work, and one of the things on the list was doing some digital double exposures. I shot a bunch of images of Verronica using a tripod and ended up layering these two together in Photoshop. I really like the result and it’s something I will be experimenting with more.

Ironically during the shoot Verronica mentioned talking with a photographer who had criticized my work saying it all looked alike. It didn’t upset me to hear that because I think it’s a pretty valid point. I’ve been shooting a lot of the real minimal looking stuff with the bed and the white walls for one body of work, and it’s intentional that it all looks alike. But I do expect I’ll be doing some different things as the year goes on.

I’m constantly thinking about my own work and I have a feeling I’m harder on it than most viewers. When people ask me how I feel about it I usually say something like, “happy but not satisfied.” I like the images I’m putting out, but I hope to always keep growing and trying new things as well.

Avarie LaRae by Rich Burroughs for Fixation Magazine issue #2, Boundaries.

This was one of my favorite shoots I’ve done. It’s been so different for me shooting for the magazine. We’re given a theme for each issue, and that’s been a new way of working for me. And I usually work very spontaneously, going mainly with the model’s impulses. For this story I didn’t have anything as specific as a storyboard, but I did have a general idea of the progression and some specific shots I wanted to try.

And Avarie is awesome. I loved working with her, and it was exciting for me to get a face in the magazine that I think a lot of the readers might not know. The community of film photographers that shoot with models and the group of good fine art models are both pretty small, and you see a lot of people shooting the same faces. I love a lot of those faces and will be happy to shoot them many times, but it’s also fun to get someone new in the mix.

I think there are a few print issues of the magazine left.

Rich Burroughs and Jennifer with Option Model Management

As I mentioned in my last post, Jennifer and I focused in this shoot on getting images where her face was partially obscured. I mentioned to her the phenomenon I’ve seen with shots cropped from the mouth down, I see a lot of them on Instagram. A lot of times they’re really lovely. I’m not sure what it is, I think possibly it’s because you probably get more asymmetry/imperfections in most faces when you add in extra elements like noses and eyes. I’d shot an image of a standing model that had that kind of crop and when I showed it to Jenn she liked it a lot. So we gave this a shot.

I think it turned out really lovely. I was worried about how good I’d get the crop, I’ve felt like sometimes the viewfinder on my Polaroid tricks me a bit as to where the top of the frame is. But this was exactly what I was looking for.

Rich Burroughs and Jennifer with Option Model Management

So those of you who follow my work will recognize Jennifer and probably know her better by her modeling name Ryonen. She’s signed with an agency now so she’s modeling under her real name. It’s a sign of how amazing she is that she could even get signed with an agency, she’s very short for a fashion model.

I hadn’t worked with Jennifer since October of last year, so it was great to shoot with her again. We’d already shot a lot of the kind of minimal stuff that I’m doing for my Polaroid book, so this shoot was a little different. We didn’t have much of an agenda besides the idea of incorporating a bit more color into the images than I usually do.

While we were shooting I asked her about things she’d like to try, and she mentioned liking portraits where the person’s face is at least partially obscured. I actually know a lot of other art models who like to make those images too, which I’ve always found very interesting. You’d expect a model to want to have their face seen, so I think the people who want to make these kind of images are often people who are more motivated by making art than by vanity.

We spent a while trying different variations of her face remaining hidden, things like facing away from the camera. This was my favorite though. Jennifer also mentioned that she likes this kind of image because her eyes are one of the things that people comment on the most, so it’s interesting for her to kind of take that off the table.

Justine Marie and Rich Burroughs

Justine and I shot some of the Impossible Project’s PZ 680 film, this was my favorite shot of the bunch. She’s pretty amazing. I came away with so many lovely images, it was one of the most productive shoots I’ve had.

Go follow her.