From my trip to Las Vegas a few years ago. This was my first real shooting trip. I’d only done a handful of shoots, then I went to San Francisco and Vegas and shot like 10 people in a week. It was a real learning experience. This was shot with a Holga on black and white film in a suite at Palms Place.
Rich Burroughs
This girl is awesome.
I had a great time working with Tita and I can’t believe I forgot to post some of our images here. She has such an athletic body, it’s a very different look than a lot of my models. She was interested in working with me to see what came out of the mix of her harder physique and my softer looking images. I think the results were really lovely.
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theyoungkimosabe asked: Hey i really admire your work, and if i remember correctly you started by taking landscape shots. Anywhere I might be able to see them?
Thank you :) I have a few galleries of my non-model work on my web site:
The High Desert series is the best example of my landscape work, I shot those images on black and white film using my Hasselblad in Central Oregon and Washington. I think that’s the strongest stuff I’ve shot that didn’t have models in it. And the Avenue of Roses series is more urban landscapes, I shot those over the course of a year on 82nd Avenue in Portland.
I don’t really consider either of those finished bodies of work but there is enough there to get an idea what I was doing.
I’ve been taking a few random shots outdoors with my Polaroids lately, I should post a couple. I used to walk around and shoot random Polaroids often, back before I worked with models. Now I shoot so much film in my model shoots that it’s hard to shoot it otherwise, I buy a lot as it is :)
An online friend of mine who hasn’t modeled much shot with Corwin Prescott today, for his 50 States project. When we talked the other day she told me she was nervous, because he’s such an amazing photographer and she wasn’t sure he’d like her body type. I told her two things:
1) He’s shot a ton of women and knows what he wants. If he’s seen pictures of you and wants to work with you, don’t second guess him. He has a great eye.
2) The fact that he’s a great photographer should make you less nervous, if anything, because you can trust that he’ll make you look good. If he was a shitty photographer, that’s the time to be worried.
They shot today and it sounds like she had a great time.
When I was just starting out working with models (I’d literally only done one shoot), an amazing model named Jess Robinson contacted me about booking her. She had done a lot of work with Playboy and was on the cover of the issue of Playboy Lingerie that was on the newsstands at that moment, and she was totally stunning. I was intimidated but I knew I couldn’t say no. We ended up having a great shoot and worked together again another time the following year. Working with her helped fast forward my modeling work, I learned a lot in our two shoots.
When you have a great opportunity like that drop in your lap you have to go for it. If you don’t, you’ll always wonder what would have come of it.
I’ve been in a few conversations recently with people about my low self-esteem. People who see me as talented are often surprised when I tell them about it. The reasons for it go way back to my childhood. I was always one of the physically smaller kids my age, and my father didn’t pay a lot of attention to me. I also had ears that stuck out like Dumbo and I was teased pretty mercilessly, my mother actually got me plastic surgery in my teens to deal with it. There are many other little events that contributed to my self image I’m sure.
Most people would see low self-esteem as a negative, and it is in some ways. It certainly holds me back some. But I also think there are positive aspects of it that I wouldn’t want to lose. I think my personality is reflected strongly in my photography and I wouldn’t want that to change.
I’ve always been shy around beautiful women. I could barely speak to the prettiest girls in class when I was a kid. Obviously I speak to a lot more of them now, I’ve shot with over a hundred models and have a lot of model friends. But the shyness is usually still there on some level. I don’t expect beautiful women I meet to be attracted to me.
One of the results of my shyness is that I put beautiful women on a pedestal. I think my photography celebrates my subjects and that’s one reason so many women follow my work. If I was a guy who thought I was really hot, I’m guessing I wouldn’t approach my work the same way. And although I’m picky and feel I can always improve, I like the art I make. I wouldn’t want to change that point of view that I have.
I think a person’s basic personality is something that’s difficult to change, at best. At age 47 my low self-esteem has been a part of me for decades. Rather than see myself as something broken that needs fixing, I try to embrace who I am including the flaws. I’m a weirdo, that’s not news to me. But I try to look at my strengths and weaknesses realistically, and play to my strengths while trying to compensate for my weaknesses. The reality is that I’m not the kind of guy who turns women’s heads when he walks in a room, I wasn’t blessed with those genes. But I do have other things going for me.
If someone were to offer me a pill today that would make me confident at the cost of possibly changing the art I make, I’d turn it down. Unless maybe it also made me look like Michael Fassbender.
This girl is amazing. I love the images we made, they’re some of my favorites.