Author Archives: Michael

Goodbye 2011. Destroy 2012.

Written by Michael. Posted on January 5, 2012. No comments.

The video embedded above (if you can’t see it click here) is a pretty good substitute to the title of this post. My “cinematographer” wife and I apparently didn’t quite see eye-to-eye on how best to film the 15 second sequence, so let me help: it’s our former christmas tree plummeting to Earth from three stories up.

I was hoping for it to have made this impressive ‘whooshboom,’ but instead it just kind of went ‘theewphoofh.’ Pretty much the decibel level of a butterfly farting.

Anyways, the results were completely unexpected and not at all like I’d hoped for. In fact, it turned out so much better — kind of like 2011 — which was a beast of a year for me with a ton of life achievements, work goals met and shooting dreams reached.

Among the high points, our now 16 week-old baby girl named Tala Mae, celebrating one year of marriage to Jenna (who’s b’day is today), a slew of editorial and commercial projects AND the honor of receiving a PDN 30 2012 New and Emerging Photographers nomination (last year’s list)!

While I feel like I’ve made a fair amount of headway on things, there’s still so much more one can do. I’m incredibly dedicated to pushing forward since I absolutely love this industry and have a passion for getting my work in front of folks that can appreciate it.

So consider this a warning: I’m coming for you 2012. . .

EPILOGUE

One of my best friends, Dhanraj Emanuel, gave me a little perspective not too long ago as I was worrying about all the logistical challenges of an upcoming job.

He said, “Mike, are you having fun right now?” I said, “well no, I’m anxious as all hell for next week.”

He replied, “Miiike (he’s East Indian), come on maaan?! Shooting is fun. You need to stop worrying. You always over think. Just go and have fun. . . you know how to do all this stuff. You’ve been doing it for years; just go do it!”

Needless to say, I always have fun when I’m shooting. Too much sometimes and have to watch the jokes I tell. . . I do run lighting scenarios and what-if’s over and over in my head to the point where I light the job in my dreams! I guess the point here is to remember why I do what I do.

It’s the act. It’s the imagery. Trust your gut and react to what you can at the moment it pops up. Stay hungry and push yourself vision-wise. Think about that stuff and everything works itself out.

Regardless, I love what I got down in San Francisco on that gig and think it was in large part because I just kind of mantra’d out to “go with the flow dude, just go with the flow. You got this.”

Really can’t wait to see those images drop and share them as it signifies a different, more broad approach for the direction of my work in 2012. And super big bonus: had an amazing sitdown meeting over my portfolios at the offices of Wired Magazine!

Isn’t it an Oprah-Universe-Provides kind of thing that if I write “shoot job or three for Wired Magazine this year in 2012″ then it’ll happen. . . okay, hope so!

More always,

Clinard

LeRoy Bell Cover for Seattle Weekly

Written by Michael. Posted on December 13, 2011. 1 Comment.

Couple weeks back, I got a call to shoot LeRoy Bell for the cover of Seattle Weekly.

Must confess that I wasn’t all that familiar with the X-Factor, but I was blown away by LeRoy’s story and his own career in music that encompasses writing songs for the likes of Elton John and Teddy Pendergrass, along with fronting his own band – LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends.

If you’ve got five minutes, you should check out the embedded video below (click here if embed doesn’t work) to see a performance and to catch a glimpse of how soulful he is.

At 60, he was the oldest candidate on the X-Factor, and in my opinion, the most down-to-earth and real guy there. Life experience, perhaps yes?! It’s evident that LeRoy feels every lyric he belts out, and it was an absolute honor to have the opportunity to spend time with him in his home north of Seattle.

If you’re looking for a hot ticket on New Year’s Eve, you should check LeRoy out at the Moore Theater. Run by his Twitter page to keep abreast since I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot more from him in the coming months. Either way, look for LeRoy in the Seattle Weekly out now!

More always,

Clinard

Blake Trask for Seattle Met

Written by Michael. Posted on December 12, 2011. No comments.

I recently had the great fortune of shooting Blake Trask, Policy Director for the Bicycle Alliance of Washington state, for Andre Mora over at Seattle Met for their Quote Unquote section.

The above is an outtake with this super-attuned gent who wrestles daily with the magnitude of responsibility his job carries. He’s essentially the guy that’s trying to make biking safe for everyone here in our state given the fact that three bicyclists were killed this past summer in automobile collisions.

Andre and I knew that whatever we chose to do photographically with Blake could be construed in any number of ways from a camp of ‘white-knuckled-Audi-I’m-gonna-teach-you-a-lesson’ type drivers OR a faction of ‘plugged-out-on-your-left’ type bicyclists forever immortalized in Portlandia and played so perfectly by Mr. Fred Armisen as seen below.

Our questions back and forth to each other read like so:

What if we put him on a bike next to a car?
What if he’s facing the car? Is this confrontational?
What then if the guy/gal in the car is giving him a cross look?
What if he’s giving the driver of the automobile a cross look?

Andre had this awesome idea of recreating the ET poster, and believe it or not, I even kicked around the idea below but timing just wasn’t on our side:

. . . was thinking another direction would be to construct an old bike thing like the image below but with like one regular car tire in the back and one moster truck tire in the front. . . (from the ALWAYS back and forth concepting emails Andre and I share)

Seen below is the final select, but in a nutshell, we knew whatever we went with could be (and was) construed in any number ways as in the case of this post over on Bikehugger where the blogger claims that we were flippant in our depiction of Blake.

Part of the reason why I write this post now, is to show that both Andre and I DID AND ALWAYS DO wrestle with how best to show a subject. It’s not just Andre and I, but really any photo editor and his/her photographer. After I read the Bikehugger post, I sent an email to Blake, Andre and Matt Halverson. Below is the latter portion of my email explaining my intent behind the imagery.

it’s hard, but the things i focused on in blake’s comments were the fact that he had a 10 month old daughter and that people should exercise empathy for one another. i kind of saw the tricycle as looking at how we get around by taking it all back to jump. getting at the elements and nuts and bolts of things, where it all started and spreading the word again on sensible transportation. look, the guy’s doing work and it just so happens that it involves tires and phones and helmets and xerox copy machines. maybe some folks would have you be mel gibson in braveheart: chain grease for battle paint or something.

my real desire with the image was to have made something that causes one to pause. an image that makes the white knuckled bro/bro’ette in the audi AND the ‘on your left’ portlandia-type bicyclist guy stop and look at their role in this thing. maybe chuckle and not take themselves so seriously. . . everybody should take it easy out there.

on the other hand, if it furthers the conversation and it gets people thinking and talking about the fact that people can die then that works, too.

More always,

Clinard

Don Mattrick for Canada’s Report on Business

Written by Michael. Posted on December 10, 2011. No comments.

Back in late July, I was sitting around at a local Les Schwab Tire getting new treads on the chariot when I get a call from “BLOCKED.” Don’t typically answer these calls, but half not thinking and half thinking ‘this call is going to change my day,’ I pick it up.

Clare Jordan (click her name there for a fun bio over on Feature Shoot) of Canada’s The Globe and Mail was on the other end. Besides telling me how much she liked my work (nice!), she launched into one of the more incredibly detailed and informative expositions on an upcoming project I’ve ever heard (double nice!). I’d start to ask a question, and she would chime in as if reading my mind. Seer, prophet? I think yes.

In a nutshell, she explained that Don Mattrick — Microsoft’s President of Interactive Entertainment Business — is a Canuck and her magazine — Canada’s Report on Business — was going to do a little expose on their native son. We devised a fun method that would have Mr. Mattrick engage with his brainchild, the Kinect for Xbox 360.

That is in fact him playing Tennis for the Kinect in the tears below, but for a whole smattering of info on Mr. Mattrick’s ascension, you must check out the article.

Sidenote: because I had been given 45 minutes with Don (which was later shaved to 15 minutes), I set up a second camera on a relay that would fire when the hero/action angle fired.

The magazine didn’t use any of them, but it’s a pretty good look at what most photographers have to think about when doing a project at Microsoft Headquarters, or really any place of business where time and space can be a premium.

More always,

Clinard

Techstars / Giant Thinkwell for Seattle Met

Written by Michael. Posted on December 10, 2011. No comments.

I thought it high time to finally chat about a shoot I did earlier this year with the crew of Techstars / Giant Thinkwell for Seattle Met magazine carried by a great article written by James Ross Gardner.

This project was my final colab with then Design Director Benjamen Purvis who left earlier this year to helm the Creative Director spot at Men’s Journal.

Our collective spitballin’ ultimately led to going toward the direction of re-interpreted business stock photos — those cheesy images of dudes carrying briefcases talking on cellphones mid-gutbusting laugh.

When I read a synopsis of the story and somehow (luckily) mis-read that Kyle Kesterson of Giant Thinkwell had given a presentation in the nude, it set me off on the sketches above. Of course this wasn’t your father’s business, but a super cool startup interested in cultivating a following for their project with the aid of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, so it held that the images were going to be a little left-of-center.

Above is my favorite image from the series where I re-invented the popular trope of “businessmen talking around water cooler.”

All the companies were super helpful and onboard with doing whatever it took to make the images shine. All of it coming together rather quickly, Kyle quickly became my right hand on the project. He said “you know I’ve got a giant slug that I sculpted” OR “you know, I’ve got this dog if you need one” (I was contemplating putting a big labrador in a suit shaking hands with a “colleague”).

Seen above are the gents from World Blender having a giant cup of coffee and talking shop alongside the impeccable hair of Kareem Amin of The Shared Web as he talks on his wireless keyboard. For me though, the real high point of the project was the boardroom shot above.

Kyle and I had been talking about how best to pull it off, and after some back and forth, we finally decided that adding one of Kyle’s giant nose sculptures was the way to go.

With the generous support of Josh Mullineaux — founder of Highlighter – and his hands, we transformed the scene into a giant talking head (or nose rather) drilling in quarterly sales performance or something of the sort.

Had a great time working on this and look forward to shedding more light on some other fun projects for Seattle Met and their current Design Director, Andre Mora and his right-hand man, Chris Skiles.

The image above was one of many great BTS shots from the Techstars project, but I like it for it’s symbology about the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. What does the future hold? How will I get there? How will I turn random thing “X” on it’s ear?

One project I’m very excited about is a colab (kind of a theme with me: collaboration) with the very talented man mentioned above, Mr. Kyle Kesterson and his new venture EW Awesome. Their first offering, called Marc and Marvin, is currently tearing up the startup battle scene. While my involvement in the project is growing, guess I could share with you one sketch that will get your inquisitive minds churning.

2011 has rocked! Going to try and get a few more posts in the tubes here, but stay tuned for what should be a banner 2012 year! More always loyal readership!

Yours in the war,

Clinard

EMP Campaign Photography on Wonderful Machine Blog

Written by Michael. Posted on October 20, 2011. 1 Comment.

If you have a second, head over to the Wonderful Machine Blog to check out their post on my recent branding campaign for Seattle’s Experience Music Project and their cool new exhibition entitled Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror.

The WM folks and I got a conversation going a couple weeks back after some of them sent kudos along about the imagery turning up around town here in Seattle.

Should really thank the amazing team for all their hard work on the project: creative lead from EMP/SFM Melissa Robinson, composite/post-production/photoshop whiz Ian Goode of Gigantic Squid and the hair and makeup stylings (and Bride of Frankenstein wardrobe makings) of Lindsey Watkins.

And super big thanks to Andrea Clinkscales for being the Bride of Frankenstein and my buddy Brian Jones for stepping in to play Frankenstein as he’s about the only 6’7″ equivalent-Frankey that I know!

If you can see the Vimeo embed above, then you’ll be amazed at Brian’s uncanny ability to speak Frankenstein (if it’s not showing up, try this link to see the video in .m4v format on my server).

More soon,

Clinard

My Greatest Work to Date

Written by Michael. Posted on October 17, 2011. 3 Comments.

I’ve been off the blog map lately for a big reason, and her name is Tala Mae Montgomery Clinard.

The image above was taken of her at four days old. At a weight of 8 lbs, 2.5 oz and 20.5 inches in length, she came into this world kicking and screaming at 7:07pm on September 23rd. I really can’t explain the joy her presence has brought to my wife and I. We’re a unit now — a family — and it’s extremely profound.

The moment she was born, everything turned bright white and hot for me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I body wept. . .

In truth, having a child is amazing, exhausing, beautiful, tense, inspiring, tiresome, lovely, frustrating, and cute all rolled into one.

For many months, she was just was Mochiko to us — a nickname given to her by my wife’s co-worker Ruby DeLuna, a reporter at KUOW 94.9 Public Radio Seattle (thanks to Serene, Jemma and staff for the cute onesie above!). Now that she’s really here?! Whoa. . . look out!

The image above is her signature ‘one eye open with contemplative fist under chin’ pose. As I attempt to slowly work my sleepy-time magic on her, out of nowhere, she’s pulls this out and is like ‘ha, got you sucker. . . i’m still awake!’ She then dozes back off a second later. . .

We’ve got really amazing support that consists of family and friends, so the transition to parenthood has been rather smooth. Just in the last three weeks, she’s met countless friends, her Great Grandma, Grandma and Grandpa and her Auntie Mags — all on her mom’s side. In a few short days, she meets her other set of Grandparents when my own folks come into Seattle from Bama.

Tala and I thank you for checking out this post. She and I recommend that you check back soon as I’ve got a host of entries in the queue regarding recent projects for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Fortune Magazine, Mental_Floss Magazine and a pretty cool ad campaign for Seattle’s Experience Music Project that’s everywhere around Seattle right now.

More soon,

Pops Clinard

Hug someone.

Written by Michael. Posted on September 20, 2011. No comments.

Tweeted over the weekend to having received a very poignant email from the wife of a man named Ron Richmond.

He and his wife, Ha, were visiting Seattle on vacation from Massachusetts back in July of 2008. They were taking the ferry over to Bainbridge with their two kids when I encountered Ron feeding the seagulls pieces of bread from his hand. This seemed kind of Superman-ish to me b/c I’d worry about them nipping at my fingertips, but Ron was unphased by it.

Ha informed me that Ron passed away from cancer last year, and the news absolutely broke me up. Through their blog, I learned so much about the man so many cared about, and the resiliency he and his family showed until his eventual passing.

My best friend died at 19 from leukemia which was devastating. The first instance really that I — and my friends — realized we were not invincible. A lot of folks, me included, sweat the small things that really don’t matter all that much, and Ha’s message really grounded me back down to the reality of what’s important.

With that, I ask two things of anyone that happens to be reading this:

1) hug your wife/husband/domestic partner/boyfriend/girlfriend. Squeeze your son/daughter/mom/dad/friend today. Tell them how much they mean to you.

2) give blood any time you have the opportunity to as this saves lives.

Ha asked if I had any pictures of him from that day, and I did which brought great satisfaction to me knowing that she had more images of the man she so deeply loved. Better still, I had one piece of footage from that day.

If you get a sec, head to the clip on my server here or here (won’t work on mobile) OR see Ron in all his glory from that day below on Vimeo. . .

Lately – The Last Few Months

Written by Michael. Posted on September 5, 2011. No comments.

I’ve been running around quite a bit as of late. In honor of Labor Day, thought I’d pull some of my favorite images from the last few months for the loyal readership to peruse – maybe get a chuckle or two out ‘em. Here we go.

Gabrielle’s House – Wallingford, Seattle.