It then came as a great surprise to get an email back in September from their AD, Winslow Taft, asking if I’d photo-illustrate an upcoming feature. After reading his abstract regarding science attempting to solve 10 of the world’s most annoying problems, it really wasn’t hard to say yes.

WRONG WEATHER FORECASTS
WHINY KIDS
WOMEN WHO DATE JERKS
SPAM
OVERHEARD CELL PHONE CONVOS
SONGS STUCK IN YOUR HEAD
NAME AMNESIA
LONG WORK MEETINGS
CEREAL DUST
BEER GOGGLES

His list above had some immediate contenders for me, so I got started straight away on my typical doodle-sent-to-creative exercise that helps to gauge which ideas he liked most.

Our collaboration was effortless, and I really loved how this thing came into being as a barrage of emails sent over one weekend. Perhaps one of my favorite Winslow lines from our convos:

maybe something with powerpoint slides – slide 4 of 1000. . . maybe rip van winkle is passing a plate of donuts with dust and spiderwebs on it?

I wanted a very distilled look to the images that would put the concept front and center. Because these images were photo illustrations — their payoff being completed in post — we opted to photograph all the scenarios in a controlled, studio environment.

In the end, we decided to pursue cereal dust, overheard cell phone conversations, songs stuck in one’s head a.k.a. earworms, long work meetings and spam email.

Sounds weird, but I just saw the spam image so clealy in my mind’s eye before it was ever completed. Because of this, the direction for the shoot had already formed as this modern-day everyman in a quasi-purgatory space going about his daily tasks.

All of the images were preconceived, so it was just a matter of marrying plates containing subject matter — the cans of spam above for example — with the everyman character in another image to create the final, finished photograph.

If you have seven minutes and are still in the dark as to what I’m getting at, there’s a pretty good video tutorial on the compositing process within Photoshop over on Layers Magazine here.

Thanks to Ian Goode for coming out of his squid tank to lend that stellar face of his, not to mention his rad photoshop skills.

Must also extend a big thanks to Mr. Donald Markwick for his amazing beard and Ms. Alexandra Rose Dennis for her multiple personalities (chuckle).

Couldn’t be more pleased with how these turned out, I hope to tackle something like this again soon. Either way, keep your eyes peeled for more exciting updates coming up!

More always,

Clinard

Oh no, that’s just me and my good friend, Patrick Kehoe, hanging with Santa Claus some months back on a job I shot for Brooks Running Shoes.

Pat’s too modest to admit it, but he’s on a serious tear right now with projects for Fast Company, The Guardian and Washington State Farmworker Housing Trust now under his belt.

You see, Pat and I came up assisting together, and we’ve been in more photo trenches than you can shake a stick at. That said, it’s incredibly satisfying to see someone who understands the technical side of photography so well get his work out and about.

You probably don’t know this, but a handful of those ‘exceptionally great’ photographers that shoot big ad jobs and heavy-duty editorials rely on uber-skilled assistants and lighting technicians — who Pat and I used to be — to do the work they do. In truth, some of them probably couldn’t find their way out of a dark cave if you gave them a Maglite and the four D batteries it takes to turn it on because there’s always been some super-capable assist/tech to hold their hand OR just light the job for them.

I have such great respect and admiration for photographers that come up through the assisting ranks. Additionally, I can get behind a photographer’s work if I know that they’ve practiced the actual craft of photography — under a working photographer OR in some kind of structured curriculum at a university or technical school.

What I’m getting at is that I see a lot of those ‘f/2.8-soft-focus-backlit-joints-made-sexy-with-a-lightroom-filter’ styles, and I die a little inside each time. It makes me wonder if that individual ever loaded, logged and ran film like I did in the old days. Could he actually take a negative and achieve the same effect in a wet lab area if prompted?

Pat can. And he can fly spaceships, too.

Anyways, what do I know? Maybe it doesn’t even matter now in our industry. I just think there’s something to be said for true photo OG’s (if you will) that are now getting to showcase their style in a larger arena. Kudos to Pat and all the other photo bro’s and bro’ettes who are hustlin’ out there and keeping the torch aflame.

More always,

Mike

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.

More always,

Clinard

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

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

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

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

Postscript. . . if you don’t see an image above of a man looking off camera with an overtly confused look, then the embedded slideshow viewer isn’t showing up. Click here to see it on Issuu, but be sure to view in ‘single page’ mode. . .

More soon,

Clinard

Working on a lookbook today for Jackstraw down on First Avenue here in Seattle and had to post these outtakes.

Should mention that John, the gentleman on the right, was kind enough to ask me for some of my photos to put up in the store. If you’re in the neighborhood, come through and check ‘em out.

I’ll have some rather great updates on recent projects and exciting personal things in the very near future so stay tuned.

More soon,

Clinard

You gotta love Google Voice for trying (click above). I love reading it’s failed attempts at transcription. Pushing things out the door, this is the back and forth between retouch/composite artist and photographer.

More always,

Mike