Category Archives: Portraiture

LeRoy Bell Cover for Seattle Weekly

Written by admin. Posted on December 13, 2011. No comments.

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 admin. 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

 

Mouth Watering Rainbows

Written by admin. Posted on February 8, 2011. No comments.

I’ve been at it again. . .

Just got off Whidbey Island working an interesting assignment, and my buddy Kristian and I spotted a Double Rainbow back enroute to Seattle via the Clinton – Mukilteo Ferry.

We were so giddy, no way we could resist jumping out and capturing the beauty. . .

Kristian’s like ‘yo make it so it’s going in my mouth, and I’m eating it. . .’

Yes sir, Kristian. Yes sir. Was so completely razzed about these, I just had to post straight away. . .

More always,

Clinard

A cookie a day makes Bill Rugen stay (at the table)

Written by admin. Posted on January 16, 2011. 3 Comments.

If you don’t believe me, then head over to his Consumed blog and wade through the immense tag cloud to locate ‘Cookie.’

Been awhile back but it might have been about 14 months ago when Bill started talking about the project over one of our many Burgermaster Power Lunch meetings. I said ‘go for it,’ and the rest is history.

So to honor his momentous feat documenting every single thing he ate for an entire year, we got together a couple days into the new year to celebrate the end of the project in pictures.

It’s been fun to see the Consumed project evolve and witness all the attention and whatnot he’s been getting over the last couple months. Must confess that I won’t miss waiting until Bill’s composed his shot from across the dinner table.

We can now dig into our scrumptious plates of Burgermaster goodness together and in synchronicity. Amen!

Not soon to forget the people that helped along the way, Bill gave credence to his wife’s fantastic cookie-making ability in this CBC interview. And yes, I too can attest, she’s a veritable baking savant when it comes to some of her cookie pairings. . .

Congrats again, friend. I say this is O.K.


Photo above by Bill Rugen

Portrait of Ron Miller

Written by Michael Clinard. Posted on July 4, 2010. No comments.

With today being America’s Independence Day weekend, figured it appropriate to hit everyone with an armed services-related post.

Couple months back, I had a lull in work travels and made some time to photograph Ron Miller, the former Naval Commanding Officer at Magnuson/Sand Point here in Seattle.

ron_miller_magnuson_navy 2343

Before getting in studio, I was lucky enough to hear stories and tour his old offices in what is now ‘Building 30,’ a multi-use complex that hosts a number of community events here in Seattle.

_MG_3157

The ballroom floor above no doubt saw quite a bit of traffic, and as he reminisced about the good ole’ days, Ron revealed a number of old cassettes buried deep in his bomber jacket. Apparently, they contained the daily motivational speeches he was often known to give to his newer recruits.

_MG_3152

One title, “Prescription for Relief from Stress” was a favorite. **(As an aside: some days later, I received a compendium of these speeches in printed form. . .)

_MG_3141

While it’s sad to admit that Building 30 now lays in a state of semi-disrepair, there’s quite a bit of community effort to preserve it by transforming it to artists’ studios and small naval museum. The image above shows an installation undertaken by a number of Magnuson Park artists as a means to draw attention to the building’s state.

_MG_3177

Either way, it’d be great to breathe new life into 30 and get someone else in there besides the ducks.

_MG_3140

As we made our way out, I couldn’t help but notice Ron’s sweet bomber jacket.

_MG_3196

Asked him about picking one up in a large, but was informed that it only came in two sizes, 1) no and 2) just Ron’s.

ron_miller_magnuson_navy 2390

Much appreciation to Ron for taking the time to sit for me. Happy Fourth to everyone!

More always,

Mike

New Portraits and New Portfolios

Written by Michael Clinard. Posted on April 25, 2010. No comments.

Been cranking on new things as of late: portraits and portfolios. I’ll get to the latter, but just tackled another set of portraits for the Bemis Art Community blog. This time around it was John Gascon of Occhio Cafe and Ouch My Eye gallery.

JOHN_OCCHIO_2090_layers_web1

Image above is the one that ran, but I had the time to do a couple versions on account of John’s relaxed nature and willingness to help a fellow artist experiment. That said, I was quite fond of the two images below.

JOHN_OCCHIO_2168_layers_web1

JOHN_OCCHIO_2299_layers_web1

Either way, do yourself a favor and head on over to the full post to read more about John and his longtime efforts helping artists and the SODO community.

In other exciting news, I now have prototype/1st round versions of my new portfolios that will be hitting photo editor/creative desks very soon.

prototype_portfolio_scan_web

How can I show you and not allow a peek inside?

inside_editorial1_web

The scan above is from inside the editorial book. Then here’s a grab from the portrait book.

inside_portrait1_web

These first round looks comes courtesy of none other than photo consultant extraordinaire Amanda Sosa-Stone. She did an amazing job pairing and juxtaposing themes/subjects/events that had been unobserved to my own eyes.

**A word of advice: get someone to lay your book out for you. If anything, it’s just another set of eyes on the ground suggesting what stays and what goes. I’m not speaking to every photographer, but I know I can oftentimes be a little too close to the work I love creating. It was certainly helpful to get someone else’s take.

More always,

Mike

A Portrait as Michael Clinard

Written by Michael Clinard. Posted on April 16, 2010. 1 Comment.

So I’m starting this new series that’s a little kooky.

LUCIEN_079_layers_web

Gave my buddy Knuteson a call and he was more than game to help me out.

LUCIEN_117_layers_web

Had a great time shooting it, and it’s fun to see the results.

mike_lucien_diptych2_web

Stay tuned as there should be more of these bad boys in the coming months.

mike_lucien_diptych1_web

More always,

Mike

postscript: Lucien says ‘sure, I can help you out on that, but you’re going to have to do something for me. . .‘

“Doing Math in Your Head” series

Written by Michael Clinard. Posted on March 22, 2010. No comments.

I’ve had an idea knocking around for quite some time about a portrait series showing folks doing simple math in their head. Think I was interested in the idea that no matter how comfortable you are at computing digits in the brain, the simple act can indeed yield some interesting portrait results.*

muna_math_diptych_layers_web

Seen above is Muna, a graphic design friend kind enough to sit for me as the first subject of the day. I realized pretty quickly that math was not Muna’s strong suit, and she had no problem telling me about it. Wanted to push it another layer, so I got a few more folks into the studio who do math pretty much the entire day.

kasey_math_diptych_layers_web

This is Kasey, my favorite teller from the local bank where I do most of my financial business. They’re the nicest folks and when I ran the idea by them, they jumped at the idea of sitting for these left-of-center portraits.

cat_math_diptych_layers_web

Here’s Cat, manager of the bank. She was always at me about getting that business account. When I came through on that for her, I told her she owed me one. She’s a sport and delivered quite exceptionally on that promise.

sam_math_diptych_layers_web

And finally, Sam, the lone guy at the bank. Don’t think he’s smiling because there’s a 5:1 ratio of guys to girls. Oh no, it’s because he was the quickest calculator in the bunch.

Several interesting projects in the works, so stay tuned for new posts over the next couple weeks.

More always,

Mike

*quick note on the project: the left panel image was captured from behind the camera by way of cable release. The right panel image was captured about a half-second to second after by way of ‘capture’ button on a tethered laptop by a completely different DSLR system set up in profile to my subject. Diptychs composed from chronologically symmetrically-sequenced images from either capture system.

Switch to our mobile site