Tag Archives: Portraiture

Coming up through the ranks

Written by admin. Posted on January 6, 2012. No comments.

Michael Clinard wishes you and yours a very special. . . oh wait? Did I miss the cutoff for sending out gimmicky, holiday-themed ephemera?!

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

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

 

Don Mattrick for Canada’s Report on Business

Written by admin. 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 admin. 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 admin. 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

An Ineffably Enigmatic Sleeping Giant

Written by admin. Posted on July 5, 2011. No comments.

Outtake from a recent editorial project. Easily one of the more interesting folks I’ve ever worked with/directed.

April Spiel Prom Photos

Written by admin. Posted on April 11, 2011. 2 Comments.

A buddy of mine and his wife had me out to the Granite Curling Club in gloomy Seattle a couple weekends back for their annual Bon Spiel.

I’d often heard amazingly debaucherous/revelrous stories and when they said, ‘we got this annual prom thing we do and wonder if you’d like to do photos,’  I jumped at the opportunity.

april spiel prom plate

Gotta admit I absolutely love the image above. To me, there’s a semi-presence to the whole thing that is as much of a portrait of the night as any other image might have been of the attendees.

crotch chopping

Back when I graduated from Art School, my first job out was working for a high school picture place in Memphis, TN called Jimmy Alford Studios. Saw a host of crazy things then, and Benj (above) brought those memories flooding back.

The lad couldn’t hear much of my direction on account of 1) the loud music and 2) the associated fog brought on by adult beverages.

disco ball head

Of the funny things said, the most notable quote of the night was “my drinking team has a curling problem.” Enough of one I’d say to warrant an attack on the hapless disco ball that wore the battle scars in the form it’s missing glassed sections.

tying balloons off

Much thanks to Granite Curling Club and all who allowed me to take their photos. . . god only know what mistakes were made that evening.

More always,

Mike

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

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