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 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

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

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

Gabrielle’s House – Wallingford, Seattle.

Down by the Water – Magnuson Park, Seattle.

Gail and her fancy note-taking abilities – Varsity Inn, Seattle.

Apple Lisa Computer – RE-PC, Seattle.

Ecuador vs. Mexico Game – Qwest (now CenturyLink) Field, Seattle

Wall in Seattle – Lake Union, Seattle.

Prep for Phoot Camp – The Lab (aka my Studio), Seattle.

The Sticky (w/ Laura Healy for Seattle Met Feature) – The Lab (aka my Studio) Seattle.

Spadaccini’s Pad – Capitol Hill, Seattle.

Pretty Pink Packing Peanuts (Reprise. . . I did an art project with these back in the day) – Kill Room, Seattle.

Jim Pridgeon’s Studio – Bldg 11, Seattle.

Proscenium Stage – Bldg 11, Seattle.

Dinner with the Quadd’s – Captiol Hill, Seattle.

NYC Daze – NYC, NY.

Tara aka “T-bone” of Thom Browne – NYC, NY.

Our lighting is otherworldly and defies physcis – Studio in SODO, Seattle.

Saw my first Sounders Game – Qwest (now CenturyLink) Field, Seattle.

I shot Charlie Sheen – International District, Seattle.

Those New Duct Tape Nikes finally dropped – Breezeway, Seattle.

Way to get born USA – Northgate, Seattle.

The World – Convention Center, Seattle.

Summer Wedding Duds – Arboretum, Seattle.

Lowriders – Magnuson Park, Seattle.

Knoxville, TN

Porn in the South (Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops Catalogs)

Washington, DC (Reagan Airport?)

Parking Lot – Washington, DC.

Spoiled kid picking his boogers – In-the-air, DC to MSP.

Display and Costume – Northgate, Seattle.

Metaphor for sumpthin’ – Bldg 11, Seattle.

Lindsey Watkins prepping Andrea Clinkscales for ‘Can’t Look Away’ Branding imagery – SIFF Theater, Seattle.

Inflated Heart – Wedgwood, Seattle.

Red Green – University District, Seattle.

Photographer at Space Needle – Lake Union, Seattle.

Bags Pickup – Airport in Baltimore, MD.

At a Wal-Mart in Baltimore, MD.

The Hugest Crab Cakes Ever – Baltimore, MD.

At a party – Bellevue, WA.

Old Hand-painted Signage – Capitol Hill, Seattle.

John Galliano shopping at Costco – Shoreline, WA.

In n’ Out Burger – San Diego, CA.

Our House (where Dogs are Cats and Cats are Dogs) – Wedgwood, Seattle.

Chateau Ste. Michelle (for Jeff Bridges concert) – Woodinville, Seattle.

My wife sneaking cookies at Chateau Ste. Michelle. . .

Phew. I’ll have more posts very soon. Thanks for looking and enjoy the day off!

Clinard.