With Jarrod Renaud, Christmastime 2012

The year 2011 was winding down, it was close to Thanksgiving and I was home visiting family in Colorado. While there, I had an opportunity to get together and shoot some photos with a new friend of mine — a guy named Jarrod Renaud. Since then, Jarrod and I have become pretty close and this last Christmas, we had that same opportunity to meet up and take photos. I’ve really come to appreciate short, reoccurring sessions that allow me to kinda gauge my progress as a photographer. I consider shooting with Kara Caldwell something like that, and now hopefully I’ve begun the tradition with Jarrod.

So as the year 2013 begins to gear up, I figure it’s a good time to share just a few of my favorites from only a few weeks back. And, if I didn’t post these now I’d be running the risk of Spring showing up, and once that happens, snowy photos will totally feel out of place. So, ya know, there’s that too.

For those interested: all photos taken with various Contax cameras using Kodak Portra 160 and Tri-X 400.

Oh, and yeah! I just totally updated my portfolio. Almost completely restocked it with imagery from 2012 like some sort of visual fish pond. Maybe you’d like to see?

With Kara Jean Caldwell

Admittedly, I feel a little guilty posting a blog while in India (isn’t there myriad more awesome things I could be doing here?), but it’s after dark and my body has no idea what time or what day it is and I am up and can’t sleep. And in any case, I’ve been meaning to post these photos for a few weeks now, so I’m just going to chalk this up to ‘being a little extra-special efficient.’ Here goes.

Shooting with Kara has become something of a yearly tradition. I’ve been taking photos of this woman almost since I’ve known what medium format was and I’ve come to regard our sessions together as benchmarks —a shoot with Kara for every year that I’ve been studying photography.

The first time I pointed a camera at Ms. Caldwell, I was using a Rollei SL66 with so many light leaks that every other photo was completely unusable. The few that did turn out, though, are still some of my favorites (this and this and this). The second time I shot with Kara was the first time I used studio lights ever. Our third session is now below. It was very laid back and shot mostly on her staircase. Here’s to another year and another shoot. May there be many, many more.

Of course, notes: all of these photos were shot using Kodak Portra 160 (except for the Polaroids, obviously). I used a Leica M3, a Contax 645, and a Polaroid 195 (just so you know).