original photographers

Photographer Interview: Kris Matheson

Kris Matheson is a Tokyo-based photographer whose urban and abstract work has been a lot of fun to watch. Kris and I both participate in the On Taking PIctures podcast G+ group, and he keeps an archive of the show’s Photographers of the Week and Weekly Assignments.

What I like about Kris’s work is his exploration of different photo subjects. You’ll see him venture down a certain road, project-wise, and then change gears and create totally different work. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

Where are you and what do you do?

I’m from a small town in Northern Ontario (Canada) but have been living and working in Tokyo for the past nine years. I currently work as a freelance English Language Instructor, and walk around a lot with my camera.

How did you get started in photography?

I got into photography to document my experiences in Japan for family and friends back home, this was way back in 2006. It wasn’t until 2012 that I shifted focus onto what I wanted to photograph to show how I see the world around me. So really, moving to Japan is what got me into photography.

What do you like about your photography?

If I am open and honest, I walk a fine line of having a love-hate relationship with my photography. It’s taken sometime to find what I am interested in rather than shooting to please other people. I like just being able to take my camera with me day after day to explore. I often revisit the same areas — when I have breaks at work I go out, so I’ve been walking some of the same streets for years now and still manage to find something that interests me.

Your photo work is varied and exploratory. Where do you get inspiration for your style/ideas?

Most of my inspiration comes from what I see on the street as I walk around. This past year I started using Instagram and have found it to be a great source of inspiration. I am also inspired by the work of Dennis Hopper, Saul Leiter, and Uta Barth.

What I love about your photo work is that you’re always giving yourself little projects, or themes to explore. Talk about why you feel the need to keep yourself “photo busy.”

Probably one of the best things I started doing in recent years to help keep myself busy is having an Idea Journal (full of terribly bad ideas). This helps me to keep track of places to revisit (and “why”), I also write down interesting things I listened to or read, and things I’ve seen, it’s also a place to write out ideas for images or a project I would like to explore. Some of these ideas get turned into mini-projects, most don’t get posted online since they die shortly after I start them (some live and die inside the pages of my journal). Having this journal is great because I can look back for old ideas and inspiration, and can re-explore when I want. I feel its important to constantly explore the world around me, and having small projects engages and pushes to always be out photographing or thinking about new things.

What kinds of themes do you explore with your work?

I explore a lot of urban scenes and more recently abstraction, often with the focus more on colour and geometry. As a side project I have also started exploring memory and destruction in photography, there’s a personal project I’ve been working on around that theme and hope to expand it in the coming year — the theme of destruction in art has really been interesting, creating something and then destroying it is fascinating to me, it’s a little more difficult in digital photography but still intriguing to explore.

Any upcoming projects or shoots you’re working on?

This year I will continue exploring abstraction in photography, and try to incorporate portraits into this theme. I am also working on some collaborations with other photographers and artists, hopefully see what that brings as the year progresses.

See more of Kris’s work on his personal site, and follow along at his Instagram profile.

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Photographer Interview: Tiffany Cornwell

This one is personal – Tiffany Cornwell has shot my family, engagement, wedding, and maternity photos (and my current profile pic)! She’s a family and wedding portrait photographer, local to Jackson, Michigan, who is super fun to work with.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Tiffany Cornwell and I’m the owner and sole photographer of Tiffany Marie Photography LLC. I received a bachelor’s degree in photography from Saginaw Valley State University in December 2011.

How did you get started in photography?

I was about eight or so when my grandpa would come visit from Arizona. On his week-long trips, he would buy me a couple of disposable cameras and tell me to go to town and document whatever I wanted while he was there. Before he left, we would get them developed and we’d check out my photo treasures together. Ever since, I had been known to always have a camera of some sorts all through middle school and high school!

What do you like about your photography?

My own photography excites me. I love that I can capture a moment that turns to a memory. Of course then, through post processing, I’m able to put my own artistic spin on the image to make to my own piece of art.

My favorite pieces have lots of color or emotion in them. I get a sense of joy and pride when I look at images where I shot exactly what I was looking for. I’m also a huge advocate of getting work printed! To see the hours poured into an image, then having it printed seems to bring the moment back to life!

Where do you get inspiration for your style/ideas?

I’m 95% a happy person, so I tend to lean towards images I can produce that emit that same feeling. That could be why I love shooting weddings…the love and happiness in someone’s big day brightly shows in their images.

I love a lighter feel in images. The grungy, dark, mysterious images tend to make me feel anxious, so I shy away from styles that could evoke that within someone else.

For ideas within a session, it usually stems from the person or couple I’m photographing. Seniors tend to have their own sense of style and their own passions, so we try to collaborate for at least a few quirky and unique poses that really shows their personality. One senior played drums for marching band, so we thought it would be cool to put glitter on them so that as she was playing, there would be clouds of glitter flying up. It was captured pretty nicely!

Your work focuses on families and couples, with some portraits in there. How do you get comfortable working with people on these intimate photos?

Meeting with them first beforehand has helped tremendously! Having in-depth discussions about their desires for the session, wardrobe choices, their likes and hobbies, and what they wish to accomplish from their session is key. It breaks the ice for seniors and couples alike to know I’m interested and invested in them. They tend to open up more during their session because they also invested the time to have their session be great and they know what the end goal is.

I’m also a bit quirky, so if they’re still a bit jittery during their session, it doesn’t take long for them to laugh at my clumsiness! Little kids are a bit more work…I tend to get a workout in from jumping around getting them to look my direction and maybe unlock a smile!

What kinds of themes do you explore with your work?

Love, closeness, growth, future. All things that tend to strengthen a family or a person. As I stated above, I love capturing special moments! I love helping seniors find confidence and strength in themselves through having their portraits done with me. The excitement and relief in a mother’s eyes when she sees I got not one but many great images of her three amazingly independent children make me beam with pride. I adore my brides when they’re crying tears of joy seeing the love between her and her new husband in their photos. I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do for them knowing I did my job to the best of my abilities so they can have memories to cherish forever.

Any upcoming projects or shoots you’re working on?

I would love to set up a fun bridal shoot with multiple women in bridal gowns and accents of a wedding day to showcase what I love, and perhaps it even becoming a promotional piece for those involved. But it has barely been put to paper so plans are still in brainstorming mode.

I would also love to continue my ferris wheel series throughout 2016. I have three or four favorite images I’ve taken and would love to create a series of fine art images focusing on the ferris wheel that people can purchase as a collection or separate pieces.

You can view more of Tiffany’s work at her Tiffany Marie Photography Facebook page, and her Instagram profile. 

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Photographer Interview: Adam King

If you’re a landscape photographer, it helps to live in a gorgeous part of the world – like Adam King in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

I’m always a sucker for mountains, especially the Rockies, so it was great to learn about Adam’s work.

Where are you and what do you do?

I was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I’m currently a second year student at Macewan University, taking my Bachelor of Science, hoping one day to get a job in the computer science field! All that aside, I also have a pretty serious artistic side that I like to express mainly through photography nowadays.

How did you get started in photography?

I remember taking my first photograph at the age of 8. I was in Drumheller with my family which is located in the Southern Alberta Badlands. This is an area which is known for its rich fossil deposits and important dinosaur related discoveries. Badlands are landscapes that are intricately eroded, steeply sloped, and largely devoid of vegetation. This area was so new and different to me I remember wanting to capture every little detail about the trip while we were there.

My family eventually noticed how much interest I had in photography and let me take some photos that trip. When we finally got the photos back from the local drugstore, I was given the photos that I had taken in a little scrapbook, which I still have to this day. I must’ve looked through them all a couple dozen times alone that first day. Ever since then, I’ve been interested in documenting and recreating important trips and events in my life through photography.

What do you like about your photography?

I guess what I like most about my photography is being able to return to a certain point in my life through a collection of photos. Getting back into the mindset of 13 year old me, for example, and figuring out why the subject of the photo was important to me is something I find myself doing often while looking at old photos. On a more superficial level, I feel really fortunate to live so close to the Rockies and share them with the world.

You live in very photo-worthy part of the world. Where do you get inspiration for your style/ideas?

I gather inspiration everywhere I can. My time in the National Parks of Alberta are usually spent just walking around (or hiking the side of a mountain) with one or two friends and taking photos of whatever I come across. One of my biggest inspirations when I first joined Tumblr a couple years ago was man-and-camera.com. I really felt the artistic approach behind his work, and it really motivated me to attempt to recreate something similar with my own perspective. Other than that, there definitely isn’t a shortage of great Alberta-based photographers out there to follow.

I notice you do a lot of your landscape work in portrait orientation, which is not typical. Is there a method behind your technique?

I honestly lean towards it out of instinct nowadays. My preference for portrait orientation is definitely heavily influenced by my high school communication technology teacher. He was an outspoken advocate of experimentation with your art and remembering that you can turn the camera on its side and shoot that way too. Since then I find it easier to create interesting compositions with the added vertical space.

What kinds of themes do you explore with your work?

Documenting nature in all of its forms. Mostly landscapes of Alberta and British Columbia, however I am going to be posting some shots from my trip to London a couple years ago. Fitting an overarching theme isn’t something I’ve really thought too much about. I just find myself always drawn back to nature.

Something I want to do in the upcoming year is diversify a little bit and try out some portrait work. I feel like learning the nuances of a different theme and bringing those ideas into your photography can be really beneficial.

Any upcoming projects or shoots you’re working on?

As I mentioned above, I definitely want to try some portraits and see how I can integrate that in with my current focus. I also just started as a volunteer at @lensblr-network, helping the team find the best in original photography here on Tumblr. I couldn’t be more excited at this opportunity to broaden my artistic eye and share the best this site has to offer with such a wide audience. It’s a really great feeling finding someone that is more than deserving of recognition for their work and having a hand in facilitating that for them. I’ve already found at least a dozen of artists that I’ve really fallen in love with since starting that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have found!

Follow @adm-kng here on Tumblr for more of Adam’s work, or catch his stuff on his Flickr account. 

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Portrait Editing in Lightroom

Just for fun, here’s a behind-the-scenes portrait editing session in Lightroom I put together using a photo from my Artists In Jackson project, featuring painter Colleen Peterson.

This is a simplified editing process, but I don’t spend a ton of time on each photo. I have my process down pretty well.

Contrast, exposure, sharpening, and VSCO. Just that simple.

Enjoy!

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Urbex Collaboration

To prep for 2016, I did something different on New Year’s Eve: I urbexed with other people.

Jamie and Seth are two of my local photo buddies. We haven’t done a ton together, but we know each others’ work from Facebook and Twitter, and did a Kelby photo walk two years back. Seth has been a good guy to talk to about some artistic goals I have this year, and Jamie is someone I’ve wanted to go exploring with for a long time.

So we picked a place and made it happen on a cold December morning. We had a lot of fun – especially with shooting portraits of each other.

Seth wrote up a little post about our adventure on his photo blog.

More collaboration and adventures – it’s what I hope to do in the new year. Most of my abandoned work is solo: I find something, I explore something. This time, it was fun to explore something with other photographers.

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Artists In Jackson: Doug Jones

 

“This place lacks confidence. That comes out in so many ways, and it’s important to me for people to recognize that they’re valuable.”

A few years back, while living out west, Doug Jones came across an art gallery in Sante Fe, New Mexico, and noticed the gallery was featuring a single artist.

Doug was attracted to the work’s bright and bold colors, so he walked in. After talking with the gallery director, he found out the artist – who was selling his work for thousands of dollars – was from a little town in Michigan.

The town? Doug’s town. Our town. Jackson, Michigan. 

That discovery got Doug thinking.

“There was this fire inside of me that wondered, ‘Why do I have to move away from Jackson? Why can’t someone make it as an artist here?’”

Now, it’s almost a mission for him: finding untapped potential and creativity, and letting it loose on the world.

It wasn’t always that way for Doug, a corporate lawyer turned community developer turned painter and art community organizer. He was going to turn his University of Michigan education into big money somewhere outside of Jackson.

But a couple of things happened that brought him back. For one, a trip to New York during college switched on the aesthetic part of his brain. For two, working at Lifeways helped him identify with the needs of the community, spiritually and artistically. 

“I found myself surrounded by incredible history and remarkable talent in Jackson,” Doug says. “And people here didn’t seem to recognize it. So I started to encourage people around me to paint.”

That encouragement came in the form of live painting and art events – bringing creative people out of the wilderness, in a sense. It all comes from understanding what the power of positive reinforcement and encouragement can do.

“I remember what it was like when someone first took notice of me,” Doug says. “If I can encourage someone to do something positive, I’m passing on the beauty and blessings that I’ve been given.”

Personally, art acts as an outlet for the suffering and pain Doug sees in the world. Working with Lifeways and other non-profits, he saw and heard gut-wrenching stories from clients about pain and loss. He saw a tough guy break down in front of him, and he helped a girl struggling with suicide.

“I saw things that helped me realize how fleeting life can be,” Doug says. “With all the stuff going on around me, I have to get it out and do something with it.”

Doug recognizes the pressures that a small, blue-collar town can put on up-and-coming artists. Helping artists realize that what they’re doing is valuable? That’s the goal.

“That self-actualization makes my entire world better,” he says. “It lets me know that the generations that come after us will be better because of what’s happening today.”

While there is more happening in the Jackson arts community – a Public Arts Commission, more and more shows popping up, collectives (like his own, The Singularity) forming – Doug sees a lack of self-confidence in town. One way to help is to bring in more creative professionals from outside.

“People recognize what Jackson has on the outside,” he says. “We just need people here to feel that, too.”

DougJones.art

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Artists In Jackson: Melissa Morse

“It’s true for most artists, but I’m an extremely emotionally-driven artist. I want people to feel something when they look at it. I put my heart and soul into what I do.”

You don’t have to look far to find great talent, says Melissa Morse.

“All the real artists aren’t in the big cities,” she says. “They’re everywhere you go. And we have our own arena of talent here in Jackson.”

Melissa would know. As a painter and mixed media artist, she’s seen what it’s like to be an artist in the biggest city – New York. She traveled to the Big Apple in college and lived there for many years as an artist.

After several years in New York, she came back to Jackson wiser and embraced her home community.

“It was the best thing for me, to stay in Jackson and raise my daughter,” Melissa says. “Coming back here, you realize that you can run all over looking for a place to be happy. But if you have inner peace, you can be happy in Jackson.”

Melissa explores happiness, loss, and faith through her art. She’s also a bit of a self-made artist, stretching her own canvases and creating her own frames from recycled materials. 

“I think it makes for a better product. You put more into it,” she says.

Putting more into her art is a goal, Melissa says, whether that’s trying out new styles or putting pieces together to make something new. It helps her express what’s inside. 

“It’s true for most artists, but I’m an extremely emotionally driven artist,” Melissa says. “I want people to feel something when they look at it. I put my heart and soul into what I do.”

And as is true for most people, that heart and soul can go through dark times. That’s where art can help, like when Melissa lost her parents. 

Melissa participated in Grand Rapids’s ArtPrize showcase the year after her mother died. Melissa doubted that she was even worthy of being there. But the year before, her mother encouraged her to participate in the event.  

“There was so much healing in that,” Melissa says. “It was a difficult journey, but in the end, when I was there and sharing my story, it was just what I needed to do.”

Being an artist involves going through ups and downs. It’s true of creatives everywhere. But it is possible to be successful in Jackson, Melissa says. Artists just have to be willing to communicate and work together. 

Take art shows. She notices that when there’s low turnout at an area show, it’s often because people are what she calls “touch lazy.”

“I see a little bit of procrastination,” Melissa says. “Someone will say, ‘Maybe I’ll go to it,’ and then not show up. Something needs to shake it up a bit.”

In her own creative life, Melissa is the opposite of lazy. Recently, she became an art teacher for kids at Ella Sharp Museum during their summer camp series. 

“It’s the best kind of challenge, working with kids that age. But it’s so rewarding,” she says. “When you can learn as much as the other people are learning, I really love that.”

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Stephen Ziegenfuss

Artists In Jackson: Stephen Ziegenfuss

“I would prefer to make guitars and give them away, if it was feasible to do that.”

For Stephen Ziegenfuss, it’s easy to love wood.

Its strength, its smell, even its taste – wood is a noble material to work with. 

That’s why Stephen loves to make it sing as a guitar maker. An engineer by training, he loves to shape and bend the material into sonic works of art for his Ziegenfuss Guitars company.

Stephen has been building guitars since college when he tried making his own bass. From there, he built more guitars for friends and family, especially the parents of friends who could help him pay for parts. 

“They kind of paid for my education – they’d pay for the materials that went into it,” he says.

From there, he worked on repairing guitars, learning about their inner workings, and before long he had a name brand and a website set up to sell his custom bodies.

More than that, Stephen likes to make things with his hands. Woodworking was prevalent in his home, he says, and he’s always enjoyed tinkering and making. That’s how he got into engineering. It was his artistic side – both in guitar playing and photography – that helped shape his guitar projects.

It started pragmatically enough. Stephen remembers seeing a guitar that he would’ve liked to own, if it weren’t for the high price tag. What would happen if he tried to mimic the design and build his own guitar?

“There’s a certain group of people with my personality who say, ‘I’ll just build it myself,'” he says. “Making a guitar was the perfect crossroads of all those things: working with my hands, engineering, and music.”

That first guitar didn’t exactly hit the mark. But over the years, he’s built his skills up enough so that he can build his own guitar at the level that originally inspired him.

Business-wise, Stephen is working on forming relationships with artists and getting name recognition in the boutique guitar industry. It’s one thing to make a quality guitar, but it’s another to make yourself known to the instrument-buying public. 

When it comes right down to it, though, Stephen makes guitars to participate in the magic of music making. And to get his hands dirty in the process of making.

His senses get involved, too: Stephen loves the smell and the taste of the woods he uses, like African sapele (tastes great) and rosewood (the smell). 

“The variability of the material is so cool,” Stephen says.

Walnut, cherry, sassafras, spruce, ash, hickory, walnut – these are his raw materials, and he appreciates the engineering quality of wood, too. Stephen says that wood, as a composite material, is great to work with. It’s robust and durable, and its strength-to-weight ratio is top-notch. 

This is why Stephen makes other things out of wood, like bike frames. Stephen says he could make a bike frame that competes with metal in terms of durability. And, he says, the ride on a wood-frame bike is really smooth because the material absorbs high-frequency vibrations.

“Certain days, you just feel inspired to build different things,” he says. “And I love using wood as my medium.”

Stephen, along with his wife and three daughters, loves the lifestyle that Jackson affords.

“The pace of life here, for us, is just right,” he says. “If I were somewhere else, I wouldn’t nearly have the time to pursue things like this. It’s such a tremendous value added to life.”

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Nicole Cure

Artists In Jackson: Nicole Cure

“I don’t like to be pushy with my art. If they want to come look, they can come look and bring their own viewpoint.”

Call Nicole Cure a natural. She never studied art, never felt like she worked hard at it, and even took a 10-year creative hiatus when her kids were born.

“I never worked hard at it. I was just born with a natural talent,” she says.

That talent is paying off now that Nicole runs a drawing and interior design business out of her home studio. She named the studio Ardis J Studio after her grandmother, Ardis Jane, from whom she inherited some of her artistic ability. 

That natural talent does not mean Nicole doesn’t work hard on her sketches. She often spends 10 to 20 hours on each piece. 

Her customers are now asking for more and more of her custom pieces and original work.

“It’s been fun and crazy busy,” Nicole says. “And I have more work than I thought I’d ever get.”

She says word of mouth is what works. After trying the art show scene for a few years, Nicole found it to be a slog, even if she got a custom job or two. Now, she’s called it quits on art shows, and her workload is still doing just fine.

Nicole works in her small studio in Hanover, which she built a few years ago as her kids went off to school. She found her basement studio cramped, and her handy father-in-law built it in no time flat. Nicole’s studio hosts little tots drawing lessons during the summer, where she teaches basic drawing techniques to first through seventh graders.

“It’s a blast,” she says. “You can usually tell within the first session if the child has a natural ability.”

For her work, Nicole draws inspiration from the world around her: kids, family, animals, and the rural setting. Customers ask her for lots of animal drawings, like horses and dogs.

“I think I’ve done every breed of dog 10 times,” Nicole says.

To experiment, Nicole dabbles in other creative projects, like furniture and interior design. The furniture thing came about because she likes to make her own pieces.

“I would rather not pay top dollar for anything. Furniture is really fun to me,” Nicole says. “I garage sale like bonkers. I love it – it’s a total addiction.”

In fact, if she were to do it over again, Nicole would concentrate on interior design work. She does a few projects here and there, using a style she calls “modern shabby chic,” but she really wants to redo an entire house.

“I use crazy colors. I just have an eye for it,” she says. “Like, my kitchen’s a bright teal. People wake up when they go in.”

Nicole’s kids have an eye for art, too, she says. Two may be better than she ever was. Take her oldest daughter, who draws all the time. Nicole calls her “phenomenal.”

Maybe there’s an art gene in there after all. Take a look around Nicole’s studio, and you will see four pieces hanging up created by her kids. 

“I’ll never take them down,” she says.

Buy the Artists In Jackson book | Ardis J Studio on Facebook

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Kaiti McDonough

Artists In Jackson: Kaiti McDonough

“It’s always related to nature, and silhouettes. I’ve had a love for silhouettes for years now. So when I realized when I put these two things together—bodies, hands, leaves—I was forcing myself to think outside the box. I wanted something that made you look closer.”

When Kaiti McDonough thinks of her photography, or life, or the artistic community in Jackson, she thinks in layers.

She started with art early, as a kid, crafting things with her mother’s materials. That, combined with her father’s love and appreciation of nature, makes her photography rich with depth and overlays.

Together with artists in The Singularity, Kaiti thinks of artists in many layers, too: experience level, professional or hobbyist, optimist or pessimist.

Even her career has taken on layers, from teaching to art curation to event planning.

Kaiti sees her main artistic outlet as photography. That started with a point and shoot camera in high school, posing friends in nature and getting lost on adventures. That all changed when she met Doug Jones. Could she do some live art photos for an upcoming show? 

A digital single lens reflex (DSLR – the fancy ones with interchangeable lenses) later, and she was off making art.

Her style comes from, you guessed it, layers: double exposures, overlays, textures, blending one image into another. The idea came after she saw artists working on body paintings – making one idea on top of another. The photos do more than document a scene or a moment. They pull you in and make you think. 

“It’s always related to nature and silhouettes,” Kaiti says. “I’ve had a love for silhouettes for years now. So I realized when I put two things together – bodies, hands, leaves – I was forcing myself to think outside the box. I wanted something that made you look closer.”

To achieve her style, Kaiti blends images mostly in camera, with a bit of Photoshop work. 

“As soon as I discovered my camera had this option, I went to town,” she says. “This was it.”

Kaiti explores her creativity in other ways, too, like sewing and working with resin on wooden boards to frame her work.

Another form of artistic expression: working with other artists in Jackson and The Singularity to highlight the local creative community. Kaiti was one of the co-founders of The Singularity and has found her calling in organizing and marketing events. The idea of getting artists together and putting on a show – a hang-out session with meaning – was immediately appealing to her.

“I loved the feeling of bringing everyone together and doing something for an evening with all your friends,” Kaiti says. “Four and a half years later, I know what I want to go to college for. I want to know more about event planning and marketing while still working on freelance photography.”

As a fine art photographer, Kaiti recommends getting into local shows as they start, while they’re small and affordable. And to be consistent at getting your work out there.

“If you have a good product, and you can make a lot of it, get into small and big art shows – you have to keep pushing at it.”

Kaiti in Eaton Rapids

She’s also optimistic about Jackson’s home-grown art market. With groups like The Singularity, the How Bazaar show downtown, and the growing collaboration between artists – as well as her own work to get more art in front of viewers – Kaiti sees it as a growth opportunity. 

“Just seeing everything grow, artists being taken seriously, there’s a market for art,” she says. “There’s potential everywhere, in our artists and our city. Jackson’s so little, it’s growing right before our very eyes.”

Buy the Artists In Jackson book | Kaiti McDonough Photography

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