For some reason each time @Vassanta and I work together we find something a little magical; from the perfect beach, to a river filled with gold flakes floating in it, to a piano randomly parked in the woods, this time we found Jacob’s Cabin from the famed TV Series LOST. LOST was filmed on the island of Kauai mostly on the North Shore and the Napali Coast, so I totally know Jacob paid us a little visit. We didn’t have much time here due to mosquitos but here are some images I just worked on this evening…
When I tried to find the cabin again it was gone. True Story. LOL (only LOST geeks will get that) Vassanta even found some fruit. Typical Kate move.
Hello hello hello all my fellow festers!! First off I wanna say I miss you all & wish I was back in that beautiful slice of heaven that we all spent those amazing 10 days together!
After getting home I hit the ground running, aka WORK…. & only last week finally developed some of the rolls I’d shot. Now all that’s left is the worst of all… THE SCANNING….
Tara’s recent post inspired me to share some of the behind the scenes cellphone shots I’d been keeping to myself… Looking back over them I can reflect on what a fun creative time it was. All the shoots, discussions of art, shared laughs, dinners, & the constant warm flash rainstorms.
Thank you so much @zoewiseman for collecting such a vibrant group of creative souls. As I primarily shoot my own self portraits it’s uncommon for me to work with other artists. But I’m always SO excited to see the results from all these collaborations.
I also wanna say thanks to @melbrackstone & @tara for creating the best home ever!! So many small memories. Curry chicken, spanakopita, yellow mellon, coconut mascot, getting low, & on & on…
Anyways heres a few memories 🙂
As i said, in no particular order but we move swiftly onto the Amazing Zestful Zoe. Its always an honor working with Zoe. First there are not many female photographers out there that shoot art nude let alone that female be the strong minded awesome wicked woman who organised the Zoe fest from birth until now. Being asked to shoot with her is like being asked by the great almighty.
I noticed that Zoe was really in the zone this fest 2016. She went off and scouted her own amazing shooting playroom location and then she individually brought us there one by one to work her magic. It was the longest shoot i have had with Zoe and it felt like a success from start to finish.
We both got into the water together with the permission of a near by sunbather and her kids and then we proceeded to make some of my most favorite all time images. Any of you that have seen previous blogs will know what i am talking about. The reflection of the light on the water in the contrasting black and white was bold and striking. We got the water around the hair so that it was still floating and that it gave the framing affect. Then we marched on to shoot upon the dark black volcanic rock. This was such an honour for me as i love to have first experiences and shooting on the iconic black volcanic rock in Hawaii was memorable. Hot but memorable.
Being the scenes
Instagram video link to show you some of the locations live.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIDmAZ3AEEU/?taken-by=modeltara
Also check out my facebook page TARATREE where i have the longer video of our shoot.
In no particular order i would like to add an image or two of some of the fun shoots i had in Kauai.
I documented things the best i could but it can be frustrating when the model is taking more snaps than the photographer. Something i believe is becoming a bit of a problem. You shoot me and I’ll shoot you. Just wait and see.
I woke up extra early one morning to work with the mighty @Bruce. In order to get the sunrise i had to rise at 5am for preparations and be ready for 5.30am.
No sweat off my nose when jetlag had kindly catapulted me into a time warp. Benefits of the furthest away travelled model. We were lucky this particul morning as the sun rose majestic and fierce as it should only many mornings in Hawaii this is often masked by the cloudy and common windy conditions they had being so close to the equator.
After our sunrise silhouette session Bruce and i set off to a local water fall river.
But I’ll let the images do the rest of the talking.
It was geat meeting Bruce for the first time and getting to work with him.
We then went on to do a mermaid washed up on the shore in the rain shoot. I will post images when i see them. I can’t wait because i got to spend time and shoot with the beautiful Claudine whilst playing out the ultimate childhood mermaid fantasy.
I really didn’t understand until the midway point of my shoot with Christian, but it was to become one of the more profound shoots I experienced in some time. As my alert Gentle Readers will have noted, I photograph a lot of women. Not exclusively, but pretty damn near. Before Christian, it had been over 20 years since I had made any male nude photographs. So I was looking forward to shaking things up a bit.
In fact, that was one of my goals at Zoefest XIII this year. Come back with something unexpected. Come back with, not the usual.
I had a great long talk with Christian the day before we shot. Immediately I could tell we were on the same page, not only in our appreciation for the art we created, but as fellow human travelers. Lots of shared philosophies and beliefs.
Christian and I agreed it might be nice to go back to the cave where I photographed Tara to see what else we could artistically mine in there. I try not to reuse very distinct locations, but I felt what Christian and I would create in there would likely be very different from what Tara and I had done.
We headed out at first light to get to the cave before the tourists were even thinking about their first cup of coffee. I’d be making long exposures on a tripod again in the dim subterranean light. And we’d need more time to work than quickly getting in, shooting, and getting out before being surprised with cave wanderers.
A little back story for a moment. In the late 90s, I spent three truly wonderful years working with a therapist called Charlie. And during that time, he helped me to come up with a way to visualize the idea of my art. My art center. Where it came from, deep inside me. Taking a vague concept and making it something a little more real.
I’d imagine a huge cave-like space. With walls that looked like the roof of your mouth more than anything else. Definitely an organic space. Dark. And in the center of this cavernous room, was small stump-like thing. Almost like a nub. And that was my art core. The center of me. And I could visit this place from time to time.
As long as my art was working, as long as I was creating, as long as I was making art that inspired me, I could manage any challenges in any other areas of my life. Because my art center was thriving.
However, much like the canary in the coal mine, if for whatever reason I wasn’t creating work that moved me, or that I had gone too long between personal art projects, the light in that subterranean space would dim. And it would become very difficult to see my art center in the darkness. If my art wasn’t working, it would be difficult to face whatever else life might be throwing at me during that time. If my art wasn’t working, I would begin to feel broken.
And what I realized halfway through photographing Christian in that Kauai cave, is that I wasn’t making images of Christian as much as I was making images of myself. Of my cavernous art center. My art nub. The truest me that I could express.
Christian was giving me so many pieces of myself through what he was emoting. Things that cycle through the state of who I am from day-to-day. Strength. Focus. Determination. Positivity. But just as often, isolation. Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. And sometimes the need to hide when I wasn’t feeling at my best. All of these things.
You’ll be seeing examples of these emotions being expressed from other images with Christian in the coming months.
After we finished about an hour and a half of shooting, we packed up and headed back to our temporary ocean-side home, Christian asked me an interesting question.
“What were you thinking about while you were shooting?”
And I had to laugh, because I knew I was going to have to explain my little art nub visualization to him. It does sound a little weird when I say it out loud to people. But as I mentioned before, Christian and I had found ourselves to be on similar artistic frequencies. He found it more interesting than odd. And I think it’s because he also has a similar sensitivity to the world as I do.
I mentioned before that it had been over 20 years since I had done any nude photography with men. And I remember one of the reasons I decided to experiment with it all those years ago was because I wanted to make sure I was photographing nude women for the right reasons. That there was something more to the art than simply having women take off their clothes in front of my camera. And me. That is wasn’t a creepy thing. I couldn’t exactly explain at the time why I found it so important to make art with these generous women. Just that it was.
And I photographed a few men during that time of artistic introspection. The first two were body builders. Certainly powerful masculine figures. But with a tone of aggression that I didn’t feel I had in me. I tried to find the beauty in their form that was perhaps like a panther or some other top-of-the-food-chain animal. But what was missing was the sense of awe that I experienced when I photographed women.
The third man I photographed was an art school friend of a friend. Just a normal guy. And the poses he was giving me, what he was emoting, was 180-degrees away from the body builders. Quieter. Almost vulnerable. Wrapping his arms loosely around himself, as if for protection. This. This was more of something I could relate to. Something I had felt before. And I realized that I was photographing women because they better helped me express something perhaps more prominent in myself than the first two men did. The need to feel wonder. Awe. Getting lost in feminine curves cascading into curves. A sense of empathy and nurturing. Something that is more prominent in the many layers of beauty that a woman possesses. What is profound inspiration to me. That’s the art I wanted to create. And still do.
Yet now with Christian, that same feeling again of a subject channeling something very personal to me, was a very welcome outlier. A surprise discovery and realization.
A few days after the Christian shoot, I was having another conversation with Zoe Wiseman, the namesake of Zoefest. I mentioned that in photographing another man in Christian, it was really the first time in a long time that I could remember feeling like I was photographing myself. Photographing women certainly contains pieces of myself projected along with who they are. But I wouldn’t say when I photograph a woman, it truly feels like I’m photographing myself. Although that’s something I may explore in the future. Food for thought.
“Oh, I always feel like I’m photographing myself when I photograph women,” Zoe quickly responded.
Interesting.
Happily, Christian also lives in California, so the chances of our paths crossing again more art creation are quite good. He certainly helped me create something unexpected. Not the usual.
And as a very good artistic friend of mine said when I gave her a preview of today’s photograph, something raw, honest and inspiring.
@carlotta and I went to the south side of the island to find a glass beach that was devoid of glass, instead we found theses images. then we went to Waimea Canyon and enjoyed the Pacific’s grand canyon and Carly got attacked by a chicken. bawk!
There are legends of a people who inhabited Kauai for hundreds of years before the Polynesians arrived. They produced massive stone works that are different than the work of the later migration. There are myths that they still exist up in the mountains of Kauai, but occasionally they come to the ocean at night.
Carlotta has the most infectious enthusiasm. About whatever she happens to be doing at the moment. She’s good energy.
Carlotta was tagging along the morning Anne and I were discovering the magical tree overlook. Every once in a while, when Anne needed a short breather from climbing all over that tree, I’d turn my camera to Carlotta, who was already mid-pose by the time I got my camera up to my eye. She was in the mood to play, which honestly, is her natural demeanor.
I first met her at the previous Zoefest I was invited to in Todos Santos, Mexico about five years ago. And I photographed her in my old studio in Chicago, before moving to LA. So yeah, we’ve had lots of fun over the years.
Since the island of Kauai was formed by volcanic activity about a thousand years ago, the beaches there are covered with large black lava rocks. A beautiful contrast to Carlotta’s skin. And even though I had rubbery flexible deck shoes on while I was photographing her, I could still feel the sharp edges of the rocks pushing through my soles. I try to always keep sensations like that in mind while I’m shooting models who are experiencing the same sharp edges, except on their bare skin, and often very sensitive areas of bare skin.
Don’t injure the models. A good practice to live by.
Carlotta and I continued to shoot around the beach area, which you Gentle Readers will see more of in the future. But we also had scheduled some additional shoot time the next day and I returned to the same cave with her that I photographed Tara in a few days earlier. Those have a different look, but equally beautiful.
Stay tuned! And thank you as always for your wonderful support!
Who would have ever thought that we would find a Weirwood Tree with a Throne underneath it in the tropics? Thank you for spotting the tree @carlotta – I’m glad I found the throne. Maybe she is Lyanna Stark for a brief moment.
