I took this shot because to me it symbolized the division of North and South Korea. The South is bustling with industry and urbanism. The North is a mysterious place obscured by rumors and propaganda. During my trip to South Korea last year, I couldn’t help but feel this divide all around me. It was a sad and lonely feeling mixed with the ever present fear of war and destruction.

The last few years have been all about work, getting more work, and shooting lots of work. Which is great and I can’t begin to say how grateful I am to have great clients that hire me all the time. But lately, I’ve had a feeling that something is missing in my career. It’s like my creative muscles are out of shape. A lot of what I shoot is about how other people feel and see the world. Shooting buildings, interiors, even food is all about someone else’s creativity. I just have the craftsmanship to capture it succinctly. I’ve lost touch with what I want to say about life through photography. Today that changes.

When I first started photoblogging, I was seeking my vision and style. I definitely found it and it helped my career tremendously. It’s time to once again to start showing personal work regularly here on Ides of May. I will post something every day, Monday through Friday. I may not write a lot, but I will try to explain why I posted what I posted.

On my last trip to Paris, I regretted bringing my big camera and lenses. It literally weighed me down and made walking around the city more of chore than a pleasure. I was constantly worried about my gear being stolen, especially my
24mm Canon TS-E II. That lens is my workhorse.

However, maybe all the hassle was worth it to get this shot. Yeah, I could have used post production to fix the perspective. But it was so cool to stand on the street corner, lens shifted up and just wait for this moment.

For the June issue of HGTV Magazine, I shot a very cool and eco-friendly kitchen in Southeast Portland. In this beautiful kitchen makeover, Shannon Quimby expertly used existing materials from the original home and found objects for both decor and function Her take on on reclaimed interior design is creative, but also very approachable. There are definitely some good tips in here for you DIY remodelers.

Here is the rest of the four spread and a gallery of the shots on their own. Look for this spread in HGTV Magazine on newsstands now!

Today is my 36th birthday. Which means, 20 years ago I took my first black and white photography class in high school. Though I chose photography as career only 12 years ago, there’s something about the picture making process that has fascinated me since the beginning. I think what I like most about photography is that it never ceases reinventing itself nor does it ever stop challenging me. Not matter how much I master the art form, I constantly want to learn more to improve what I can do with it.

As my approach and style have evolved over the years, I too have changed and grown as a man. I was a kid when I took the picture above and now I’m a dad in the picture below. Photography has always been this reflection of my life and each frame leaves breadcrumbs of where I’ve been and who I was. Going back and looking at work I’ve shot over the years, shows me how far I’ve come and how much farther I can go.

Here’s to the next 20 years of adventure, one frame at a time.

- Lincoln

The blog has been a little quiet lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. In fact, it’s been a great start to the year and I can’t wait to share some recent work. Timing of blog posts is often tricky for me. For example, part of this shoot for Portland Monthly I shot back in September of 2012. So, it’s been 8 months before I can even talk about and show the work.

These three small space were a fun challenge to photograph. The first house was only 11 feet wide on the inside. That’s probably the narrowest home I’ve ever shot. The other two apartments we’re typically small, but the owners really made use of the space with their design minded aesthetics. My friend Amara Holstein wrote the story and it’s a great read especially if you don’t know what to do with your own tiny place. Here are the spreads for a little inspiration.

Wildwood Restaurant is an iconic farm to table fine dining establishment in Portland that’s recently gone through a wonderful rebirth thanks to restauranteur Cana Flug of Besaw’s fame. I first met Cana when she hired me to shoot an image library for Besaw’s. I loved the shots I got from that shoot and working with Cana was a total blast.  Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to shoot for her again and, once more, I absolutely love the work I got from this gig. Here are some of my favs:

Owner Cana Flug on left, Head Chef Dustin Clark on the right

ONE-MAN BAND

Depicting an original metaphor for sameness

THE TEXT for an advertisement promoting a new housing development asked, “What would life be like if everything was the same?” Lincoln Barbour, a Portland, OR-based commercial shooter, took on the creative challenge of answering that question visually in a series of images that included this shot of an all-tuba high-school band. “The ad agency hired me based on my personal work, which is quiet, subtle, and candid,” Barbour says. “So the hardest thing for me was finding my personal voice in the shot while meeting everyone else’s expectations.”

Barbour’s first challenge? Simply finding enough kids who had band uniforms and tubas. Unfortunately, he couldn’t. “We had six tubas and ten kids,” Barbour recalls. “I had to shoot the same picture three times and move the kids around with the different tubas, and then Photoshop it all together so it looked like one photo.”

Working with the agency’s art director, Barbour determined that the frames to be composited would need to be captured from the back row to the front in order to get the right overlap. “I shot six people at a time with tubas, and there was always one person on the next row below, overlapping so I could line them up as we went along,” he explains. “We had to think about the kids and where they’d be in the picture, and, yes, there are two or three repeated musicians, but who’s to say they weren’t twins?”

Barbour also faced a tough task in getting even light and lots of depth of field in the cavernous gym. He used four Profoto 7B packs and heads with magnum reflectors, bouncing the light off the high ceiling at full power. The light stands were placed at the four corners of the frame. The exposure on his Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II was 1/125 sec at f/11 and ISO 320. The lens: a 24–70mm f/2.8L Canon EF zoom at 57mm.

“When this job came in, I took it on myself to do everything— all the production, prep work, location scouting, and prop building. I was exhausted when it was over,” he says. “I learned a lesson here: Next time, I’m going to hire stylists, a location scout, and a tech guy for all the Photoshopping.” No more allowing himself to become a one-man band!

—Laurence Chen

Quite a bit of production went into making these two pictures. It started with Art Buyer Mark Pakulski contacting my rep Adam Renfree with these concept sketches:

It was then up to me to figure out how to turn these concepts into real photos. Once we confirmed the cornucopia was made out of bread, I immediately thought that I would need a food stylist who could bake and prop.  I called Lucy Neilson and got her thoughts on the sketches. Lucy can bake, but she had never made a cornucopia out of bread. So, instead of having her spend a week figuring it out, we decided it would be more efficient to hire a professional baker to bake the bread and make the cornucopia. My food guru friend, Kevin Ward, recommend Jared Lester of Pearl Bakery and he rocked it. Not only did he make all of the breads perfectly, but he was already using Fleischmann’s Yeast in his breads. The stars truly aligned on this shoot.

I sourced the table tops from World Market and The Rebuilding Center. Lucy brought in props from a variety of stores (West Elm, Williams Sonoma, Ikea) and from of her own personal inventory. We set up and shot everything in-studio at Sandbox PDX. Art Director Emily Hoyne really liked my natural light food work, so I chose that style for lighting. I used some fill cards here and there, but what you see is basically what came out of the camera. Very little retouching was done. I used Canon 5D Mark III with the Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro and shot f/5.6 at around a 1/15th of a second.

This photo shoot is a perfect example of the difference between being good at taking pictures and being a professional photographer. Photography was very small part of what went into this job. I spent about a week getting ready for this shoot (coordinating with the agency, booking studio, prepping my crew, etc). On set, I was responsible for making the shots happen. I directed my assistant, digital tech, food stylist to get the basic composition going. I went back and forth with Emily to get photographs that the client would sign off on. A shoot like this is kind of like a big performance, but you don’t have the option to miss your lines. There was no redo and the clock was ticking. However, with a lot help, I made it happen and everyone was really happy with the end results.

To take someones else’s advertising concept and turn it into reality is not an easy task, but it’s what I love about my job.

Credits:

Emily Hoyne – Art Director / Olson
Caleb Hudson – Account Supervisor / Olson
Mark Pakulski – Art Buyer / Olson
Lucy Neilson - Food Stylist
Jared Lester – Baker

Speaking of GRAY Magazine, I am currently running this sweet ad campaign to promote my architecture/interior photography business to the Pacific Northwest. The campaign was brilliantly written, art directed, and designed by my friend Craig Skinner. I first met Craig when he was at Owen Jones & Partners and art directed the I Am Home shoot we did for Prometheus Real Estate. We really hit it off and later that summer he joined my kickball team. We’ve been friends ever since. Craig is now over at Razorfish where he is a senior art director and has done superb work for clients like Microsoft, Bing, and New Zealand Tourism.

I love the direction Craig went with these ads. I feel it really speaks to the power of good photography in advertising and marketing. The ads are meant to show that even if your message fails (in this case deliberately), strong visuals can carry your brand and your audience will still connect to it. And also you should probably hire me to create those awesome visuals for you. I have to say, I’m lucky to have a friend like Craig.

Also, have to give a big thanks to Tim Kamerer for the updated logo and style guide we used for the ad. I’m working on a new website and brand refresh and I’ll have another post about Tim’s skills soon.

Here are the other ads that a running over 3 issues of GRAY December through May.