The year so far…
Time flies when you’re living. The days come and go and come and go and before you know it, it’s been almost a year since you’ve updated your blog. I can’t believe we’re a few days from Halloween and the Holidays are right around the corner. I have to admit that blogging or writing anything here has been low on my list of priorities, one of those “oh yeah, I need to do that” things that just never seems to get done. So here I am now, with a few things to say and mostly some updates on how the year has gone so far.
I began the year with confidence. I made plans and built ideas for portrait projects and even began toying with the idea of continuing my table portrait series. Of course none of that ended up happening and it made me realize for the hundredth time that I function best when I just let it flow. It didn’t help that the house we moved into last year doesn’t have the kind of space I need for the table portraits - it’s a bigger house but the room layouts don’t give me the area necessary to set the whole thing up. In the end I understood that I had said all I needed to say with that project for the time being and it was time to do something else. What that something else might be was elusive though and the first few months of the year passed without much of anything in the way of good photography.
Sometime in early March, I was going through my art and photography books and came across a book on Rembrandt. Seeing it reminded me of the days of the classical portraits back in 2019, and how much fun I had doing that painterly style. I wondered if I could make that setup work in the new house downstairs in the family room. One day I’d like to have a dedicated studio space either in a separate building, or on some property or something, but until then I make-do with what’s at hand. Luckily there was just enough room for my backdrop and three lights, and so I asked my son, Liam if he could sit for a portrait and help me test it out. I’ve been lucky to have him always sit for me ever since he was little and the portrait we made that day was one of the best.
Portrait of my son, Liam
With the success of that portrait I started to get excited about what else I could do in that space. So I reached out to Jessica, who was the first ever model I ever photographed some eleven years ago and with whom I’ve worked dozens of times over the years. She’s usually the first person I think of whenever I have an idea or when a new project comes up. We’ve built a strong working relationship and when you have that kind of rapport with someone, it just makes everything so much easier and more laid back. Reaching out to her, I learned that she’d recently inherited a handmade mink fur coat and when she showed me photos I knew we had to use that somehow. I’d also been wondering if I could manage do a butterfly lighting look in the space as well. The light has to come from above but with my subject sitting down I thought maybe it would work despite the lower ceilings downstairs. So we planned a couple of different looks - one using the Rembrandt style with fur and a green dress and another more modern style with her hair pulled back tight and the beauty light coming from above. Both photos were done within the space of an hour and are so different from each other you’d swear they were done on two separate days.
After the portraits with Jessica, life got busy and I spent most of my free time at gymnastics practice or basketball or on a few trips that we took as a family to Walla Walla for the kids’ spring break and then to Bend, Oregon for a Lord Huron concert. We discovered Lord Huron in 2024 when my wife and I went to see Sturgill Simpson at The Gorge and Lord Huron opened for him. Over the course of a year, we saw them three more times, always with the entire family. We liked to be close and always worked to ensure we stood in the same spot on the front rail, in front of the bass player, Miguel Briseño (DJ Con Queso) and we swore that by the third show he remembered us. At the end of the last two shows he gave picks to my kids and at one point he saw my little Calliope rocking out, pointed at her and got down in front of her and played one of his bass solos. Nobody does a live show quite like Lord Huron and seeing the photos just now makes me want to see them again soon. Anyway, I caught the concert photo bug at the Sturgill show, and with the quality possible on iPhones and since we always fought to get close to the stage, I was able to indulge in some fun concert portrait work. This made me start to inquire more seriously about photographing a show with my actual gear, like maybe get a press pass or whatever but there are no worse gatekeepers in the photo world than concert photographers. Seriously, ask one of them how to get into it or how they got into or who might be able to help and just watch them trip over themselves in their haste to pretend not to know or to say it’s too hard or something. The whole thing is just rife with a snobbish insecurity. Anyway, between Sturgill, the three Lord Huron shows and a recent Charles Wesley Godwin concert, I had a lot of fun and would love to explore it more, gatekeepers be damned.
So in between concerts and trips the occasional real estate home shoot, and family stuff, there wasn't a whole lot of time to devote to making new portraits. Still, even during those times I was and am always still thinking about what’s next. Summer came, and some of the old faces came back around. Kelsie was one such. She and I have worked together for years, ever since her mom, who is a good friend of the family, told me she’d love to see what sort of portraits I could make of her daughter. Now it must be said that if I had a dollar for every time someone has told me that, well, I wouldn’t be rich but I’d have quite a few dollars. So I don’t normally pay much attention and usually just politely nod but in this case it was a fortunate thing. It’s not just that she’s pretty, let’s face it there are lots of pretty faces out there. What impressed me most about Kelsie were her instincts on camera and the rapport we were able to build. She just seemed to be able to quickly grasp what I was after and it became very easy to work with her. When I find those people, I try to keep them around. So anyway she came back to town from college and we set up a portrait shoot around the time she was going to be changing up her hair. Using a similar setup to the Rembrandt look I’d used for Liam and Jessica, I made a stunning portrait of Kelsie. We even snuck in a reference to Johannes Vermeer with her choice of ear ornamentation.
Portrait of Kelsie with Pearl earring
Towards summer’s end, we took a couple smaller trips, one with the whole family to St. Maries Idaho where we stayed on on the St Joe River and spent the weekend paddle boarding up and down for my wife’s birthday. It was our fourth trip to the area, but the first time we’d really been able to explore the river. There’s something about that place that draws us back. It seems that there is still a little bit of the old world left there in that river valley between the hills, and those kinds of places are becoming harder and harder to find.
And then in late August Liam and I took our annual father and son camping trip up to Sullivan Lake, the site of last year’s Milky Way photo and story. I didn’t come away with any photos like that this year, but he and I had the best time, just the two of us up there at the edge of civilization. We spent most of the days either paddle boarding up and down the lake or skipping rocks at the water’s edge. The second night we were awakened shortly after midnight by the most insane thunderstorm I’ve ever been through. We tent camp when we go, so it was loud and scared the hell out of Liam and at one point the rain fell so hard against the tent that even though we were right next to each other, we could hardly hear even if we yelled. It seemed to go on for hours, and eventually we did as all men must in those situations - we got silly. As the storm raged on we laughed joked and bonded over the insanity of it all. When it quieted some, I played Leonard Cohen’s “Ten New Songs” album on repeat until we fell asleep. Come the morning, all was calm and peaceful as we packed our gear to head home.
Near the end of Summer I got a text from my good friend Douglas McCoy, rock and roll hair stylist, educator, photographer, videographer and all-around great guy. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in coming down to the salon - Lucid Room - and setting up my studio to shoot some hair models that he and a few other stylists had found. Douglas has been exceedingly supportive of my work over the years. When he owned House of Pop he regularly let me use the space as a studio after hours and he’s stood, sat and smoked in many a portrait for me as well. So of course it was a no-brainer that I’d be willing to come and do that and we set the date for August 30th. Group shoots like that are an absolute blast, there’s such an electric energy on set when you have multiple models and stylists and two or three different lighting and backdrop setups. Douglas always has great music blasting and over the course of a couple hours we made some cool, fun photos and everyone had a great time. One of the models, Mariah and I worked quite well together and I plan to include her in future work - another instance of “when you find good people, keep them.” I look forward to doing something like that again.
So all in all, it’s been a pretty good year. Not super productive in the art department, especially compared to years past, but things are picking up in that area. I forgot to mention as well that I have continued photographing Calla Lilies whenever I can and passed the Hundredth Lily milestone this year. As of writing this I’m at one hundred twenty-three and counting. That work is dear to me, and even if I’m not making portraits and photographing people, you can bet I’ll be sneaking those in whenever I can. What that body of work will end up being is anyone’s guess. I certainly don’t have any set plans or goals with it yet other than to maybe get to a thousand one day. Wouldn’t that be something? Anyway I’ve selected thirty-three of the most resonant and you can view them here.
Anyway friends, that’s about it for now, but I’m not done with 2026 yet. Just this week I started on the first part of a project that came about by happy chance, and I’ll be excited to share more about that when it finishes up in the next month or so. Take care and I’ll talk to you again soon.
-Cory