Elver was just visited Seattle this weekend so my family and I were able to celebrate this landmark year for him. I knew I wanted to capture his portrait.

I don’t remember a time when Grandpa Elver wasn’t in my life; he and my grandmother visited often from their Montana home. To me, he has the the gift of eternal youth because he’s just never changed while I just continue to get older.

As a child, he was different than my nurturing parents who were teachers for a living. He worked at a paper mill and was a farmer & mechanic in his off-time. I viewed him as rough and tough around the edges. If we were cotton he was worn leather. But it was always clear he loved spending time with us. We’ve played countless games of cards with him, and his enjoyment of making friendly-yet-consistent jokes at our expense never gets tiresome. His course, raspy laugh that is like no one else, and it always will proceed these one-liners. And we’ve always been able to joke back at him and he never minded. He’s never seemed to mind a lot of things and that has subtly taught me to not sweat the small stuff.

In 2010, I was honored but saddened to be with him during the passing of his wife, my grandmother Bonnie whom we loved. At her memorial my wife and I saw in his eyes the depth of love and commitment that a 60-year marriage brings. Through my tears, it made me so proud to know him and to be connected to him by blood. This mourning experience burrowed maturity in me and I came to closer gripes with my childhood being in my past. Yet this example of what life-long committment looks like soothed the loss.

Photographing Elver

Out of the portrait session it was pretty difficult to narrow down to one, (I’ve found this can happen a lot when you photograph someone personally close.) In one portrait I wanted to capture Elver’s smile through his age and wisdom. In the second I wanted to present his subtle curiosity and whimsy. He was an extremely subject to photograph.

And speaking of maturing, I feel that it’s appropriate that I’ve been in the midst of maturing as a photographer and now my grandfather is part of that process.

So I hope through my writing or photography, you have a closer picture of Elver; who he is and continues to be. And if you want to call him your Grandfather too, I’m sure he won’t mind.

Photography: Brandon Hill

Recently I was able to spend a weekend south of Seattle near Yelm, Washington. The spot I stayed in had no wifi or cell service, which was freeing in a new, strange way as well. With my iPhone in-hand at all times, my temptation is to shoot and share, perfect later. But when I merely had a camera and the great outdoors (and no connection), i just went out to shoot.

View Larger

View Larger

Speaking of Warby Parkers, here’s my brother with his new pair.  100 bucks and he was able to have options shipped to him.

We’re having a tropical heatwave in Seattle– no wait, it’s a snowpocolpyse that these parts haven’t seen since the 1940s.  My wife and I moved away from the Midwest to avoid seasons like this and our first winter in Seattle has struck like a mighty force.  Oh well, we decided to do some street sledding with Buster and my brother, Tyler. Meanwhile, the entire city is shutdown and productivity is at an all-time low.  Drive (and sled) safe Seattlites.

Me and my mighty mascot.

SHEILA HOUSTON WAS 16 YEARS old when she began working as a prostitute. She was newly married with a baby, and her pimp was her husband. “If you really love me, this is what you’d do for us to make it,” he told her. His request didn’t seem right, but she did it anyway because she thought she loved him. And even though she took the baby and ran not long after, she spent 11 years in what she now calls “the life.” Years later, instead of burying her past, she shares it freely with the young sex workers she counsels as the director of outreach services for New Horizons Ministry. She hasn’t left the streets, but she has left the life. –Matthew Halverson, Seattle Met

Last month, Seattle Met Magazine assigned me to take a portrait of a very bold and strong woman, Sheila Houston. Seattle has the second-highest rate of human sex-trafficking in the nation. Sheila is leading the charge against this epidemic as she works at New Horizons Ministries. She comes with experience and empathetic understanding for these young victims that she works closely with as well as on the street for extremely young girls working as prostitutes. She’s recently been featured on CNN discussing the work that is being done at New Horizons.

For Shelia’s portrait I worked closely with Seattle Met’s creative director, Andre´ Mora. We knew we wanted to present her in a very simple environment and discussed having her swallowed by darkness. Andre´ had noticed my work on a previous portrait series for a 2009 Haiti art show I shot for and desired a similar mood. We wanted the highlights of the portrait to essentially be a metaphorical light in the darkness. I lit with a single strobe far camera-right shooting through a large soft box. Her clothes and hair and skin already had a nice cohesive tone so very little color adjusted was needed in post production.

The first thing you do is listen. A lot of people like to talk at these girls instead of listening to them. But they’re happy when someone just listens to them. Because everyone takes advantage of them already. –Sheila Houston

Success is getting to see a girl again. That means she didn’t die.–Sheila Houston

If you’re interested in Sheila and more about her work, I’d urge you to check out the article online or pick up the January issue of Seattle Met if you’re Washington resident.

If we’re not upfront with our convictions as people, how can we be honest as artists?

I’ve wanted to blog about this photo illustration for a while now. It’s titled, Perseverance. The hope is that the image and its title says it all. But in case you’re wondering, the narrative is about cutting through a barren desert. Metaphorically it represents a few things; survival through life’s trials, defining your artistic core, and a little dose of “the journey is the destination”. To prepare for it, I worked with painter and climber, Jeremy Collins, (also is featured in the piece at the front of the boat). Much of his life’s journey has existed with his friend David, the writer. So it’s a personal piece about their creative collaboration and friendship. It reflects the absolute necessity to persevere in their convictions, as artists and as people. We also really wanted it to be a dried up desert rather than an ocean, so the feeling of isolation and odyssey was heavy. Some of objects of significance included: Jeremy’s paintbrushes, David’s Louis L’Amour books, a typewriter, an old globe, climbing gear, cameras and suitcases.

No boat? No problem. The shoot must go on.

To prep for the shoot we put them into old world wardrobe, and rubbed dirt all over their faces. The only prop we couldn’t land in time — was the boat. Fortunately, I knew if we got everything in place, I could work the boat in during post production. We would have loved to shoot on-location but it wasn’t in the cards. So with boards we built an endoskeleton of the boat with all of the props, and shot in-studio.

Watch the shoot setup and post-production process in this video below.

Watch the video Full Screen

Yes indeed, the final output took countless hours in Photoshop. This piece that has pushed me to my limits in post-production. Ultimately what helped me the most was:

a) Photographing with the perspective in mind prior to the photoshoot
b) Photographing as many props as I could since I knew the motion of objects flying and force was critical.
c) Making sure I got the intensity we needed from the subjects. If it didn’t say it in their faces, the final piece would never hold up emotively.

Even without the environment surrounding us, we worked through the narrative emotively and the process was extremely fun. These extremely creative guys were using their imagination to highest degree and they saw their surroundings in their minds.

After the boat portion of the shoot I decided to take some individual portraits. They did a phenomenal job of keeping that intensity alive. They really didn’t need any direction at all by this point, and to this day they’re two of my favorite portraits I’ve photographed. All in all it helps to photograph people with imaginations and creativity like theirs.

Photography can be historical! Or at least historical in nature. Often I’m hired to produce period portraits for book covers and here are two recent completed shoots. These were both different genres of books for different publishers but both involved a heroine. One was set in the 1800s in the pacific northwest, and the other in the victorian age. Typically we always shoot in the studio for these but I was able to mix it up and shoot outdoors for a more natural look option. I worked with a great dress designer, Christine Hall who designed both looks, alongside my wardrobe stylist, Jenna Huffman. For the victorian shoot I was happy to involve Seattle makeup artist, Amy Hill and hair stylist, Cristy Carner who literally transformed our model into a character from that era.

Click to view the wider large version

Some Behind-the-scenes

Good look for her, huh? This opened up my mind to completely new possibilities.

Amy is a make-up master.

And I can accept that the mythology may outweigh the reality of this man, (especially on the outset of his death) but in that it’s evident that he’s brought creativity, leadership and vision to us through Apple and Pixar. If there’s any inspiration I can gather from this complicated guy, is how much one can accomplish in a short lifetime.

I first was drawn to the Macintosh world when it felt like the supreme underdog. (No, it wasn’t when I was a kid and played with an Apple II. I’m not that cool.) It started my college years around 1998 when I started studying graphic design. Until then I had only used DOS or Windows but I had professors in music and art who loved the Mac, even though they said they were worried Apple might not be around in a few years. So there was something about being the underdog that drew me in much more; maybe I identified with it like the other right-brainers. I liked that at that time, other students thought of us art majors as bizarre and peculiar for proclaiming Mac-allegiance. We all dug it.

After that I went to grad school and was of course surrounded by this niche club, and many of us had bought the new “iPod”. I remember people at the airport asking me what it was constantly. That’s really where that magic set in for me; holding something that wasn’t like any other product I had owned in design and functionality. If you asked my brother he could still tell you how protective I was of that 10 gig pod. The Mac allegiance only grew naturally, and really there wasn’t any reason to use anything but Apple.

Currently I’m finding the niche club has grown so large that the one of the things that kept me still content is that our visionary leader from the beginning was still running things. *It’s amazing how quickly someone who uses Mac can sound like a cult-member. Much has been written about this and Jobs’ ability to bring emotional following to his company; whether it’s in the past or during the height of its popularity and success.

I’m now reminded all over my house of the things Steve and his team invented. On one hand I really don’t wish for the legacy of Steve Jobs to cause worship of him as a person; I doubt he would like that at all. But if his legacy inspires people to create and persevere, then repeat — I’m all for it. Apple will continue, it won’t be the same, and I wish someone could fill his shoes. But I guess deep down, I wouldn’t want anyone to.

–The photo above is easily my favorite portrait of Jobs by photographer, Marco Grob.

Memories with Mac

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

-Steve Jobs

While shooting, we had a good amount of wardrobe changes and each panel was planned almost like a hip-hop comic strip. Even though there was a tight plan, Grant was intuitive and creative on the fly. We listened to the tracks during the shoot too keep mood flowing. Grant and Curt Cuscino from Hypelife were fantastic to work with and we accomplished a lot in a day. And check out Grant Wish’s album online iTunes or Spotify.

Artist: Grant Wish
Client: Hypelife Brands
Art Director: Curt Cuscino
Assistant: Jon Lemmon

Moving is tough, it takes time, money and encouragement from friends and loved ones. Once the packing, consolidating and even selling of a few items was complete, my wife Kristin and I got to the fun part of the journey, the drive. It was by far the most pleasing roadtrip I think I’ve been on. We trucked our packed Outback XT through Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and then finally Washington. I tend to forget how beautiful the US is. Being urbanites has allowed us to forget about things like grass, mountains, big sky, and just space.

Naturally, I had my camera nearby in and found some good spots to pull over. Our move to Seattle has been in the process for quite some time. We’re sad to say goodbye to our fantastic Kansas City friends and the incredible barbeque that comes with that. But we’re thrilled to see what’s ahead in the Pacific Northwest.