I’ve been asked a couple of times to post more images from my Organic Valley Shoots:
Click here for the Organic Valley gallery
Looking through these images again I’m reminded of what Organic Valley farmer said : Kids Sell Milk. After all, milk is the quintessential good for you food to give your kids. And kids and cows really are a very cute combination. These truly are family farms – who can resist buying milk from a farm where a charming youngster bottle-feeds the calves?
Yesterday I drove up to Seattle’s Grover Thurston Gallery to photograph work for artist Gabriel Manca. What a beautiful gallery! Why can’t Portland have a Pioneer square full of art galleries! How about a Pike Place Market too! Oh wait we used to have one of those… The Portland Public Market. I still prefer Portland – I got bleary eyed seeing Seattle again, but I found the lack of food-carts upsetting.
Gabe’s from Enterprise and I love that he incorporates imagery that is familiar to me as an Oregonian. I’m not going to critique his work here – I’d just blabber on about how amazing he is – but if you’d like you can read one entitled “What a pretty picture – OMG what’s happening in it!”
The Sea Contains Only a Few Small Islands
I love working with artists, so its puzzling to me that some photographers find doing copy-work for artists boring. I suspect that it’s related to the age old criticism that’s at the heart of photography as an art form “but you didn’t create it- you just saw it and pressed a button!” Or it could just be that we all have different subjects we like to photograph and different folks we like to work with.
In any case, I think doing copy work for artists is one of the most interesting things I do as a photographer. It’s fascinating what I learn about the craft and the meaning of the pieces when I get to work with an artist and talk to them about their work. I get a kind of familiarity with the art that I couldn’t get as a casual viewer in a gallery. I don’t mind that the work I create is “unoriginal” in the sense that I’m hired to represent someone else’s vision. I can create my vision some other time.
If You Think I'm Cute, You Should See My Daddy!
Last year, I visited Gabriel Manca’s studio. His place is museum of acquired stuff arranged in categories for when his art requires an object. He’s a master of finding free materials, including an outdated armory which he dragged onto his property and has converted into a beautiful studio using his carpentry skills. He’s also created a forest glen with sculptural elements between his house and his workspace.
Can’t wait to get back and see what he’s working on next time I make it to Wallowa County.
I spent a good part of the summer photographing Oregon and Washington Dairies for Organic Valley. I can’t think of a better way to spend the summer than traveling through the northwest and visiting with farmers and spending time with cows and kids. In dairy, where it’s been difficult for farmers to turn a profit over the last 20 years and quite a few families have left the business, I was impressed to see second, third and even fourth generations joining the business. Organic Valley is definitely doing something to make small farms sustainable.
This is Lucky. She lives at Double J Jerseys where she enjoys grass, nose-licking, and staring at photographers.
The farmers were incredibly helpful – there’s just no way I could have done these shoots without them. With their help, I knew where the bulls were, I knew how to get over and under fences, I was fed beautiful organic and wild foods, I borrowed farm-vehicles, kids showed me where their favorite birds nests and calves were, I met all the 4-H animals, and just had a blast.
Baby cows are very curious about pig-tails.
I might have some nose-prints on my equipment.
A few words on working with cows: I LOVE COWS. They are really very fun to work with.
That said, they weigh about 1,000 pounds so I would never photograph them without talking to the farmer (this is the “don’t try this at home kids” section of the blog), finding out the location of any hazards and of course the bulls – in the freezer being best for photographic purposes. And no, I’m not talking about beef.
Cows have that prey-animal instinct to run if you approach them or make sudden movements. On the other hand, if I sat still for too long, I’d risk the whole herd getting curious, surrounding me, sniffing me, trying to lick me or my bag and generally cracking me up.
So I did a lot of walking sideways to try to get the cow I wanted in the spot I wanted for a good shot. Basically I did a lot of roaming about on green pastures surrounded by beautiful country – hard job, I know.
To see more images of OV farms, go to the Find Your Farmer section of the Organic Valley Website.
Last summer I did a shoot for the Carman Ranch website. It was fascinating working with Cory Carman, a real forward thinker in the field of grass-fed cattle ranching.
We spent a long time looking at other ranch websites debating the use of photos of cows on the site (do people want to see the animal they are eating?). Many ranches feature big bloody steaks and cowboys wrangling in clouds of dust – to which Cory replied “That’s not Carman Ranch”. After spending some time with her cows and her fields I understand why. Cory’s cattle don’t need any wrangling – they simply follow her around (she moves them every ten days so to avoid overgrazing). And she doesn’t think we should be eating enormous steaks every day, but that grass-fed beef can be a small part of a healthy, responsible diet. It’s all about the cows -and Cory believes her customers want to know how the cows are treated, rather than ignoring where meat comes from – so in the end she decided to feature them on the site.
Black angus nose in a field of new spring grass.
This outtake, one of my favorite images from the shoot, was not chosen for the site. But you can see which ones were here:
It was 70 degrees in Portland yesterday and I’m hankering to get back into the vineyard to do some photography. Grapevines are one subject I will never ever tire of – because they change so much throughout the year. And because, having grown up on a vineyard, I have an emotional response to their smell, their colors, their textures.
These are some shots from last spring – you can see the tiny pinkish grape clusters readying for bloom.
While I’m hard at work putting together galleries for the new website I may as well start blogging! I want to share with you, dear readers, both the successes and hurdles I find working in the field of photography. And I want to introduce the fabulous individuals and businesses that I get to work with.
This sunday I did a shoot with George Ramos. George is a Portland furniture builder who revives older homes from the horrific choices made by overzealous remodelers in the 1970′s. He designs and creates beautiful cabinetry and built-ins. He also restores the dignity of older bicycles. For this shoot, George brought an beautiful Miyata touring bike:
I asked George for a few details on this bike:
“Hi Anna, the Miyata is a 1986 model 1000. I bought it off Craigslist a few years ago and after riding it for 2 years I decided to “restore” it. I’ve seen many of the amazing custom bikes made by our esteemed local framebuilders and I’m always blown away by how they shine. i decided to customize the Miyata in colors/style of my choice instead of going the purist route. All the components are upgraded and while the originals were all of high quality I really went over the top with some of them, especially the hubs. they are made by Maxi-car, a French manufacturer whose hubs are legendary in the vintage bike world. (and smooth like butter) I modeled the overall look and feel of the bike on a vintage french bike like the stunning examples in the Golden Age of handmade bicycles book. As a “nod” to the french i strapped the small louis Vuitton bag under the saddle to hold a tool kit and tube. The Miyata 1000 is a great example of a bike model that has been catapulted to internet fame by the website of “Harris Cyclery” in Mass. Sheldon Brown became the “keeper” of this huge site which is like the Wiki of the bike world and he became a bike guru to the masses. On the site they describe the miyata 1000 as the best “off the shelf” touring bike ever so it is a very desireable model to own. Looking at the details of the frame and it’s construction it is easy to see that Miyata truly got it right and that the frame has the hallmarks of a beautifully crafted machine. Your photos do it justice, thanks for taking the time to shoot yesterday. – George”
Anna is a commercial photographer based in Portland, Oregon.
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