Douglas Fur 365 a new photograph every day for 365 days

ALL IMAGES BY DOUGLAS FUR FOR PRINTS AND INQUIRIES EMAIL: (brianssnider at gmail.com) ALSO VISIT douglasfur.com

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PRINT SALE FOR THE FLORENCE PROJECT

How ya doin? Yeah me too. It feels like a certain group of people let a gnashing tiger out of its cage believing it wouldn’t eat people, and now it’s free and just mauling everyone in sight. There’s a lot to be angry about right now, I’m angry, but I’m also trying to take the advice of others and focus on a few key issues. One issue that has kept me up at night has been Immigrants rights, or the lack their of. The Florence Project is a “nonprofit legal service organization providing free legal and social services to adults and unaccompanied children in immigration custody in Arizona.” At first I kept track of the many legal cases they and other Immigrant Rights organizations had filed but quickly became overwhelmed. It’s the most recent issue pertaining to unaccompanied children that I’ve found most despicable. These immigrant children who may or my not know English are forced to represent themselves in court without legal counsel, without knowing their rights, without an advocate. It seriously makes my blood boil to think of young children separated from their family being pushed through a careless legal system without an advocate. Okay so here’s why I mention any of this, as a nonprofit The Florence Project can use your donations to help provide their legal services for free, as well as use that to partner with other Immigrant Rights organizations to sue the government. To help raise money for the Florence Project I am running a small print sale with all the money going directly to The Florence Project. The prints are 8x8 and 12x8 sized, printed on Canson archival paper. I’m offering these prints for $30 through my big cartel shop douglasfur.bigcartel.com or just reach out to me directly. I thought really hard about these images, hoping that they will be something that reminds you of what your money went to. I get it everyone needs your money right now so I tried to make the price accessible.

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No.13 Haiden 2024

This brings me to my last shoot of 2024. Remember when I mentioned a few posts ago I love when people reach out, well, for the record I love working with people who know what they want. I enjoy the process of art directing a shoot, but I was right in the middle of working on one when Haiden and I did this and to have her come in with such confidence about what she wanted from wardrobe on down was wonderful. On top of that she had such a way with posing that frankly made my job simple. I edited and delivered almost double the promised about, entirely because I just could not decide and it hurt my heart to leave certain shots out. So Haiden really brought it, but I was also give a big thanks because while editing these images I was inspired to take the basis of these and run with a concept that might just be my major focus in 2025 and I cannot wait.

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No. 12 Adia & Sisi 2024

I don’t want to share much from this shoot just yet, we’re still the process of shoot the 2nd half and I have yet to fully deliver the images to either Adia or Sisi and so I’ve selected this rough Polaroid scan to represent my 12th shoot of 2024. What I will say about it right now is that this project is an effort to tell a very short story with only images. I’ve worked with narratives in a more conceptual way before but this time I planned everything out as if I were shooting a short film. I reached out to Sisi, explained the concept and asked if there was anyone whom she’d be comfortable with and she suggested Adia. I was really nervous for this shoot, in part because the location, a tiny men’s restroom and I knew it would be a feat to get the shots, but also because I wanted things to feel real without overly directing the shots. I know you don’t know anything about this shoot or what exactly I wanted to feel real, but I’ll just tell you that this photo has everything I wanted. Sisi and Adia were phenomenal in this.

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No. 10 Sam 2024

I’m going on the record, soooo write this down or whatever, “I love when people reach out to me about shooting something.” Over the last couple years my projects have become more elaborate with more moving parts and greater attention to detail. Concept, location, prompts, wardrobe, and most importantly the person I’m going to be working with, has consumed a greater portion of my creative time so when someone sees something I’ve done and reaches out to shoot it or something like it a huge pressure is relieved. From shooting lingerie for Hi TIger, to getting nude in Barrio Viejo Sam has always learned into bravery of the shoots. This shoot has been long in the works and we just got it in before watermelons went out of season, and seeing as they were a specific request I knew we needed to make it happen. The watermelon has become symbolic for Palestinian support and I am also drawn to the idea of food as protest. The red backdrop was a tough choice, I initially considered a mint green color to contrast the red, but later liked the idea of red on red, and the symbolism of red in this particular instance.

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No. 11 Veronica 2024

I’ve always rejected the thought of having a style, I know some who really fret about not having one but for me I’ve always just done what interests me most and then do it the best way I know how. Maybe I do have a style, if so then it is inherent and unintentional. With all that having been said, for nearly 7 years I suppose if I’m known for anything it’s possibly as the photographer with the disco ball. Honestly I had no idea when I bought this thing in the winter of 2018 that I would still be shooting with it or that I’d have used it as often as I do. Veronica reached out to my this summer about shoot my Disco in the desert series which I have affectionately branded Valley Fever. Aside from the first hour of this shoot, in which I took us up the road in the wrong direction only to walk back down the same road to where we started, now hotter, sweatier, and already a little exhausted. After this however we turned Tanque Verde into our own Studio 54. This all turned out better than my wildest expectations. Veronica absolutely embodied this project and it shows, but I’m most grateful for her patience with me hiking back out of the canyon when I had to stop and sit multiple times, and for the extra water she had in her car after mine had been fully depleted.

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No. 9 Laura 2024

The circumstances behind this shoot were so unbelievable that I wrote a whole blog about it on douglasfur.com. For the unaware, Laura reached out to me at some point in August and we threw out some ideas but it was when I was told about this abandoned series of buildings that I found my hook for the shoot. I reached out, we set a date and then on the day everything went wrong. The location was inaccessible, every backup idea I had fell apart and just as I was ready to give up Laura took over and used her location scouting skills to find a trail. Believe me, don’t believe me, personally I still can’t believe it happened but at the end of this trail we found… an abandoned house. I can say with complete honesty, if I had not been working with Laura on this shoot literally none of it would have happened I would have given up long before we ever got to our ultimate reward. What I love about all this however is that yes, this location was exceptionally cool but Laura took the energy from this space and embodied it into some really amazing work. I highly encourage you to check out my blog post which goes into greater detail and shows off a lot more of what we shot this day.

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No.8 @moomoofail 2024

I reached out to Emily about shooting, as I often do I initially left the concept open but quickly proposed this idea of “sad ballerina.” For years I’ve been fascinated with ballerinas but for this one I wanted to do something I’d never really seen before. Street Ballerina is practically its own sub genre and it can be beautiful but because I rarely go for convention I wanted to see a sad street ballerina not doing any poses. Emily played up this part so well it was a little disconcerting at points, this feeling that she really was just a big ball of sadness that I was putting into shots she didn’t really want to be in. One challenge of put myself up to recently is to tell stories with only images. How can I use the location, the wardrobe, make up, props in a few or even just a single image. Indefinite gratitude to Emily for totally getting into this role of the sad ballerina.

[douglasfur365]

No.7 @pole.mantis 2024

Since the beginning of the year I’d been dying to shoot something soft and gentle, I’d been brainstorming and gathering all kinds of references images. Then I worked with Sisi for the disco shoot and things began to fall into place. Once the lemons entered the project everything clicked. Circumstances forced me to alter a lot of what I’d originally planned for this shoot and Sisi was a real champ, that white sheet looks nice and soft but underneath was a bunch of jagged rocks, to be clear I did offer to put something else down beneath the sheet. Sometimes I spend a lot of mental space working out the meaning behind everything I’m doing. What is this about? What does this say? What is the story? Occasionally It’s just about contrast, colors, or putting lemons into a shot.

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No. 6 Nica 2024

Not long after the disco shoot we started talking about shooting some yoga. I love this kind of work because I don’t have to worry so much about poses, and yoga already comes with built-in dynamic body positions. The primary focus for me was location, and so I returned to my familiar secret spot in the Tortolita mountains. We specifically shot during golden hour and while a brilliant sunset with a wide range of colors would have been beautiful the flairs of the sun setting over the mountain were perfect. In the years that I’ve been doing this work one thing I’ve really come to love is photographing my subjects not just within the context of my own creative projects, but in learning what their passions and careers are and photographing that as well.

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No. 5 @desertfreak 2024

Cherry approached me with this concept and then for one reason or another it kept getting pushed back, in particular we were trying to find that delicate desert balance between too hot and too cold. We nearly hit the jackpot this day as the sky was cloudy and about half the shoot the sun was hidden. Regardless, her concept was a kind of vintage pool tanning shoot except in the middle of the desert, that is right in my wheelhouse, take two juxtaposing elements and put them together. Because this shoot was very editorial in nature I was really inspired to shoot it with heavy flash in a kind of 90’s early 2000’s aesthetic.

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No. 4 @pole.mantis 2024

Like Nica this was my first time working with Sisi. I’d seen some of her pole work through instagram and just took a shot that she’d be interested in this concept. I was right, she was amazing but what I learned and loved about her was this relentless encouragement and positive affirmation she brought to the shoot. Whenever I feel nervous and awkward before a shoot I always remind myself that I get to hide behind the camera and it’s the models who put themselves out there, who try something on the fly, who bare themselves figuratively and sometimes literally. Sisi was so encouraging of Nica, it was a nice reminder to me that photographers need to be encouraging and let their subjects know when they’re hitting things right but Sisi can do it in a way that I never could. What a champ.

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No. 3 Nica 2024

Grateful for meeting and working with so many new people in 2024. There’s a temptation to return to the familiar but at the same time I’m always pushing myself to do something new which includes finding new people. I had never met Nica before I reached out to her for this project and I’m never sure what’s more awkward, reaching out to someone I don’t know to shoot, or reaching out to someone I do know but have never shot. I don’t know honestly when people reach out to me it’s most ideal, but having said all that Nica is so lovely and amazing. I was really just going on pure intuition that she’d probably rock this concept… and I was right. I had this studio booked for four hours and while it was a long day it was so much fun. Nica bought those skates specifically for this shoot (I mean to presumably use later too) so I wanted to squeeze them into as many shots as possible. I might be wrong but I think this was only the second time she wore those skates and it was a special moment when she put on a skating exhibition for us. We had a lot of fun, I guess that’s all I need to say.

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No. 2 @desertfreak 2024

I talk about this all the time but shooting indoor locations around Tucson can be tough, there are no daylight studios to speak of, to shoot in the most interesting locations can be a logistical nightmare at times so I’ve had to get really creative with what and where I shoot. While looking around at locations I came across Floor Polish Dance studio decked out with multicolored lights, silver streamers and some yellow and teal chairs that scream 1977. I immediately knew I needed to shoot a 70’s roller disco themed shoot. I love 70’s culture so with the right wardrobe and this space I knew we could do it. I’d originally envisioned getting a group together to shoot all at once but coordination was really tough and so I split it up shooting with Cherry first. It turned out to be super helpful because I learned a lot about how to best light and shoot this location to get exactly the look I wanted. Again it should be no surprise that Cherry was the first to get in front of the camera for this, but a big thanks for all the patience while I figured out how exactly to shoot this best.

[douglasfur365]

No. 1 @desertfreak 2024

I always like to take sometime at the end of every year to go back through every shoot I’ve done. For me this is primarily a way of showing my gratitude to everyone I’ve worked with throughout the year. Portraiture is a collaborative experience and here in Tucson I’ve found a wonderful community of people to work with.

Back in February I was accepted to show work of @&gallery’s Foodfight show, but I needed some new work and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. For me I was extremely grateful for Cherry who I could reach out to explain that I wanted to do a shoot with Honeydew melon and I need to get it done in the next two weeks, and we were able to pull it off. This shot of Cherry surrounded by Honeydew was the inspiration for the whole shoot, the necklace of pulp and seeds was something that we added in the moment that I loved. What I’ve never showered were the images we shot toward the end with the Teal backdrop, the contrast of those shows with teal and green wasn’t quite as striking as the pink and green but I loved them still. Revisiting all this work is about showing my gratitude to my collaborators but Cherry is always up to do something new and weird and I have extra gratitude for that.

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Sionna, 2024

Sometimes I do this. I design this whole shoot that takes advantage of colors, or wardrobe, or the way I chose the backdrop in the setting, and then the first image I share really doesn’t show any of that. I just remember developing this image and immediately being drawn to it. So no, you can’t see the yellow of the lemons, or the green stems of the gladiolus. I perfectly hid the edges of backdrop which I purposely often shot this day. I loved the contrast of the black, the way everything feels, cool, soft, and gentle. But right in the center of this image is that powerful right arm, almost like Sionna is flexing.

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Cherry, 2024

I didn’t post nearly enough out these. We went out and shot this back in April, at the time we were trying to beat the heat, and it still felt very hot. But compared to 110º these images feel cool.

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Cherry, 2024

Sometimes you don’t know what you need until it happens. This shoot needed these red boots. I don’t remember if Cherry ever mentioned them prior to the shoot but when she showed up with them, they were the final piece to the puzzle.