#seattle model

[douglasfur365]

Ari, 2019

I got this piece of advice from my writing professor in college that has always proven to be effective. Put the work away and give yourself some space. Give yourself the night to sleep on it, a week, a month, or in this case four years. When I took this photograph I was “all in” on a project titled Rituals and Routines for which I had grand plans, then mentally I fell off a cliff and moved on before I could finish. At the time I thought these pictures were beautiful but I didn’t know what to say about them, then four years later having basically put them away since I shot them it’s like I’m seeing this for the first time.

[douglasfur365]

Libby, 2022

Okay, so why did we hike up this hill in the middle of the desert in the hot sun on a moderately windy day only for me to obscure the picturesque scene by putting up a backdrop holder with a white sheet? I’ve asked myself that question that question too. At first I thought I’d explain the whole thing here, break down the creative process that led to me exposing the artifice of the shoot and putting the natural beauty just within view but instead letting Libby be the dominant force of the image. Maybe these images are total self-indulgence and you don’t get them. Looking at them from my perspective and looking at the majority of the work I’ve shot over the past year I’m realizing that these probably say a lot about my sensibilities and I’m not sure it benefits you or I for me to go on a lengthy explanation about them, I’d rather leave it all up to you. I don’t know why do you think I did this, maybe that’s a question for a therapist.

[douglasfur365]

Avery, 2018

When I was planning out this shoot I had all these shots I really wanted to get, I got exceptionally lucky and locations I didn’t think we’d ever get to shoot in we got to shoot. Four years later however the shot I love most is one that I never expected to work as well as it did, one I just threw in because I thought… maybe it could look cool. I never took this project to its conclusion, I made some mistakes and I kept trying to fit it into a box even when I knew it didn’t exactly fit. Looking back now this inspires me to try something I haven’t done since… build a character with my collaborator and shoot it in a more cinematic way, just like little snippets, a small portion of a story, I don’t have to tell the whole thing.

[douglasfur365]

Alissa, Can We Really Party Today? 2018

One of my favorite projects was also my most short lived, Can We Really Party Today? Was a response to the total shit-show of life in Trump America. I stole the title from a Jonathan Wilson song “Can we really party today/ with all that’s going on/ shouldn’t we get started today.” I wanted to know if we could party, indulge, have fun, when our government is corrupt and broken and committing atrocities at home and abroad. Can I really throw a party where I forget all my troubles and drink beer, eat barbecue, and shoot off fireworks into the air? I stopped working on the project because I felt like I’d captured the idea as good as I ever was going to. I’m just not feeling the 4th of July, to be frank I don’t really care about celebrating our independence from England. The empty jingoistic phrases I hear every year are not only just untrue but aggressively so. I hardly feel like this is the land of the free. I’m still just as confused and unsure as I was four years ago, can we really party today? With all that’s going on? And really, shouldn’t we get started today? There is so much to fix.

[douglasfur365]

@darknessatnoon6, 2021

Back when I ran my music blog Secretly-Important, there was this band that I really wanted to interview… I was waiting for something, I don’t remember what, but I thought the stars should be perfectly aligned. Then out of the blue they broke up, their Bandcamp page disappeared overnight and that was it. This happened to me enough times that you’d think I’d have taken those lessons into photography with me but breaking that habit is a process. Having only worked with @darknessatnoon6 is a perfect example of waiting too long to work with someone. I keep looking over the many projects I did during my time in Seattle and keep thinking, “what if booked her for this shoot or that shoot, how much better would this project be?” Not only did I miss out on making so much great art, but I missed an opportunity to really get to know a great person. But here I am and I got this one opportunity and I am so happy with what we shot for it. Look, do that thing today, get the ball rolling and take your shot and do not wait on it. As it would turn out these were the last photographs of any kind I would take in Seattle.

[douglasfur365]

Jennifer, 2021

I shot Jennifer and Kelly together but want to give each their own spotlight here at the end of the year. This was just a fun shoot, a fitting way to end shooting in Seattle, I owe a lot of thanks to Jennifer for coming in with all kinds of party props to help fill out this shoot, in some ways it did kind of feel like a party. This was my last shoot before my move and the way I remember it I was just a week away from moving and had so much on my plate, I think I even had to stop the shoot at one point to meet an someone who was buying something I was trying to get rid of. Having now been in Tucson for eight months I’ve come to appreciate people like Jennifer that much more, her commitment to setting a scene, her attention to detail, her ability to go for it, are second to none and that is a rare thing. I feel like there were a lot of great collaborations ahead of us and that made this whole shoot very bitter sweet.

[douglasfur365]

Alissa, 2021

When it comes to Alissa and the hundreds of photographs we’ve taken over the years it would be quicker for me to show you all the images I didn’t like as opposed to the many, many, many that I feel are near perfect. Alissa always came to a shoot with tons of emotion and in every project we shot together I felt like she captured the defining image of the project. She’s a true artist across multiple disciplines and thus I always felt like we were telling a story together rather than me just looking for the story to tell with each shot. As with all of these shoots, it was the first time working with all these people that I stripped away the location and any distraction that it might present, a great challenge but as I’ve said an opportunity to just focus in on these wonderful people. I always felt like Alissa and I had a lot in common, we were closer in age than almost anyone else I’ve shot with, she has two kids close in age to mine, and we’ve both worked in the theater (though she is active while I have not done so in many years) and so I will sorely miss working with Alissa.

[douglasfur365]

Rain, 2021

I’ve heard many photographers say, “work with new people all the time,” and I’ve heard other photographers say “work with the same people many times.” I’m mean isn’t everything in photography like this “always use an ND filter” and “never use an ND filter.” Etc, etc, etc. But anyway, I always like meeting and shooting new people, I’m skeptical of photographers who shoot the same three models over and over and over again, but on the other hand when I see a photographer who never shoots the same model twice I’m also skeptical. For me it’s all balance, to meet new people and take in new ideas and ways of working, but also revisit the same people over and over until I develop a shorthand with them and a familiarity. By the time Rain and I shot here we’d worked together enough to have developed a certain kind of trust that can only come from working together many times on different types of projects, and at times those projects had very little direction to them. All I really wanted from my last shoots in Seattle was just to capture some of the people I’d worked with often, people I wanted to see one more time before my departure. These shots of Rain stand out a little from many of the other shoots I did at this time, I think they have a rawness to them that the others didn’t. There’s so much beauty in letting someone come in and just wear the things they wanted to wear and be the most sincere version of themself on film. Over the years Rain exposed that rawness many times in our shoots and it created some really amazing art that as I’ve come to realize is just not able to be replicated.