The middle of winter in Lake Almanor

I have a few friends that all left for the winter for 4 month stints. We call them snow birds the snow comes they leave. I get it, if I could, I would too. For the first time in years I felt jealous. I didn’t really want to face another winter it’s hard and long and takes a lot of courage and determination to care for myself and my family and for the most part there aren’t many fun parts. I don’t like it when sonny days end. Summer is my favorite season.

I have found joy in the snow but I am jaded, finicky about the snow. It needs to be a certain way for me to ski on it. So I wait for optimal conditions. Like yesterday, perfection , but I waited too long to get out on it and I didn’t want to contend with a pack of very hungry coyotes in freshly made snow mobile tracks that gave them the freedom to fly their dens and come for us, me and my 3 dogs.  We went out just before dusk, not smart on this wild meadow.

Winters are extra long at 5000 ft. We don’t get to see spring till May.  We are buried in snow till mid April at times. I can’t plant gardens till June 1^st for fear of hard frosts and they have knocked out all my tomatoes sometimes in mid June. Winters are really long here and they are dark too and I suffer from sluggishness, lethargy and apathy (winter depression) I have to fight hard with exercise, sunlight, ott lights, keeping moving, yoga and vitamins, fish oil, flax oil and D-3 are key and added to my daily vitamin regimen. Because we are in a remote area there is not much socializing. The closest movie theater is an hour away. I have learned after 16 winters to adapt to my environment. Making myself ski, cooking well, Netflix.  I always have plenty to do, but during long dark days I do it, I just don’t feel as enthusiastic as I am accustomed to feeling.

And so, the snow finally came and along with it days of no electricity. We adapted. Our house is heated with wood heat and we have propane stove and hot water heater. I have a huge porch that faces the meadow with ice chests on it. Because of the precariousness of where we live I have always kept pretty hefty supplies and set our home up to live without  electricity if need be. We have land lines for phones as well.  We are never behind a day on vacuuming, dishes or laundry and we keep tons of frozen blue icies in the freezer so we can keep the fridge cold too. It was a small hiccup to lose electricity. I only kept out one camping lantern so I cleaned the kitchen with my 8 hour battery pack video light I use for weddings. I had enough charge to cook and clean by it for 4 days.  We have fans that circulate the heat all over our house so when we lost electricity I put giant pots of water on the stove and let the hot vapor heat the house and it was faster and permeated every room.

We went winter camping. 6 Of us worked and ate together. We read and saved battery charged computers for a family movie 500 days (I hated it). We have a giant generator that will run our whole spread, but I wanted my children to adapt and excel. Roll with it, like the whole town had to. We did set up the generator for the freezer just in case.

On day 3 the complaining started and I am one for a good bitch but not about winter, it’s too hard already, a car ride has never been shortened or made easier by complaining and pushing my will about when are we going ot get their.  I won’t allow it and I assume like gallbladders, natural childbirth and appendixes there is a purpose to winter maybe for the regeneration and rejuvenation of my soul. I never came out of a winter not wanting to face sunny day in fact I come out grateful. I am grateful for electricity and snow on the meadow and winter because I am always relieved when it’s over and grateful we made it through.  I am grateful for snow and winter and husbands and children and dogs and woodstoves and propane and skis and paints and kindles and planning and the fact I am Boy Scout and prepared. I am grateful we all got along. I am grateful it’s almost February and winters will be over in a few months. It’s half over and I am grateful!!!!

The light is just right

Tulips in the morning

I want to paint this one

Tulips in the studio

one lilly on christmas

I love flowers, especially tulips, because I love painting them. In order to get myself to do the taxes I don’t want to I am making myself a deal. For every hour you account is an hour to paint. Some flowers in winter

Jesh De Rox happens to be one of my favorite artist photographer creative types. He is a wonderful shooter, but his words hit me harder. I like his words a lot. He has an ability to articulate my understanding of my own process of creating an emotionally charged portrait.  He is a superstar in the American wedding photography industry right now and he is on the road promoting his new Beloved concept. 

How I create a photograph is by co creating and collaborating with my client. Working together with my client for an authentic emotionally charged portrait. I relate to Jesh when he talks about what is a good photograph. Like him, because I had no real formal classroom training, my definition of a strong photograph had to have elements of authentic emotionally honesty. I have no passion for the contrived or false. I can’t help it and when I am met with a dead energy I have no passion to pursue it. I have come to accept this as a truth for me.

I learned by doing. As a fashion model scout I can look at someone’s face, in person, which is in 3-D and know what it will look like in a one dimensional photo. Finding photogenic people is easy for me.  But I soon became surprised when a stunner of a girl would have no authentic connection to her own spirit.  It was blocked by ego. I found they were trying to be something they perceived I wanted rather than what they are.

My job today is very clear. Set them at ease in all ways. Convey to them I am trustworthy and a safe person to be allowed to view them in their authentic state of being. In order to do this I must convey the same thing to them. The fact that they allow me to look and photo captures them is a phenomenal honor. I am blown away by the sacredness.

When working with a new couple it is a must I shoot their engagement session. It is included in any package as well. But it is essential for the strongest of images come their wedding day.  I have to understand my subject, their feeling for each other and above all set them at ease so that when they see me again on their wedding they are genuinely happy. How they react to my presence, my camera is paramount. This is the reason I love photographing people so much. If they allow me to see them then I know I have really done my job. All the rest of the technical photograph stuff is easy, skill I can learn in bed reading. Being good with people only comes from interacting with them and if it goes wrong looking at my part.

I teach watercolor to 4^th grade and 6^th grade this year. I can practice my people skills with each human I encounter.  People are reactive by nature so what I give first 9 out of 10 times is what they are going to convey back.

Jesh says if you want your clients to drop all the walls, the pretense of ego and fear and to be raw, authentic, real, then I must show up channeling the same energy. Truth be told humans are such intuit creatures whether they are consciously aware of it or not that it is quite apparent when someone is covering something up, channeling  a false energy showing up with the fear of not being likeable. I must confess as well that I fear people won’t like me.  It is an inside job though that I have to willing to work on it continuously and consistently. The more comfortable I am with me, accept me, I find the more my clients are at ease with me as well. The more non judgmental I am of myself and them the more authentic they can be.

I ran into this girl on the Sonoma Plaza last summer. I really liked her face and energy and thought that on my next trip back to San Francisco to photograph models for my Bridal Fashion Shoot I would do some personal work with her. When I was employed at city model management as an agent and scout I was 22. If I approached young girls to model they, or their mothers would give me a distrusting look. I was 22 and looked 16. Freckles skinny, fat cheeks I would think it odd as well. Now, as a mom and in my 40s I usually get to shoot 9 out of the 10 people I want. A luxury of age. I work really well with people new to the camera. It could be all the years in front and behind of the camera. Maybe the really uncomfortable modeling helped so I can now set them at ease.

I showed up to her house at 3:30 a little late. With 2 big make-up boxes in tow. I said hello and we headed for her closet. After I finished her makeup we grabbed a few of her things, matched it with my own portable closet in my FJ and ran for the hills. We spent two hours up in the Mission Highlands area and it was really cold.  I usually get the same thing from first shooters…I never knew modeling was so hard and I never knew I could look so good. Not to be a know it all, I did. That’s why I shoot and that’s why I picked you. I was a scout before a photographer. I know what you are going to look like on my film the first time I see you.

If I ask you to model for me you can bet you will be pleasantly surprised by what your bones are going to photograph like. I know,  I am know it all! I can’t help it.

When I met her mother, Gea, I was 23 and Gea was still in High School. I felt and instant repour with Gea and her mother Betsy. I became friends of the family; I became Gea’s mother agent. Gea modeled for city model management for years. I came to know and love Betsy and got to know Gea’s grandmother Joanie and got to hear the story of Gea’s great-grandmother Cookie. I visited their wonderful old home in old town San Jose. I always thought if I were to write an Epic novel this line of women would make a phenomenal slice of an American story. There is a very special story inside the generations of women that live and have lived in that house in San Jose.

One morning Gea called me at home to inform me that she had had a prophetic dream about me and her.  She said,” Kimmie, I had a dream about us last night. I dreamt we were both pregnant with girls”. Me, just having had given birth not 9 months previous, was like NOT!!! Some months later we both gave birth to girls. This is her girl!

My dear friend Edgar pulled the dress from a designer friend of his Mark Zunino, who if I could afford it, designs would fill my closet. He is a genius. We shot it in Edgar’s Twin Peaks apartment. 

10 feet tall and stunning

Her red shoes

waiting on a ride

Soft

Growing up

Her First Test

Edgar's wall

There she is

Brian Todd aka B-tee is a Bay Area rapper and a son of a friend. A few years ago he contacted me to photograph his first CD cover. We established a repour and since then I have photographed him and now his accosociates.  

At the Saramonte shopping mall in 1970 there was a toy store, I can’t remember the name, it was situated in the Southern Wing of the mall on the western wall. The first time I saw them I must have been 6. There was a wall full of dolls. Collector’s editions as I know it today. Then all I desired was to hold one. To dress her put jewelry on her. I love the ball gowns all indicative of the confederate south. It’s no coincidence why I love, Gone with the Wind, Hello Dolly, My Fair Lady and many more. I am mad about beautiful clothes. Costumes if you will.  I spent many hours of my early childhood standing in front of that glass staring at those dolls. The one I wanted was a doll in a huge wedding ball gown. There were many reasons I didn’t have a doll collection, the first being I didn’t know how to take care of it. Somehow I have satisfied my need to play dress up with myself, my daughters and the brave girls that model for me for the sake of making a pretty picture. I have wondered for sometime my attraction to the fashionably feminine and beautiful. I am not gay; sometimes I wish I were, husbands are hard. I remember my mom telling me once the males of all species were more beautiful than the females, that was at an age when I was apt to believe anything she said. I knew that her statement was false. That was just impossible. I wanted to remind her of the fat bald smelly 50 year old man we walked past. I was also most grateful to my creator for making me a girl. I recall feeling like my creator got my costume just right, I felt so lucky to be a girl.

I caught a picture while I was gone. I didn’t plan it. It was a moment. Mia seeing for the first time what was inside her grandmother’s class case. Then it all came together. My attraction is a simple as hers. PRETTY. I like pretty things, among other things.

Her First Look

Let me in

 I also have a knack for making people feel prettier than they have ever felt. A letter from a recent shoot.

Hey Kim! Just wanted to say thanks for EVERYTHING. I absolutely love my pictures. I’ve never seen myself in that kind of picture before..its weird. But you made me feel so pretty and confident. The pictures are perfect- love the processing! It was fun chatting with you bout your life as a model..I gotta hand it to you..you’re a strong woman. Gosh I have a new respect for models..they go through a lot. But anyways, thanks for taking the time out of your crazy schedule, not to mention being a mom of five kids, and make my senior pics an amazing experience. Oh and thanks for the make up tips. Well, hopefully I’ll see you sometime soon!
          Kelsey

And now, some of the pictures I took of  the amazing beautiful young woman that were gracious enough to let me photograph them.

Sarah and Grace

All there

A FriesianRush Ranch

Last Light

Top of the Bay

I am heading out to the Bay Area for a few model test shoots this week and a couple of paid bookings. I love shooting new things new people in new places. I am never sure what I will get so I look at it as a treasure hunt and I may come home empty handed. But, for sure, everytime I venture out I learn something new. Here is one of my most favorite fashion photography rep sites. http://www.jedroot.com/.  Look for updates in a week or so.

Portraiture isn’t my main source of income  weddings are. I do portraiture because I love it. I do portraiture because I have time to be creative to think things through. I do portraiture to get better at my craft. I do portraiture because I never know what the experience is going to bring to tangible fruition. The images usually will surprise me. I am clear there is a large mystery to the process of portraiture and that has very much to do with the soul that is encased in the body I happen to be photographing. I am a believer that we carry around a soul and a personality very much inmeshes with an ego. It is amazing to observe who comes to the front for the camera. The only people that this rule doesn’t apply to are babies. It is my experience that once there is a self consciousness, then, the self doubt, the editing of one’s authentic self begins to happen. I have never photographed a person who was not somehow affected by their own personality. Ego, personality, self-doubt is a part of me and all around me in the humans I observe. My job, as a photographer, is to get all aspects of my shoots ready for the soul to show. Hair, makeup, clothes, light, camera settings, background, props then I wait for them sometimes it’s a long wait sometimes a short one, but inevitably they show up, my job is to see it and capture it. It’s like catching hummingbirds with a net. I have no judgment about who they are I feel so lucky when I have captured them, it’s really hard, but fun and really satisfying.

People try to be what they think I want. I want to see them; most don’t know who they are yet so it becomes a part of the process them hiding, me waiting.

As a model in NY , SF and Paris as an agent in SF as a photographer traveling Northern California I have come to understand I have a passion for being with young people and sharing with them what I know about many subjects. I am comfortable with them inside and outside my house. It helps I have many children and like them.

There really is no more of a gratifying experience;  photographing a young person who has never been in front of a camera professionally before is golden. I was a fashion model maker in SF and I loved model development. The people I shoot today are going off to careers in other fields, but I have never seen why not share what I know about fashion and photography and make up and styling and energy and how the camera sees the truth of emotion. The product usually brings surprise to them. They have never seen themselves that way before. 9 times out of 10 they tell me it’s a confidence booster. They leave feeling good about themselves. I love that part.

Last night’s shoot.

That Hair

Movement

The meadow with snow

one of my favorites

A really cold day

She plays the violin

Lights and Darks

against the wall

A Happy look