I have photographed my friend Tricia many times over the years.  First as an actor, then as a budding nutritionist and now as a herbalist/nutrition counselor.  For her new portrait I wanted to highlight her caring and gentle nature that is lively and engaged with cultivating the life around her.

I used a soft light and reflectors to photograph Tricia.  I keep the background clean and bright and the shooting style candid and less posed.

Check out the before and after. To check out Tricia’s counseling services - Nutricia Consulting

To check out Lisa’s work – www.lisahelfert.com

1940′s portrait lighting for 2012

This new year brought an urge to play with studio lighting, experiment, refine and explore new possibilities.   I have long admired the lighting of the black and white portraits of movie stars from the 40′s.   The intense and romantic lighting takes me back in time and makes me want to stand up a little taller.  The women are portrayed as confident, classy and shameless in the power of their beauty.  We could all, women and men, use a little of this confidence.

When Melanie of @Sisarina boldly cut off her blonde hair and began sporting a new amber brunette pixie cut, I thought she would make the perfect subject.   The lighting would accent her haircut and show off her confidence as business woman without diminishing her beauty.    She looks good as a blonde with classic 80′s model lighting, but strong as a brunette with 40′s model lighting.

To see Melanie Spring’s wonderful work www.sisarina.com

To see more of my work www.lisahelfert.com

Melanie Spring owner of Sisarina, branding, marketing, websites

Yes, mushing in Maryland!

I photographed this slide show of images for  Maryland Life magazine’s November/December issue about the Fair Hill Challenge, Maryland’s largest dry land sled dog race.

The Fair Hill Challenge is well worth coming out to watch.  Beautiful dogs happily traversing through the woods, climbing hills, crossing streams, and flying through fields.  The dogs whiz by you as glamorous as figure skaters without the need for a false smile, they are ecstatic.   The owners eagerly share their stories about the dogs and the usual sport of mushing.  An enjoyable opportunity to witness the bond between man and animal with and against nature’s elements.    Do bring your mittens, long underwear and hiking shoes.  To see the course requires hiking and  I spent two hours under my covers before I was warm again after the first day of shooting.  You need to watch out for the particularly uncompetitive Samoyed dogs who ran directly at me wanting a hug during the race and stopped during the stream crossing to rest.   They are not fast dogs, but they were my favorite.

To see the Maryland Life article

To see the slide show or  press the image of the flying dog

www.lisahelfert.com

Fair Hill Challenge

Baby Sequoia in Yosemite National Park

Today is the darkest day of the year but tomorrow is the beginning of brighter longer days.    I hope you have a wonderful holiday season whatever tradition you celebrate or not.

I captured these elegant sequoia’s at the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park.  The majestic sequoia trees have been around longer than any person living on the earth.  Walking around I felt humbled by their enormity and beauty and wished they could speak about our history.   Technically I did nothing special to capture this image, the park is really that beautiful.

To see my past post about Yosemite go to this link

www.lisahelfert.com

 Jonathan and I met in 2003 performing together and enjoying the zany culture of our poet friends.  To our surprise a year later, we discovered that we had known each other for a much, much longer time.   We had been curious childhood enemies, who spent our summers in a cold war over a gorgeous body of water on Cape Cod called Depot Pond.

My grandfather, like a proud farmer, cultivated a Zen-like haven on Depot Pond to inspire his family to connect with nature and relax.  Through his binoculars he surveyed all possible offenders of pond peace.   Every summer the last two weeks of August ushered in a time of my grandfather ‘s quiet cursing and head shaking.  At dinnertime he would describe the offensives of  “those boys from the cabins” who, as I found out later,  were Jonathan Miller and his brother, Matt Miller.

 Grandfather had some specific grievances:

1.  The boy’s voices traveled a couple of football fields away over the water to be heard at our beach. (Obscenities like motherfucker were shouted, as they played games like, king of the raft, which made our beach time educational)
2.  The boys fished in our reeds. (The reeds were planted for the fish to enjoy and thrive.  Who eats tiny shiny sunfish anyway?)
3.  The boys capsized their sailboat over and over for NO good reason. (My grandfather believed in beauty, balance and pragmatism)
4.  We were not allowed to take the rowboat across the pond to the lily pads.  (I found out later it was because “those boys” were  smoking something fragrant over there.)
5.  Overall those boys were judged to be rowdy and disturbing of nature.  (My grandfather was so serious about his sense of justice  in nature that he set up a switch to give electric shocks to any squirrel that dared to eat from his bird feeder.)   

Jonathan and his brother Matt had their own observations about the “snooty people” across the pond who did not appear to have enough fun.   They ignored the anonymous complaints about their volume and use of the English language.   They proudly splashed in the luxury of being a boy in nature’s playground.

Being a nice girl, I obeyed my grandfather’s rule to stay away from “those boys from the cabins”.  We breezed by them with my grandfather at the helm of our non-capsizing sunfish.  As the obscenities flew, I just looked at them over the book I was reading.  I believed in nature like my grandfather and remained firmly connected to the elegant feeling of floating on the water in my Styrofoam lounge chair.

But 20 years late, as a 30-something year old single woman, what do you do when you meet one of “those boys from the cabins”?   Naturally, you date them.

But sure enough, I learned grandfather was right.  Our romance failed.

But my grandfather was wrong also, because our friendship has lasted.   I learned that the spirited playful energy of Jonathan and his brother are an essential ingredient for life.

When Jonathan’s brother was diagnosed with lung cancer, I had a certain loyalty and understanding.  As a volunteer, I had just finished facilitating a bereavement group with 12-year-old’s, all dealing with sibling loss.   That experience showed me the challenges that my fun-loving friend would face.  I listened to Jonathan and encouraged him to create art as an outlet while coping with his brother’s illness and, later, his own grieving process.

Jonathan would say he creates art for fun, while I would say I seek meaning and a sense of peace in my work.  We are both misguided, because when we create and work, we both tend to be lighthearted and thoughtful.   Jonathan would tell you that, now, I am the fun one, while I usually badger him to get out of his house and enjoy life.  And I find that Jonathan forces me to calm down, stop and think.   We do not fit our own stereotypes and share many qualities that help us work together and be supportive friends. 

 Our creative collaboration in this show, joins together the lively and lighthearted with a more soothing and thoughtful quality of our natures.  The movements of the photographic panels have a soothing and playful quality that becomes pleasing and mesmerizing.   A sense of contentment comes from freeing your thoughts for a moment and allowing yourself to restore.

My work in this show was created in response to the rich collaboration with Jonathan.  Although, I found myself somewhat ambivalent watching my photographs be cut up and placed on his sculptures.    Photographers are attached to the images they create, but in the end I liked the sculptures more than my images. 

 I began to want to cut up my images, so I began cutting up some of the beautiful images from memorable trips I took this past year.  I attempted to create a new image that is iconic rather than literal to serve as a memory for that past experience.

 I see this process as an attempt to explore the idea of taking a beautiful memory that you love and possibly lost, destroying the image of the memory, but also creating a new beautiful image as a memory.   When the images become more iconic rather than literal in meaning the work is calming and ultimately healing. 

“Interactive Kinetic Art and photographic Images”

October 15th – 30th   the Fridge, dc

Opening October 15th, 8pm – 11pm

Kids Class  October 30th, 2pm – 4pm

Address:

the fridge dc

Rear alley entrance directly across the street from Matchbox on 8th street

516 1/2 8th street, SE

Washington DC

Lisa Helfert is a freelance photographer working in the Washington, DC area.  www.lisahelfert.com    

To see more of Jonathan’s work - www.jonathantristrammiller.com

Press for video - Emotional Clocks

As an engineer, Jonathan T. Miller has a wonderful ability to think spatially. Continually he moves around his thoughts, feelings, words and infinite numbers in his brain. You can see him sitting quietly contemplating, but inside his brain the movement is intense and imaginative, skillful creating beautiful algorithms and kinetic art.

We met many years ago when both of us wrote and performed poetry together. Naturally from our poetic roots, our collaboration included an expression and discussion of feelings and emotions. Together we looked at how emotion guides the creation of artistic work.

The kinetic piece, Emotional clock, can relate to any feeling or emotion for the viewer, but we together created this piece to speak to the grieving process.   We spent a long time discussing time and grief. We talked about the recent death of his brother, how he was coping with the enormous sense of loss and pain. I reflected his thoughts and related my own experiences with loss and ongoing work with Hospice Caring to help others work through their grief process.

We acknowledged the importance of the passage of time and the belief that time gives us space to feel and think and heal. Time moves continually like his kinetic art. The feelings attached to grief come and go differently over time. We explored, searched and photographed beautiful clocks to place on the sculptures. I printed images sized to work with the shape and movement of the sculpture.

The collaboration process and the art has been a healing process for both of us. The resulting kinetic piece, Emotional Clock, is intended through movement and visual image to express a sense of the soothing that time allows but also allows for the necessary movement and natural flow of emotions that comes in life. Feelings change and move like the part of the sculpture. They go up and down, around and around and come back to center over time. They only thing we know for certain is that as we move and change, as time passes, we will not stop feeling, whether happy or sad, strong or muted, colorful or mysterious. Watching this soothing piece, Emotional Clock, as time moves around on its axis is freeing.

The show opens at the Fridge in DC on October 15th at 8pm. The next blog post will discuss how this collaboration inspired photographs that will also be included in the show.

To see the video of emotional clock

To see more of  Jonathan’s work

To visit the Fridge

To visit lisahelfert.com

Enough computer time 

This photograph was taken for a show called “Year of the Goat” in 2003.  I had just started to work

with digital camera and photoshop.  Little did I know that this goat was telling me something really

important.   Stop and stretch everyday!

]]> http://lisahelfert.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/late-afternoon-stretch/feed/ 1 helfphoto Late Afternoon Stretch http://lisahelfert.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/learning-from-others/ http://lisahelfert.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/learning-from-others/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:58:33 +0000 helfphoto http://lisahelfert.wordpress.com/?p=477 ]]> Yesterday I shot some fun photos with folks with development disabilities.   I remembered my experience of photographing with Tyler at the Red Wiggler Foundation many years ago and wanted to share the insightful experience.    Tyler reminds us all to be happy, be yourself and above all maintain your own artistic vision.  This was something that I really needed to learn and continued to remember again and again.

Below are two of his images included at our art opening at Black Rock Arts center in Germantown, MD.  I wrote the following short essay to describe the experience of working and learning from Tyler at the Red Wiggler Foundation.  Many thanks to Woody Woodruff for making this happen and Christine and Malka from their support and help.

Customers waited in line eager to pick from the August harvest of colorful vegetables, lines of tomatoes, stacks of cucumbers, peppers, garlic, zucchini, bunches of basil and oversized watermelons. Tyler stood in front of the seller’s tent, smiled, and handed each potential buyer a bag to stuff. When Tyler saw me his eyes lit up, he raised his hand with a white plastic bag flagging me down and gestured,

“Lisa, Lisa, your car is over there and the engine is off. It is off.”

He went back to handing out the bags. In the midst of the chaos of the market he had seen me drive up, park, and walk over. I found it amazing that despite being surrounded by fabulous vegetables and people Tyler was able to focus on my car arriving in the parking lot over 200 feet away.

“Tyler I am here to take some photos with you today.” I squeeze the words between customers and bags.

“Your engine is off. Lisa, it is off.”

“Yes. It is off.” My 1997 Honda Civic had never received as much attention.

Four months before I began taking photos every Thursday with Tyler, a worker at the Red Wiggler Foundation in Clarksburg, MD. Tyler has a developmental disability; I am a photographer, and we were partnered together through an artist grant to share each other’s talents, visions and experiences.

I watch as Tyler smiles. He is naturally charming. He makes eye contact and is fully interested and engaged in what he is doing and the people he is coming in contact with.

“A bag.” He holds it up with a smile.

I get the camera and some film.

“We are going to take a break from selling. What do you want to take photos of?” I ask.

“Your car. The engine. Yes. The engine. YES! ” He emphasizes “YES” with an extra big smile and hand gesture similar to a cheer or pulling the signal for the bus to stop.

“What about the market? Anything interesting here?”

He looks over the scene. He is smiling and I suspect he is thinking about my car. He reminds me of men who honestly do not care about things outside the world of computers or machinery, but who will politely go along with anything you say outside their arena of interest.

“Look how busy it is.” I point to the crowd standing and milling around the tent, the vegetables artfully arranged, and money exchanging hands. He walks over, takes a photograph and turns back to me. His behavior seemed like a quiet act of appeasement. He reminds me of my grandfather, sort of glazed over and disinterested, after he had changed the TV station from his train show to Gilligan’s Island or the Brady Bunch to please his grandchildren.

“Your car. Your car. Lisa.” Tyler points past the fruits and vegetables.

I decide to let him work through the busy time of the market.

I remember when I started working with him. He would point to me with a big smile.

“Lisa you are my friend. You are my friend.” He said everything twice to make sure I heard.

“You are sweet. You are sweet.” I thought he was a huge flirt.

“You are beautiful. You are beautiful.” All of this flattery, it worked, I loved the guy. Yet he did not want to photograph any people including me. I found this puzzling.

Pleasing other people is a big part of Tyler’s life. Working for people, charming them, and hoping to receive more attention. When he started taking photos, he would photograph other people’s suggestions; his friend Jerry’s, Malka, the counselor or mine. He would always take just one photo, and then he would stop and wait for us to continue guiding him. His composition showed an appreciation of beauty, a good eye that can not be taught. So I wanted him to continue, but with his own ideas and subjects.

One day he said he wanted to photograph a tractor. It was a turning point. Not what normally I would consider an object of beauty, but he noticed everything, named everything, and photographed everything possible on the tractor. He was energized.

He began to express his wishes on subject matter. Primarily, my car photographed first, each visit, every Thursday.

“I want to photograph your car. Your car. It is a Honda. A Honda.”

“Ok.” Hidden under my friendly accepting exterior, I had secret thoughts that he was silly, boyish, obsessive and mildly amusing.

“The engine is off. It is off.” Pointing his hand at me to show he was serious about this engine business. But who was I to ridicule his fascination with unique subject matter. I photographed goats for an entire summer, another photographer became famous for photographing his dogs with hats on, and Edward Weston made vegetables as sexy as body parts.

Tyler’s uncompromising passion for machinery began to guide us. Some days we opened the hood of every car on the farm and photographed each engine or sometimes just the hood, the wheel, the headlights. Tyler would read any written material under the hood and tell me.

“Caution do not touch. It is hot. It is hot.” I had never looked so closely at a car’s contents or bothered to read anything under my hood. I merely cursed at cars that cut me off or kicked a wheel when the car did not work. Instead of thinking of cars as a pain in the ass, I took a couple of photos of car engines with Tyler.

“Good job. Good job. You did a good job.” Tyler would tell himself and me. I could stand to have such a positive attitude about work.

After photographing working machinery, Tyler would wander until he found something different to photograph. A defunct tractors behind a barn or a rusted out trailer basking in the sun. I followed and he took the lead with his own ideas. But most importantly, he was excited by his results. He would point to each frame on the contact sheet, name each car part, and whose car it belonged to.

I wondered if he would grow as an artist in a different environment, outside the farm and machinery he loved to eye. I thought at market he might see things differently, but his point of view, his artistic vision of car parts, machinery, and tractors, remained intact. For a moment I was disappointed, but I realized that Tyler was a huge success. He used the camera to share his own artistic vision of what he sees, what is important to him and I, as an artist, recognized his vision.

The line of customers had died down.

“Tyler we can take photos again.”

“Yes” he responds again with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader shouting and waving after a score.

“What do you want to take photos of.” I was open to the car idea this time.

“The construction. Yes! Yes! ” Across the parking lot four giant construction trucks roared. I had been so focused on Tyler and the market I did not notice the trucks, but he did.

We began to walk over. The construction trucks pushed and pulled at the dirt. I marveled at their strength.

“Lisa, Lisa. You are my friend. My friend. Yes.”

“Yes. I am your friend Tyler.” I watched him look at the construction machinery, smile, and walk with determination.

Tyler works and learns at the Red Wiggler Community Farm. It was founded to create meaningful, fully included jobs for adults with developmental disabilities through the business of growing and selling high quality, home-grown vegetables in Montgomery County MD.

To see website about the farmworks project

www.lisahelfert.com