Hair & Makeup by Steven Robertson

Equipment used to achieve these images

Links take you to B&H (the premiere online photo store) where you can view more details about each of these products, or purchase them.

• Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
• Lens: Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
• Tripod: Manfrotto 190XPROB
• Tripod Grip: Manfrotto Ballhead (322RC2)
• Memory Card: SanDisk Extreme 16GB
• Strobes: Two Elinchrom 600RX Monolights
• Light Modifier (Strobe 1): Large Photoflex Softbox with grid
• Light Modifier (Strobe 2): Medium Photoflex Softbox with grid
• Software: Adobe Lightroom & Adobe Photoshop CS5

To book your own personal photo session visit

http://www.jakegarn.com/booking (this particular session was a Long Shoot under the Model Portfolio section)

Yes.  But it’s still a total dick move.  :-)

Sometimes it’s annoying to see someone post work showing off their skills when clearly they’re making a full fledged effort to mimic somebody else, but the fact of the matter is we are all doing it.

That doesn’t mean we’re all consciously trying to be like someone else but every artist in the history of time tries to relate their art to the world around them, the only difference between good art and bad art is how successfully the artist hides it.

For instance, when I take a photo that is an original idea, say a model shooting herself in the head with Silly String.  A great idea and one I never, ever saw shot before.  An original idea… at least I think it is… that being said I won’t be surprised when someone links me to a photo very similar to it (but I haven’t seen one).

The problem is not one single element in this image is a creation of mine.  Silly String was patented in 1972 – five years before I was born, the model is an exquisite creation of God, and the satire of suicide by string is ironic only because of the more serious issue it alludes to.

My only contribution was to combine a bunch of elements (that are not mine) and show them in a new way.  Technically I haven’t actually created anything.

Isn’t that all that art really is?  A reproduction of some form of the life we know?  Can we really claim ownership of that?

Well the answer is a resounding YES!  We can copyright just about any artistic creation but where is the line between new and old?  When does a portrait of another person actually become the artists‘ creation?

Before I had a camera I drew.  That was my artistic release, and when I would draw I’d look towards other images to mimic.  Just as a type of practice.  I made this drawing in high school based on a beautiful photo in National Geographic.  Not my creation but I did bring a new element to it, I changed the medium from a photo to a drawing… what are the ethics of that?  Am I allowed to change someone else’s photo into another medium?

What about this drawing of Bob Marley I did during the boredom I endured at the outbound telemarketing job I had in High School?  Who’s art is it?  Is it the photographer that took the original image?  Is it the drawer?  Is it Bob Marley’s parents for giving birth to him?  The question can get a little blurry… but the fact is I didn’t have permission from the photographer to make a work based on their photo, but does that mean I can’t draw it?  Not at all!

That said the ethics in the art world are pretty well established.  Drawings (and photos) that mimic somebody else’s creation are great for showing off and practicing technique, but you should never put mimicked images/photos/drawings in a professional portfolio (online or printed) and claim sole credit for the creation.  That’s just not cool.  But a personal site or a critique website where you go to learn?  I think most people agree that’s fair game.

If you want to claim credit for work then make sure it’s not just a copy of someone else’s hard work and inspiration.  Take something from the world around you and make it your OWN!  If you really want a drawing to be yours you need to draw something that nobody else created without your help or input!  Or if it is based on something at least bring something original to the table!  It’s a lot harder to draw from real life but it’s a lot more rewarding… take this charcoal drawing I did nearly 10 years ago (not the greatest thing in the world but not half bad for a hobbyist).

My advice to you is to know the phase your work is in… if you are in the mimicking phase then don’t worry!  Everybody starts somewhere, but just realize that maybe you aren’t quite ready to slap that “XXXXX photography” logo on your images just yet.  Save that for when you start producing your own ideas, it’s much more rewarding that way!

PS – I looked quite hard to find the original photograph of the Lady in the Hat and Bob Marley with no luck… if you can find them post a link in the comment section, I’d love to give credit to the original photographers but I drew them about fifteen years ago!

For Immediate Release:

A solo exhibition from fashion photographer Jake Garn exploring the merging of style and identity in a culture of mass production.  Proceeds from print sales will benefit the Humane Society of Utah.

Opening Reception

July 16th, 2010 | 6-9pm | (a)perture gallery

1617 s. 900 e. | Salt Lake City

801.953.0109 | aperturegallery.org

rsvp info@aperturemktg.com

Food generously donated by Corbin’s Grille | Printing and Framing by Replicolor of Salt Lake City

at Trolley Square Mall

As part of The Hive gallery’s fashion month we did a live shoot at the mall (during open hours) for the public to come watch!  It was tons  of work, tons of fun and we had a great turn out of spectators!  Here is a behind the scenes look with lighting diagrams (click them for a full size view) and video which will give you some real life peeks at how everything was set up!  Enjoy!

Part 1

The Story behind the scenes of the Enlightened Collection

We shot these in November, and for those of you that aren’t familiar with the Salt Lake City area in November I’ll spell it out for you, it’s not warm.  Which meant we needed a heated pool or a plane ride out of Utah. The heated pool sounded cheaper.

We planned to travel south to St. George, Utah; an hour-and-a-half north of Vegas, which is close enough to taste yet far enough that you don’t get that Vegas after-taste, in other words a perfect place for this photoshoot.

Coordinating the nearly dozen people required for a shoot like this is hard enough, now try coordinating a 400 mile road trip on top of that.  Yikes!  So some of the details got put off to the last minute, one of those was the state of the pool’s heater, which we found out was broken about 24-hours before travel time.  After finding out that a timely repair wasn’t possible we immediately decided that a high of 54 degrees Fahrenheit in St. George’s November was not nearly warm enough for any kind of un-heated pool activities.  St. George’s November?  Sounds like a Guns N’ Roses song. Hey GnR – loved you in the nineties by the way!

So there we were, no pool and lots of people scheduled for a pretty major project that required a pool (no, you cannot fake water in photoshop realistically – in case you were wondering).  After about an hour of panicked phone calls to everyone that was important to the shoot I realized something… hotels have heated pools and we have lots of hotels in my hometown. So I called the manager of the Layton Comfort Inn to ask him some questions about their indoor pool.  The main question being, “Hey, after you close your pool tonight can I bring a model in there and do a test shoot?”

“Yes,” was his response.  Matt, the manager, and I go way back by the way.

Now I just had to find a model that was available with nearly zero notice at 8:30PM on a Thursday night, a Thursday night dominated by a cold November Rain no less.

If you are not familiar with the process of finding a last minute model let me tell you how it works.  You get your iPhone (which is the most amazing device ever invented, and if you disagree then you probably don’t have one) and start a new text message, then you add between 3 and 7 girls to send the message to.

“Why not text just one girl and wait for her to respond?” you ask?

I’ve become an expert in girl behavior and here is how it works, if a girl is busy they don’t generally actually say so, they just read the text message and keep doing whatever it is they were doing when they got the message – thinking in their brain that they’ll respond later.  Later usually means, “Hey, sorry I missed your text yesterday, what’s up?”

So I text multiple girls and if multiple girls say yes all but one of them is encouraged to “Answer quicker next time!”

Here’s a quirky little secret though, since there is a limit to how many girls I text I usually don’t go too far into my contact list before stopping… if you are smart then you may have noticed where this is going – girls with a first name that starts with a letter that is early in the alphabet tend to get more text messages about last minute shoots.  So, if you are Zooey Deschanel and you’re wondering why I haven’t called lately now you know. Hey Zooey – loved you in Almost Famous by the way!

Christie Iba

Christie is not only absolutely stunning but she is also blessed with a name that starts with C and a text-response rate of less than 2 minutes, which is solidly above average!  Christie had a problem though, “Can I call in you like 5 minutes?” she queried.

Fast forward five minutes. “Ok, I can come, where do you want me to meet?  What should I bring?”

“My house, swimming suit.”

“A swimming suit?”

“Oh ya, we’re going to be shooting in a pool.”  –Editorial note, I don’t like writing long text messages… so generally girls may not know exactlywhat they’ve agreed to!

I pack up my gear just as she arrives and we head over to the hotel, as we pull up to the brightly lit entry way I suddenly hope that none my neighbors drive by and see me pulling up to a hotel at 10PM with a beautiful girl that is not my wife… which leads me to a very funny story about my neighbors…

Unrelated Story about Jake Garn’s Retired Neighbors

Across the street from me is the nicest couple in the history of mankind, they are so nice that if I forget to take my garbage can to the curb on garbage day they actually do it for me.  Seriously nice.

One day, about a year before my wife and I got married my neighbor stopped me at the mailbox and she asked me, “So, I see a lot of cars over here with lots of pretty girls and we were wondering, is the girl with the red car your main girlfriend?”  So I had to explain that Jenny (my now wife) was my only girlfriend, all the other girls are models that I photograph.”

“Ooooohhhh, I see,” she said, “Well my husband is going to be sorry to hear that, he was pretty impressed with you.”

100% true.

Back to Christie Iba

I unload my Elinchrom 600RX Monolight with a Large Photoflex Softbox and put it right to the edge of the pool, as Chrsitie jumped in and got her hair wet… the pool was perfectly warm, the room looked great and this looked like it could work!  The shot?  Well it looked fabulous with the flash falling off perfectly across the water obscuring the other side of the pool into darkness.

I started calling everyone to let them know that our carefully planned road-trip was now a half-hazardly planned all-nighter.  An epic all-nighter.

Stay Tuned for Part II of the story, where we actually shoot!

Here’s a quote I heard from another photographer about some of my more over-the-top images.

“Anyone could make those, if I had access to your stylists and equipment it would be easy.”

This frame of mind is not unique to this particular person.  Many aspiring, and even established, photographers begrudgingly carry this thought around in the back of their mind.  It’s not even limited to photographers either.  The “I could do that if only…” mentality is absolutely pervasive in our culture.  Simultaneously diminishing the accomplishments of others and inflating ourselves to their level.  No wonder it’s so popular!

The argument falls apart, of course, when their creations don’t live up to their own expectations as being impossible to copy… of course anyone could pretend to be able to copy something someone else created.  I could have done an amazing portrait of Sunflowers if only I had Van Gogh’s free-time and toxic paint fumes, I could have treated your case of syphilis if only I could write a prescription for antibiotics, I could have made a billion dollars by inventing the iPhone if only I had access to Apple’s engineers and designers, it would be so easy!

If you have this thought in your mind then the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath, take a step back and accept this one simple fact…

It is your past that makes your present achievable

Yes, with the same stylists, equipment and ideas you probably could achieve something similar, the only problem is you don’t have those things… and I didn’t have them either, until I put in the work to get them.  If you want to bring a team of collaborators together in the creation of your own images then keep reading.

Everyone (stylists included) works for currency

I’m not talking about cash. This would be a pretty stupid blog post if all I did was tell you to gather a wad of hundred dollar bills together and call up a stylist (though that might work). Cash is only one form of currency in this world and the funny thing about cash is it’s value is completely invented.  Cash only exists in order to make it easier for the economy to work, but any economist will tell you that at the end of the day it’s the exchange of goods and services that has any real substance.  Cash is only valuable because you can trust you’ll be able to trade it for other stuff later… but I digress.

So forget cash and focus on a currency of real value.  The currency of talent.  It’s the stylist’s talent that makes you want to work with them in the first place right?  Well I have news for you, they want to work with talented people too!  So skip the cash and work on increasing the value of your own talent… that’s the first thing.

The Anatomy of Talent

In my mind talent is made up of two different, yet equally important parts.  A creative vision and the know-how to bring this vision to fruition.  I don’t care how amazing your idea is, if you don’t have the means or ability to create that vision into something tangible then the idea has no value.  The other side of the coin is all your technical abilities are completely useless if you don’t have an idea worth creating.

It’s actually not all that difficult to spend the time learning the technical craft of photography.  All it takes is time.  By the same token it’s not all that hard to come up with a “blow everyone’s mind” idea!  For instance I think it would be amazing to create a teleportation machine, I could charge everyone $50 to transport them anywhere in the world instantaneously.  I’d be a billionaire over-night.  Only problem is I have no idea how to accomplish this.

It’s the perfect marriage of these two elements that is rare, the ability to come up with achievable ideas that people care about and to actually see them through to fruition.  In other words you need to tailor your ideas to your abilities and simultaneously make them cool enough that people notice.

In that vein here are a handful of images that I created before I started working with a creative styling team.  All of these images/ideas were simple collaberations between the model and I, no professional hair styling, makeup or wardrobe stylists were used.  Just ideas.

Creating images showcasing ideas isn’t enough though.  Stylists want to know that you will be able to show their work in the best possible light (no pun intended?) and that means you need to know classic beauty lighting and composition. This means bright, soft light flooding your image. You’ll need to show you can do it over and over again so make sure your portfolio has lots of these types of images.  Over-reliance on photoshop effects and blurring the skin is a BAD idea to get this look, if you need to do that then you’re doing it wrong.

Once again here are a handful from my portfolio, again, all shot before I used stylists on a regular basis… and once again.  Notice they show off both technique and creativity?  That is important if you want them to be noticed.

When creating these images I did not have an agenda in mind, just a passion for creating them.  No money was involved, no class assignment, no commercial job for either me or the models.  I think that was the key.  Passion is the absolute best kind of fuel to drive your creative currency… without passion there is simply no way you can stand spending the time it takes to build it into something bigger than you are.

You HAVE to love what you do enough to actually go out and do it.  If the only reason you’re doing it is for the money then I’m sorry, you’re just not going to get good enough.  Shoot what you love so you can love what you shoot.  Don’t worry about creating what you think other people want to see… it doesn’t work that way.  People sense passion and people love artists that take risks, it may take some time for your passion to catch on to others and it is possible that it takes longer than your entire life (Van Gogh anyone?).

If that discourages you then you’re not cut out for the journey, after all… it’s the journey that’s the most fun.

What Next?

Here’s the beauty of this system.  I was in no hurry to start using styling teams, I was having so much fun that the thought never even really occurred to me.  Yet after creating images like these for a couple years I noticed something interesting happen and you’ll probably notice the same thing… your currency becomes valuable enough that it starts to be in demand.  When this happened to me I was taken a bit by surprise, and in several ways I’m still surprised to this day.  I really had no idea that my passion would translate into a currency that had value.  I was making them because I loved doing it, that was it…

Maybe that’s the secret.

Or maybe you just wanted to peek in and check it out just a little bit…

Well, you are in luck.  We have compiled an amazing set of styling teams including hairstylists, makeup artists and two amazing fashion designers along with nearly half-a-dozen models for a shoot the public is invited to watch, every step of the way!

As part of fashion month (which includes a several images by Jake Garn) at the Hive Gallery, on the second-floor of Trolley Square Mall, we will start styling at 4PM inside the gallery.

As models get finished we will be moving them out for on-location shoots at various places in the mall.  It’s free to watch and open to all!

I seriously hope to see you there!

Friday June 25th, 2010 is the day.

Trolley Square Mall, Salt Lake City, Utah is the place.

4PM to 9PMish is the time.

Zero, Zip, Zilch is the cost.

Neck Wrinkle (n) The overlaps in skin caused when a person’s head is turned with a seemingly unnatural angle relative to the neck.

Even though most photographers and models will create images that avoid overlapping wrinkles of skin somehow neck wrinkles pop up in professional fashion and beauty photography not commonly, but definitely not rarely.  There are neck wrinkles in a book titled “Fashion Photography” for crying out loud!

I don’t know why I allow myself to be so bothered by them.  Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to make posing adjustments to relieve the excruciating pressure required to overlap one’s skin on itself, or it might be because neck wrinkles remind me of over-active models trying too hard to show their arse AND their face, ala “Bikinis and Cars 18-month Calendar” style.

Whatever the reason, if there is a neck wrinkle in an image I just can’t stop looking at it (and thanks to this article I’ve now cursed you with the same affliction).  It’s like this, 1 of my 5 senses wants to abandon their post and render me temporarily deaf whenever I stumble onto one of Jay Leno’s monologues, yet my brain orders it to even greater attention, and in a true plot-twist my senses are repulsed but my brain is fascinated by the agony of it all.  So I cannot look away.

I even spend a few minutes talking about posing techniques that will eliminate neck wrinkles in my photo workshops for crying out loud!  It’s that big of deal to me.  I’m not condoning it, that’s just the way I am.

That being said sometimes, sometimes the perfect shot happens to have the wrinkles.  That’s just the way it is.  No amount of posing or time-machine can fix it.  The perfect comedy line-up just happens to include Jay Leno… what are you supposed to do?  Do you skip the whole event just because of one overlapping skin wrinkle?  Bless his heart.

The answer is of course NO.  You cannot abandon the perfect shot because of one dulwarp.

dulwarp (n) 1. Jay Leno 2. Neck Wrinkles.

So I’m working on a set of images I call the Chameleon Series. You haven’t seen the images yet, nor do you know anything about it because it’s a surprise (the series will go on display at The Aperture gallery in Salt Lake City on Friday June 23rd, 2010 – stay tuned for details) yet it happened… the perfect shot of one of the models just happened to have them.  I don’t know how I missed it during the shoot or if I noticed them and just didn’t realize we just made THE shot, but in any case I had to accept the fact that they were there.

THE shot (n) The shot of all shots in this particular look.

At first I just let them be, I thought to myself that I could do it. I could release an image with neck wrinkles, it would be fine.  But as the image neared completion I realized I couldn’t live with myself if Jay Leno accidentally made his way onto my TIVO anymore than I could put an image into this series with neck wrinkles.

So, I had to fix them and fixing them takes quite a bit longer than you’d think, yet it was all worth it.

Before

After (nearly complete)

• Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
• Lens: Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
• Strobes: 2 Elinchrom 600RX Monolights
• Light Modifiers: Large Photoflex Softbox & Medium Photoflex Softbox (both with grids)

• Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
• Lens: Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
• Strobes: 2 Elinchrom 600RX Monolights
• Light Modifiers: Large Photoflex Softbox & Medium Photoflex Softbox (both with grids)