Beanie Cap Guy

The Narcissus Series...

Narcissus fell in love with a reflection of himself as he stopped to drink from a pond in the forest. Even though he realized he couldn't have the beautiful boy in the water he sat there and pined for him and eventually died. In that spot a Narcissus flower grew and bloomed. This series began for me a few years ago with the first image below that I have titled Narcissus Gazed. Following it are two more images from the series, the ones following the jump being nudes.

Hudson...

I photographed Hudson almost five years ago on the beach in Laguna. This time he flew in from the east coast to work with me out on the Great Salt Lake Desert. For someone who isn't a professional model Hudson certainly does deliver the goods; what a treat it was spending a day with him taking pictures, catching up and jabbering endlessly about this and that and the other.

 

 

More pictures of Hudson after the jump. They're nudes so they may or not be safe for work, depending on where you work.

Snow White At The Water's Edge...

Snow White stopping to play in the water, somewhere deep in the woods near the cottage of the Seven Dwarves.

Snow White In The Woods...

I was walking in the woods today and thought I saw Snow White. She looked a lot like my grandaughter Taryn though, but I'm still pretty sure it was Snow White.

falling leaf and fading tree...

Some more pix of Becky from our shoot this week up in City Creek Canyon. Check out Becky's amazing handiwork in the scarf she's wearing: black laceweight merino wool knitted to perfection on little teeny tiny little needles. And of course to wrap things up Becky is modeling one of my fal collection Pussy Caps. The green scarf she's wearing in that picture is also her work.

 
  

I have to admit, it's amazing experiencing fall again after more than twenty five years in Southern California where it basically doesn't happen. Whenever anybody talks about fall colors now I will always think of Becky.

Becky In Her Fall Colors...

It had to happen...

 

In the first picture Becky is snuggling one of my Pussy Caps and in the next she's modeling one of her handknit scarves. More detailed images of her extraordinary lacework will follow but for now this will serve as a reminder that in some parts of the country fall is in full swing!

The Day Matthew Shepard Died...

 

photo by Gina Van Hoof

Eleven years ago Matthew Shepard was beaten, burned and brutalized and left to die in the cold night air outside of Laramie, Wyoming. He was tied crucifixion style to a fence on a desolate prairie outside of town where he was found unconscious the next morning by a cyclist. His death five days later in a hospital in Ft. Collins sent shockwaves around the world and triggered an avalanche of grief and outrage. His killers, one of whom had been a mormon eagle scout, are each serving 2 consecutive life sentences and will never again be free. Matthew's legacy has become a part of the fabric of my life, as it has the lives of so many others both within and outside the community.

At the time of Matthew's death I was living alone in a little cabin in the Granite Dells outside of Prescott, Arizona. My lover Les had died a little more than a year earlier there in that cabin and I had withdrawn from the world and disappeared into a solitary existence. I don't remember exactly how it all unfolded but I had just purchased an old used computer from a pawn shop, my first ever, and it was online with that old computer that I found out about Matthew's death.

Even though I didn't know Matthew I was so overcome with grief at his death that I sat in front of my monitor sobbing and feeling as though Les had died all over again. Out of that grief came an outpouring of feeling that I typed out in my first computer composed essay that I posted somewhere online amidst other expressions of love and caring for Matthew and his family. As a result of that posting one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco found me and asked if I would come to San Francisco that weekend to read the essay aloud at a candlelight vigil being held in Matthew's honor.

The Utah Collection...

My first coffee table book is finally underway and will be called The Utah Collection. It's shaping up nicely and should be ready to go to press in a few weeks once I feel like I've completed the shooting I want to do and made the final decisions about which images to include. Here's a sneak peak from the book; Heather Shepard Gardner dancing at sunset out on the salt flats.

 

I will self-publish one book to send to publishers in the hopes of attracting an offer for mainstream publication and will also be taking orders for the book here and on my websites. There is almost no money to be made in publishing a book of this nature but it will help promote my photography work. By the way, the above image is virtually untouched. I bumped the contrast a little and that was it; what you're seeing is what Heather and I shot in that moment out there on the salt at sunset. No retouching, no airbrushing, no cropping. Below is the book's cover.

Titian Child...

Perhaps if Shirley had been a redhead...

Rare Old Photo...

I was going through some of my stuff and found this old photo I'd taken of Leonardo da Vinci many years ago wheh I was living in Italy. It was a little messed up and ripped and stuff but I took it into photoshop and did some work on it and I think it's fairly presentable now. Leo was a lot of fun to work with - kept hitting on me but I just smiled and said no thanks and kept shooting. So here you go, Leonardo from the town of Vinci...

Time To Go Home...

from this...

 

to this in just one day...

 

Boy, the seasons change fast around here. I guess it's time to go home.

Bradley The Plein Air Artist...

I photographed Bradley Clark this week up in the mountains above Park City. He's a professional illustrator and also does extraordinarily beautiful watercolors working a plein air as you see him here. I promise you, you'll really enjoy a visit to his website.

 

Brad and I were good friends in college - he's a singer and we made a lot of music together and even did a recital together our sophmore year. He took off for Art Center in Pasadena where he met his wife Cindy, who's also an illustrator and then they moved to New York and I didn't see them much after that. They recently moved to Salt Lake after three kids and nearly thirty years in upstate and I've had a wonderful time reconnecting with them. Did some headshots of Brad a few weeks ago and now these shots of him painting.

Our families come from the same area in southern Idaho but we are not related by our last name. We are however related through marriage; I believe we have great aunts who are sisters, something like that.

Almost 30 years later I can still see so clearly why I liked Brad so much when we were kids in college. He's bright, he's talented and he laughs at my jokes; he gets the subtleties of my humour without ever having to explain a thing and vice-versa. It's nice. And hey, he's got a gorgeous voice and a beautiful wife. What more could a guy want...

 

I am surrounded, always, by such wonderful people. I'm not sure I know anybody luckier than me.

 

On Being Gay...

When was the last time you distinctly thought about being straight? Kind of like, "I'm straight and so today I'm going to act like a straight person." Or, "Let's see, since I'm straight I'm going to write in my blog about being straight." It wouldn't even occur to you, would it.

That's kind of how being gay is. It's not like there's this constant thought about being gay, In fact, there's probably never much thought about it at all in my mind, except perhaps for when people ask questions about it and I do my best to answer. But even then it seems a little strange because my being gay is as much a natural state of being in my life as being straight is for you. I don't look at my reflection in a store window and think, oh wow, there's a gay guy. I don't see gay when I look in the mirror. I see me.

I don't think about being gay any more than you think about being straight. It's that simple.

So what is gay then?

Updating Myself...

Thought it was time for an update to my pictures so I asked my friend Jason Santti if I could snag some of the pix he did of me at the Labor Day BBQ. Right up there next to my daughter Auri's pictures of me I think these are some of the nicest anyone has ever done. And kids, that's exactly what I look like right now a few weeks before my 56th birthday. No tinkering in photoshop - just Jason and his new camera and me.

 

I see the aging and I'm fine with it. I know who this guy is. The curls are back and I'm loving them more than ever; I made peace with them almost 40 years ago when I looked like this:

 

This thing called aging makes me a little sad sometimes but like all of us I have no choice but to surrender. I don't know if true gracefulness with aging is even possible but I'm gonna give it a shot.

James...

James flew me into LA this past weekend to do some headshots of him and his sons Maurisun and Maisun. Los Angeles was on fire of course and the air was thick with smoke but we had a successful day of shooting Sunday and finished up with an hour on the beach at sunset in north Malibu. Here's just a couple of shots of James at the beach.

 

 

It was good to be home even if it was just for a day and a half. Soon I'll be going back and putting down some new roots. It's time.