Photographer Profile: Christiane Covington

Today I learned that a friend of mine from may years ago died on May 13, 2009, of a drowning accident on the island of Maui, Hawaii. Her name was Christiane Covington, and she was a lover of motion pictures and the craft of film making; I never knew anyone so passionate about cinema as Christy. We met while working together on Alex Seligman's UCLA graduate student film "Macaroni Casserole," where I discovered that Christy was an excellent photographer—the best I have ever known. She also had a lovely singing voice, and I had the privilege of recording a few songs with her.

In more recent years Christy worked as script supervisor on many feature films and TV programs, too numerous to mention here. But if you're interested, here is her biography on the Internet Movie Database.

Christy was a dreamer, and if she decided to do something, she would follow that path relentlessly until her dream was fulfilled. She was the first female dolphin trainer at Sea World--at a time when the field was dominated by men. She basically hung around until they realized that she wasn't going away, so they HAD to hire her. That was the way Christy operated. If she wanted something, nothing could stop her.

Christy was born with an aesthetic eye, and with creativity in her blood. She wrote many screenplays, directed many plays, and made several independent films. Her dream was to be a feature film director, and I know that if she lived, one day she would have met that goal, too.

I should also say that Christy was a very spiritual person and a peaceful soul, always seeking to know about life and her place in it. She had a boundless curiosity, a kind disposition, and loads and loads of talent. The world has suffered a great loss because she is no longer here to contribute to its well-being.

Here is Christy singing a song.

Here is a lovely video tribute, made by her sister, Cassandra.

This one's for you, Christy.

An Interview with Eolake Stobblehouse

Eolake Stobblehouse was born in 1963 in the small town of Karrebæksminde, Denmark. His father was a house painter, and his mother an artistically inclined bohemian out of Sweden. From early childhood, he exhibited a keen interest in philosophy, technology, and not the least, art. He studied the various techniques and disciplines of fine art avidly, and when he got a camera at age 11, he became absorbed by the possibilities of the photographic medium.

Stobblehouse has won many titles and medals for his fine photographic work, work which he later has expanded and refined in the digital realm. He also maintained an occasionally-successful career as a fine arts painter and draughtsman.

Beyond that, Eolake Stobblehouse is a writer of science fiction short stories for acclaimed American publications, and is currently writing about art and Macintosh computers for various magazines. He is published in the USA, the UK, France, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Italy and Spain. He is working on a book about art, creation, and aesthetics, and how they relate to the universe.

Norm: Eolake, you seem to have an eye for seeing the ordinary in life and turning it into an extraordinary photograph. What's your strategy here? Do you plan your shots beforehand, or simply carry a camera around with you wherever you go and shoot whatever catches your eye?

Eolake: Very kind of you. Well, I know photographers who work by putting on a camera like a shirt in the morning. But it never worked for me. If I'm not particularly looking for pictures, I rarely see them. Making photos is a intense mental process for me. I have to "kick the motor into gear" when I do it. Sometimes when I close the camera down and decide I'm done for the day, I can almost feel those high-velocity flywheels start to wind down.

So it's rather wearing, I can only do it when I'm fresh and I've specifically decided to do it.

I don't usually have specific pictures planned ahead, it comes about as a "collaboration with the world."

I often find that the pictures from one session tend to follow a thread, and be of similar mind and compositions. Maybe there's a particular Inspiration that one taps into and plugs into the world when one works like that, and the products reflect it.

Norm: What are your favorite cameras and lenses, and why?



Eolake: Oh boy, I can go on about that. (And sometimes I do on my blog.) My home is full of cameras, many of them classic ones bought cheap on eBay just for decoration. All of those are metal bodies, which you sadly almost never find on new cameras these days.

Back in the film days, camera evolution was slow enough that you could keep a Favorite Camera for ten years. But here in the first decade of the millennium and the digital camera revolution, things are going so fast that even good cameras seem obsolete practically after a week. This will surely level out after a while though. Maybe.

What I tend to like is cameras and lenses which let you work fast, and give high quality images. Especially when combined with a portable camera. So my ideal camera would be shirt-pocket sized and make pin-sharp wall-sized pictures, and take photos hand-held at night. It may take a couple decades for us to get that one.

I like compact cameras, because I'm usually a walk-around photographer, and a big camera gets irritating after a while, and attracts attention.

I also like automaticity. Auto-focus and auto-exposure allows me to concentrate on the composition. Of course, if you need to do special looks like a very blurred backgrounds for example, you need to know what the camera is doing and control it tightly. So automaticity will only take you so far.

Norm: It intrigues me that you run Domai, a website featuring lovely figure photography, and yet your own work seldom contains people. Can you explain why this is?

Eolake: Ah, that changes back and forth. I've done quite many pictures with people in the past, and I'll probably do so again. It only takes a bit more time to arrange and do properly.

Norm: Your photography seems to encompass the entire spectrum of emotions, but in a subtle way. For instance, here is humor, sadness, loneliness, and aggression. Do you find that your own emotions inspire your work, or steer it in different directions?

Eolake: I tend to work with pictures in visual terms, forms, lines, colors, textures, light. But people will always invest emotions into pictures, just try and stop them.

Norm: I personally enjoy your "theme" photos, for instance, your "Study in Scarlet" series is an awful lot of fun. Do you consciously seek to create themes in your photographs, or does it happen spontaneously?

Eolake: Often spontaneously, but it varies. In the case of the Scarlet series, I noticed it happening, and started looking for more subjects with red in them.

Series are fun. If you're lucky you get a bigger-than-the-sum thing happening. And they also make you work more consciously with the pictures, and grow.

Norm: Do you have any advice for beginning photographers who wish to learn more about the craft? How can they learn to be more creative with the photographs they take?



Eolake: These days there are hundreds of web sites where you can see pictures or discuss photography with other happy amateurs.

This may lead to the blind leading the blind though, so I also advice to go to the library and get all the books on photography they have, and also all the books with art photography they can deliver. (You may have to use the service where they get books from other libraries, since photo books are quite expensive, and each library don't have many.)

You can also join a local club. If you're lucky it will have some people who are really interested in pictures. Many people are mostly in it for the chat and coffee though, so you never know.

It is very important to enjoy and study the works of photographers who are better than you. If you can't find anybody better than you, you don't have a problem. Or maybe you do.

See more of Eolake's photos here.

Photographer Profile: Alen Sislen

Alen Sislen is passionate about photography; not just the finished photograph, but also the photographic process of visualizing and then creating the printed image from the millions of pixels, that when combined represent what he experienced when looking through the camera's lens. For him, the photographic process is not complete until he tries to convey to the viewer his excitement, whether produced by the play of light and shadow, by bold colors, by subtle tonalities, by rich textures, or by the intensity or even the calmness of the overall image. His goal is for the viewer to be moved or intrigued by what they see, regardless of whether their reaction is the same as what motivated me to make the image.



While he uses the most modern digital photographic equipment, his style and technique are traditional. In the digital "darkroom" it is not unusual to spend hours "processing" and printing an image that may have taken just 1/30th of a second to "capture." Although he takes advantage of state-of-the-art equipment, digital manipulation is kept to a minimum.



Through photography, he tries to communicate what motivates him to press the shutter release. The writer uses words; the musician uses musical notes; the painter uses brush strokes; the potter uses clay. Photography enables Alen to present the world around us in a way that stimulates more than the sense of sight, but hopefully, also evokes our emotion and imagination.



His greatest influences have been those with whom he has studied, including the well-known British landscape photographer Charlie Waite, widely published former National Geographic photographer Bruce Dale, digital expert Thom Hogan and fine art photographic artist and Photoshop master John Paul Caponigro.

Visit Alen Sislen 's website.

Photographer Profile: Michael Fatali

Michael Fatali was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1965. At the age of six, his family moved to Southern Arizona. The first introduction to his love affair with the outdoors began with many hiking and camping trips with his father during Fatali's childhood.

When he was fifteen, his mother passed away from cancer. Feeling this unfortunate loss, he began to rediscover himself and develop an intimate relationship with nature which nutured him and taught him lessons of our communal co-existence with the natural world. Even though there was a physical separation with his mother early in life, he feels a spiritual connection when he spends quiet times in places of mystery. His insightful understanding of our unified connections with nature has blessed him with a life mission to share with us all. The still frames of time which are reflections that mirror the glory from the Creator of light and power.

In 1990, Fatali was still struggling as an artist with the creative desire to improve upon making intimate photographs of the Desert Southwest. With only a few hundred dollars and his large plate camera, he and his wife hit the road and moved closer to the red rock country he loves so deeply. Fatali displayed his new images of the now world famous slot canyons by opening his first gallery in Page, Arizona. Publications and featured television stories soon gained him both regional and international recognition. His sensitive eye for canyon light has become his own unique photographic voice in the world of photography.

Visit Michael's website.

Photographer Profile: Robert Balcomb

Robert Balcomb, Master portrait photographer, lives in the Puget Sound area, having practiced portraiture for over forty years, from California to New Mexico to his present location. He is a graduate of the American Academy of Art, Chicago, and has a BS-Ed from The University of New Mexico and an MA-Ed from The University of Northern Colorado. He also was a faculty member of Olympic College, Bremerton WA, specializing in English grammar, technical writing, and public speaking.

Balcomb is not just a photographer. After the Chicago art school training, he spent two decades as an Advertising and Technical Illustrator—he emphasies the point that in order for one to consider himself a photographer in the world of Art he must necessarily be also an Artist, not just a shutter-clicker, as too many photographers unfortunately are. The Mortensen technique demands the touch of an Artist.

Balcomb’s exclusive technique results in portraits that are timeless, considered not just photos, but as works of Art, proud to hang on any wall. He has photographed people, many luminaries, from many parts of the world, including children and eventually their children, and then their children! They all know he is the only source for this most distinctive work.

See more Robert Balcomb photographs