I was asked to do a sort of quick engagement photo session Saturday night while the couple were in town to visit mom. So after work I went to work(You know being a photographer is more lifestyle choice than work!) So I got see Whitney Bergendahl again, I had met him about 12-13 years ago soon after he and his family moved to Crawford County-I took his picture and it ended up in The Meadville Tribune. He was a kid--11 or 12 at the time. He is now in his early 20's and getting married. His fiance' Rachel live in Ohio. It was a short, but fun shoot where we joked around a little and tried to find a nice engagement portrait they could use as an announcement in the paper(he'll be in The Meadville Tribune again). I'm sure this won't be the one for the paper, but I like this and the one below as out-takes of the shoot that are nice portraits of their love for each other. SayerMotter Photography by Richard Sayer
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When I posted a coupon earlier the first person to respond reminded me of this photograph I took. I had come back from Long Beach where I saw a collection of George Hurrell pictures and I was inspired to attempt some glamorous portraiture. I had met a few inspiring models and asked to work with them. One of these sessions I met Morgan who was perfect for this harder lighting with her strong chin and cheeks bones. We made several nice photographs that day including a portrait we have used as an advertisement a couple of times. This was one of my favorite shots from the day. I never really did anything with making an image black and white, but leaving one color showing through before this work started. Its not easy to do this successfully. I see a lot of attempts at it, but few successes. I usually end up either going full color or full black and white myself as I find it difficult to control sometimes. SayerMotter Photography by Richard Sayer Check out Sunday's Meadville Tribune to see that we were one of the top three photo studios in Crawford County.
Saegertown's Brittani DeVore is heading to Pittsburgh this week to compete for a Miss Pennsylvania crown and some of the many scholarships available from the Miss America pageant organization. I arranged to photograph Brittani this morning at 8 a.m. She is a busy busy girl. We had to meet so early because she was getting a new car at 9:30 and had to be to work by 11. She is also competing in the Miss Pa. pageant starting on Sunday and then moving to Nashville after that. I've photographed Brittani several times over the years and she is pretty impressive and very nice young woman. I liked this photo I took of her (I was actually checking my exposure for her formal portrait but liked the image of her adjusting her dress and made a second frame). It looks almost like a posed dancer photo, but also looks candid. I like how she knew exactly how she wanted her dress to look and didn't bother hoping I'd suggest it. She and 6 other area girls will be competing for the Miss Pa. crown. Meadville Tribune photograph by Richard Sayer
I took these two pictures on June 10. Karen and Aaron are homeless. They are living in the woods near French Creek just off Bessemer Street on a piece of land they have permission to camp on. The recent heavy rains soaked them and their tent as well as all their belongings. I'm not sure how they got to this point and its not my place to judge them by any means. They were very nice to me and I asked them some pretty personal questions being a journalist. I know I'm in no real position to help them, nor do I know if they want help. They simply just don't have a home and are finding a way to survive. Aaron is looking for employment and acknowledges how hard it is to find work when he is homeless. I asked them about winter and they mentioned that if they don't find a home by September its time to hit the road and head closer to family or where it is warmer. I might try to check back with them periodically to see how they're getting along. A story about them and area homelessness will appear in Sunday's Meadville Tribune. Meadville Tribune photographs by Richard Sayer
Next to my desk at the Tribune is a wall with few things posted, a few phone numbers of photographers I need to contact on occasion, a list from Harmony Motter on what makes good photography, a few tea bag sayings, a picture of Bob Dylan holding a sign that reads 'Dig yourself,' A photograph I took of Santa Ray Eldridge and a photograph I took last summer at the Crawford County Fair of Nancy Kopf(folks pronounce it Cupps). Yesterday I got to photograph Nancy again, she is a very kind and fun loving person, sort of a Mother Theresa only with jokes and a big laugh. She does great work in Peru and our story will focus on her efforts to help people(a lot of children) in this region of the world. The picture above I felt shows her as that caring saintly mother Theresa type and picture below with her Piranha necklace having just made a fierce face but couldn't hold it for long before busting into laughter. She's a pretty special lady and one of the people who I've come across in my job that really makes me understand why I love what I do. Someday I might try to accompany her on one of these trips. Meadville Tribune photographs by Richard Sayer
You know when a pile is the result of several small piles then piled together? Well I've been going through one of these piles. Since I'm a photographer, and have been for over 205 years now every pile I have, somewhere within it, there are photographs. I have slide boxes of photographs shot on slide film, I have slides in slide holders in three ring binders. I have prints and negatives, boy do I have negatives---and thats not even counting the 3 or 400 discs I now have with images. Anyway, when I go through these piles I end up looking at pictures and remembering them and thinking of things I can do with them. When I was between 16 and 24 I hung out with Chris, Joel and Ray alot. I have thousands of pictures of them. One thing we used to do alot was go to the beach--never in the summer time, always in the winter. The winter beach is my favorite. I took this picture, I believe on New Years Day. The absence of Ray tells me we were probably in high school still and Ray would've been grounded, but the vignetting sort of leads me to believe that maybe it was after high school (vignetting was from the UV filter rim on a very cheap lens that I had directly after school) and maybe Ray was behind me. Joel is hunched over because he was cold--Joel was always cold because he only wore a t-shirt, maybe a flannel and his leather. I used to love rolling the window down in the VW bug and listening to him complain about how cold it was. Anyway, I still lie this funny ad/fashion shot of Chris. Chris was also the guy leaning against the no trespassing sign I posted back in the beginning of May. Old school photograph on slide film by Richard Sayer(I made this digital copy by holding the slide up to a light and shooting it with my Micro 55mm lens)
The great part about organizing stuff (you know those piles that turn into piles upon piles that end up being a pile that you just someday have to deal with) is that you stumble back upon parts of your life that you might not be thinking about--but perhaps should be thinking about. In the mid-90's I made several portraits, all on black and white film. These were exploration portraits, meaning I wanted to search for the character of a the person, not just take a resemblance. I asked my friend Ingrid to pose for me a few times and I think I made two, perhaps three or four pretty nice telling portraits of her. Yesterday, in one of the big piles, somewhere down near the heart of the pile was a book of slides I had taken of my work. In that book were two of those pictures of Ingrid. This was one that I especially liked because I felt it really captured her searching.
When I was looking at this picture I took last weekend of Eric and Rowan Scout, I got to thinking about fathers and their role. The way Scout feels at this moment in time with her dad kissing her cheek---thats how dad's should make their children feel. I guess the ones that do this often are good dad's. I know father's day is coming up and I've never been good at acknowledging these 'days,' but my dad (and mom) made me feel like this far more than they made me feel bad so they do deserve to be remembered for it. I think Eric is a great dad and that is a wonderful thing to see, a young man taking the responsibility that, to me, is beyond his years and doing it very well. Eric, Aimee and Scout are expecting a fourth Reinagel to arrive in the near future and I'm going to guess that I'll be able to photograph this kind of happiness many many many more times. SayerMotter Photograph by Richard Sayer. Father's Day is June 20th (Pop, in case I forget, Happy father's Day!)
A second one today because the event is special enough(and I posted the other one too early!)6/5/2010 Meadville High School team sports have been a little low over the last few years, but this year's volleyball team was very good, second in the state good and they proved that this weekend in Penn State by coming very close to winning a state championship. Meadville's leader, senior Adam Barba is seen in this photo holding the 2nd place trophy at Park Avenue Plaza as the team boards a fire truck for a parade through town. It was a very solid season for the bulldogs. Meadville Tribune photograph by Richard Sayer
I was sent to photograph the owner of a local restaurant. The assignment read something along the lines of 'they are known for their cheesecake and the owner will tell you who to photograph.' When I got there the owner really didn't want to be photographed and set up a piece of cheesecake on a table and basically said--'see what you can do with that.' Now the assignment is for the local Chamber of Commerce magazine so I was really expecting a very enthusiastic response, but just didn't get that. As I've said before I'm a people photographer so taking a picture of a piece of cheesecake was a challenge for me. I did this picture to hopefully show a little of the flavor of the place and make a visually appealing image. What was torture was that there was a glass of wine and piece of cheesecake that was for me to photograph, not eat and drink. My belly is actually rumbling a little as I write this. Meadville Tribune photograph by Richard Sayer
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