#douglasfur365

[douglasfur365]

@desertreak, and @silverwilddesign 2023

For various reasons mortality influenced a lot of the work I made in 2023, at times I planned shoots unrelated to just to give myself a break. But everything was leading up to this shoot. The concept of what gets left behind on earth was very present in my mind. I think the first element I knew I needed was the cholla skeleton, then I thought how interesting it would be to pair that with seashells from the Salish Sea, the tulle was a textural choice that was rooted in funeral veils. But those are just objects, @desertfreak and @silverwilddesign were the final piece to this project, they were more than what you see in the images, they were true collaborators helping build this entire concept.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #medium format #tmax 100 #Pentax 67 #Tucson photographer #Tucson model #Arizona photographer #black and white analog

[florezcarolina]

We’ve been called to strip down to truth. Because only from this space can we simply be in the awareness of this moment. We let go of illusions in order to create from place of groundedness. Of what’s real. You know and Spirit knows, but it’s accessible only when you recognize truth. And you speak with the truth. No more illusions, no more people pleasing. Just you in your power. #listening. Photo by @douglasfur365

#listening

[douglasfur365]

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, 2022 on the occasion of my 39th birthday.

Today I turn 40. I certainly don’t feel 40, or maybe I do. I know don’t feel as old as I thought my parents were when they turned 40. I’m genuinely not sure how I feel about this birthday, 39 kinda sucked, I felt kinda shitty most of this past year mostly stemming from a pretty late discovery that I have a wheat allergy. I never understood what exactly people with chronic illnesses meant when they talked about the depression they suffered as a result of their illness, after this year I certainly do. At least I can say that I was never alone… literally because as it turns out I’ve also been living with a parasite, maybe still, only time and medication will tell. Last year I visited New Orleans for the first time for my brothers wedding, the next day on my birthday I took a cemetery tour. It was really just happenstance that I found myself here on my birthday, but I have been thinking a lot about mortality in my work recently so maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence.

#douglasfur365 #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #film photography #nikon f100 #kodak ultramax 400 #kodak #New Orleans #cemetery no. 1 #st. Louis cemetery #Marie laveau #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

Ari, 2019

I got this piece of advice from my writing professor in college that has always proven to be effective. Put the work away and give yourself some space. Give yourself the night to sleep on it, a week, a month, or in this case four years. When I took this photograph I was “all in” on a project titled Rituals and Routines for which I had grand plans, then mentally I fell off a cliff and moved on before I could finish. At the time I thought these pictures were beautiful but I didn’t know what to say about them, then four years later having basically put them away since I shot them it’s like I’m seeing this for the first time.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #seattle model #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #film photography #Nikon f4 #kodak colorplus #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

Jenny O. 2017

I don’t know, but I suspect that many of you weren’t around in 2017 when most of my posts were music photography related. So it would make sense that many or most maybe even all of you have no idea that before I did whatever it is I do now that I spent many years running a music blog out of Seattle called Secretly-Important. I’m not a musical, I was just a guy who loved the music that was being made in the early 2010’s and because I obsessively researched it I thought it was worth sharing with others. That led me to photographing shows, and soon after photographing the musicians I interviewed. This one here with Jenny O is probably my favorite, between September of 2012 and this interview her first album Automechanic quietly became one of my favorite albums. In that time I’d become awed by her songwriting, and fascinated by her as a person. I unceremoniously let the blog die a year later, a mixture of life with two kids and my increasing dedication to photography left me with too little time to devote to keeping up with the latest in music. There was perhaps a little part of me however that felt very satisfied with what I’d done over the years, and that Jenny O was perhaps as good as my blog would ever get.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #35mm #canonetql17giii #Jenny o #music

[douglasfur365]

@desertfreak_ 2024

Let me start here, if you haven’t already been down to &gallery to see the Food Fight show get on it! There’s some really amazing work on display there. I bring that up because I did this shoot for that show, and I was working within a short time frame. I am extremely grateful that there are people who I can reach out to, say ‘this is what I’m doing and I need to do it like ASAP’ and they are right there with enthusiasm. Why Honeydew? Honestly, it was affordable and I was going to need 9 of them. Also I had this pink backdrop and I wanted something that would contrast with that. The pastel pink of the backdrop and the subtle green of the honeydew worked perfectly together.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #photography #fujifilm #fujixt3 #Tucson model #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer #fuit

[douglasfur365]

Roxanna, Barrio Viejo 2023

I really don’t know if I was really the person to shoot this project as it became what it did, I’ll let you argue whether or not. What I do know is that I am the one who went ahead and did it. I hope and I think I was able to provide an experience that was freeing, unique, empowering, maybe even fun. But really I am grateful that there are people out there who read some vague description and thought, yeah I’ll do that, because if nothing I definitely asked a lot of those who contributed to this project.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #medium format #film photography #Pentax 67 #ektar 100 #Tucson #barrio viejo #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

Desertfreak & Silverwilddesigns

When everything for this project came together it affected me in a profound way. These remnants of the cholla, of once living sea creatures, of mineral, of metal, placed with the soft and very living flesh of people.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #photography #fujifilm #fuji xt3 #Tucson #tanque verde #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

Florence, 2018

Dipping into the past, which I said I was going to do regularly when I wiped my feed a year ago… but then never did.

I remember being very frustrated by this shoot after the fact, not by Florence, but with my many technical failings. I missed focus on too many shots, which kicked off a year long obsession of finding the perfect camera to alleviate my chronic difficulty in nailing focus. I also felt shame for my ignorance of metering for people with darker skin, an important skill that rarely gets discussed. Lastly I look at the poses and wonder why I didn’t suggest this or that pose. Florence approached me about shooting and continued that go-get-em confident attitude right into our shoot. I think I went on auto-pilot and let her fully dictate the flow without much input from myself. But having said all that, when I look at all the keepers from the shoot, they’re really special. How many shots should be really good out of 50, 100, 150? I don’t know. Why didn’t I shoot any black and white? Why did I shoot so much of this with a 28mm lens? All these questions I’ve asked myself and not spending enough time really appreciating the excellent work that did came out of this.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #medium format #35mm #portra 400 #Nikon fe #hasselblad 500 c/m #kodak colorplus 200 #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

No. 9 @desertfreak and @silverwilddesigns

In so many ways 2023 was all about working up to this shoot. There are so many layers to what makes this shoot so special, not the least of which was working with both @desertfreak and @silverwilddesigns together. This was a perfect Tucson fall day. And this was the emotional peak of my feelings of fear, curiosity, and acceptance of my own mortality. This shoot is about death, it’s about what is left behind, but what surprised me is the tenderness that came through in the end.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #medium format #pentax67 #tmax 100 #fujifilm #fujixt3 #tanqueverde #tucsonmodel #tucsonphotographer #arizonaphotographer

[douglasfur365]

No. 8 @Slut4horchata 2023

Over the years I’ve been asked about doing some Halloween shoots and being totally honest they just don’t appeal to me. But when @slut4horchata posted a reel from a few years back looking to do something similar I reached out. I was inspired. Within just a couple of days we were meeting up in downtown Tucson. Overall this was mostly a video shoot, where we came up with interesting shots and then filmed it with the hope that we would have enough interesting material to put a couple of reels together. It was so much fun shooting this laughing, and just doing whatever goofy or interesting idea came into our heads. In general I’ve learned when I’ve shot enough or when I need just a bit more. That shot with the candles was the result of a really amazing gentleman from the Historic Bates Manor who saw us shooting in the parking lot and was gracious enough to let us briefly crash a wedding the was occurring inside, if I hadn’t felt I needed maybe one or two more shots we never would have got this.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #portraits #ghosts #Halloween #Tucson model #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer #fuji xt3 #fujifilm

[douglasfur365]

No. 7 @desertfreak and @hannie_o with makeup by Des

The strangest turn that 2023 took for me was this. While editing my previous shoot with @desertfreak I started putting together this story in my head that we’d kind of worked on in the moment, but it led to some frustration that I hadn’t taken that concept further. I began thinking about how for this shoot I could really lean into that idea, scrapping what I’d planned out previous and take it in a new direction. As I planned shots I wondered if this would all be better as a video, my recent acquisition of a Fujifilm Xt3 made it possible to shoot this as I envisioned, and so I began story boarding. I owe big thanks to both @desertfreak and @hannie_o for being game for this change and going for it with me. We shot it all in one night and it has inspired me to work on new video projects in 2024. When can you see it? I’m submitting to some festivals while I work out how to find a permanent home for it to be seen.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #fujifilm #Fuji xt3 #monsoon season #Tucson model #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

No. 6 desertfreak 2023

We were supposed to shoot something else on this day, plans got delayed and I reached out to Desertfreak and Desi who did the makeup to see if they were still down to shoot, if not the original plan, something else. Right before we started shooting I felt my confidence and inspiration completely drain from me, I secretly begged for everyone to cancel, I cursed myself for having pushed ahead with a shoot. Once we started shooting however I found that we were putting some great stuff together, for not having a strong plan I felt like this work made on the fly was really stunning. This shoot led us to what we did next together and as it turned out we’d shoot together three of my last four shoots this year.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #medium format #Pentax 67 #trix-400 #fujifilm #Fuji xt3 #Tucson model #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

No. 5 @gracemotel 2023

Have you ever watched the behind the scenes of a movie that was supposed to take place in the winter but shot in the middle of summer, so all the actors are walking around in parkas with gloves and hats but it’s also 95°. Well this shoot looked hot and it was hot, though maybe not as hot as it actually was. What I have learned is that when inspiration really strikes me if I don’t act on it I maybe never will, so when it occurred to me that @gracemotel was perhaps the perfect person to Hustle to Disco in the desert we made it happen, 100° temps plus be dammed. For anyone else silly enough to attempt the same here’s a short list of what I brought to make this bearable: 1) Lots of water 2) An umbrella 3) small cooler w/ ice packs 4) a wet and frozen towel.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #photography #medium format #35mm #Nikon d7000 #Pentax 67 #tmax 100 #disco #desert #Tucson photographer #Tucson model #Arizona photographer

[douglasfur365]

Seraphina, 2023

After I finished editing I sent Seraphina a message saying how much I felt these images we shot, I’ll leave it at that. I look back at any of these images we shot and I can really feel the emotions. In fact I’ve been feeling a little lost since I finished editing because I’m compelled to do more with this shoot, but what exactly?

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #photography #portrait #San Francisco #SF model #Tucson photographer #Arizona photographer #Nikon #Nikon d7000

[douglasfur365]

Seraphina, 2023

San Francisco, early march with Seraphina who embodied this entire concept more wholly than I could have imagined. I could have chosen any image we shot this day, but I chose this one. The desire to show off all of them at once can only be tempered by somewhat arbitrarily choosing one image and sharing that first.

#douglasfur365 #portrait photographer #film #film is alive #analog #analog photography #medium format #film photography #hasselblad 500cm #trix 400 #San Francisco #San Francisco model #Tucson photographer #az photographer