Some more portraits of my beautiful friend, Maria.

About a year ago I took some portraits of my lovely friend, Cai Hall, during the period of time that I was taking documentary pictures of my closest friends. I met Cai in college during our ‘film school days’ and we’ve remained friends ever since. She is a filmmaker living in New York. Other than begin a great friend, Cai is a wonderfully talented artist and very strong woman whom I admire for all of the work she’s accomplished since we graduated.  A theme of this blog and goal of mine for this coming year is to photograph portraits of creative individuals who inspire me. So, I’m very happy to showcase these portraits of Cai today. Please check out her work at http://www.caihallfilms.com/.

In the spring of 2009 I made a decision to begin a meaningful and personal photographic project. Up until that point, I had been focusing primarily on developing my technique and style, and the only other photo project I had done was A Delicate Line. During a 12 hour bus ride from El Paso to Los Angeles, I thought about my artistic goals and about what kind of photographer I wanted to become. I realized that the best thing to do would be to take on a project that would help me begin that journey. Inspired by my visit and a song I listened to on my way back to LA, I decided to spend a few months taking documentary portraits of my closest friends in the hopes of coming up with a project that would be an exploration, introspective, and reflect my growth as a photographer. I am really very fortunate to have such a beautiful group of friends who have always supported me in my creative endeavors.  My friendships bring me so much happiness and inspiration; it made so much sense to take portraits of the people I spend most of my time with and who know me best. 6 months later I began my first shoot for Perennial.

These images are a collection of all the ‘friends’ portraits I photographed for those 6 months. I finally went through all of them, 2 years later,  and was pleasantly surprised to find that there were many images I really loved. You can view all of my favorites at this gallery : Untitled ‘Friends’ Project

These are some photographs I took of a Weekend Pilots show I attended a little while back. They performed for an audience on a downtown LA rooftop. It was a fantastic show, and if you want to see their performances for yourself, please visit their website http://www.theweekendpilots.com/. Their latest video is absolutely hilarious, so definitely check them out. Also click here to see more images I took of the rooftop show. More performances to come in the new year. Happy Holidays!

I recently had the pleasure of meeting a very beautiful and talented model, Maria. We collaborated together on a shoot about two months ago and I finally got around to working on some of the images. We shot very early in the morning at my old apartment in Sherman Oaks. Maria styled all the clothing and also communicated with me what her goals were creatively for these photographs. We shot for over 2 hours. The images below are a small sample of the entire shoot. I’ll be posting more of my favorites soon. Thanks Maria!

About a month ago I was able to photograph some more work for Perennial. Here are the most recent images shot for this project which began a year ago. To see the Perennial Portfolio just got to my website www.marlamontgomery.com

A few weeks ago I met 3 very interesting gentleman, Ray, Jay, and Dan. They perform together in a comedy band called The Weekend Pilots, and I had the pleasure of seeing Ray and Dan perform at a comedy show put together by my two comedic friends, Matthew Portman and Tatenda Mbudzi. I thought they were just brilliant and hilarious, and I made it a point to seek them out and ask to take their portrait.  So I met with the three of them and fortunately for me, they seemed to like my offer to document them and their shows and ultimately do a creative portrait shoot with them. Over the Labor Day weekend I attended a party they hosted to promote their latest album. The portraits I’m posting below are of Ray. Please click on the link to view the rest of the images taken of the party and their performance that night. http://www.marlamontgomery.net/photogallery/weekend_pilots/MM110905/

A while back I photographed a portrait for comedy band, Proxima Centauri. And just a little while later their guitarist and my friend, Dylan Mayer, left Los Angeles for South Korea. A goal I had in mind when I started this blog, which is essentially a theme at this point, was to photograph portraits of people that I find interesting, dangerous, strange, and/or adventurous. In a way, I guess it’s an attempt to indulge my curiosity and attraction to these kinds of people, and to explore their interests, talents, lives, etc. I’m particularly fascinated with people who have the guts to kind of just pick up and start a new life somewhere new and different. I think there is definitely something admirable about a person who can just change their life so drastically and take themselves to a whole new part of the world without having any experience or much preparation for it. I think it’s a true adventure.
Dylan did exactly this. I shot these portraits of him just before he left for South Korea. I had originally intended to take him in his Proxima Centauri Space get-up to the Antelope Valley during poppy season. Unfortunately, this year was apparently one of the worst years for poppies. So, on a whim I settled on taking him to Pyramid Lake…. some place north of LA and south of Antelope Valley. The lake left much to be desired. It was a weird place; it felt pretty dirty and uncomfortably empty. But the shoot was great; I let Dylan explore the place and I documented his ‘mini’ adventure there. Peter Berg, who is currently in Mongolia right now and was the subject in my first blog post, The Rubber Duckies, joined Dylan and I on this small shoot.

About a little over a year ago I photographed my first nude portrait session. Unintentionally, it took me a year to make my first edit of the entire shoot. It was a simple concept; I wanted to do nude portraits in a familiar setting without too much technical complexity. I shot them in daylight and focused on my direction and composition. I remember what I enjoyed most about the shoot was how ‘aware’ I felt about myself, my presence there, and the subject. By that I mean my self-awareness in being allowed to explore and observe something new about someone I know. And also to witness the subject explore her comfort and vulnerabilities with her body. I shot over 1,000 images that afternoon. Here are some of my favorites; and I have posted a body of work from this session in my portfolio Portraits II : http://www.marlamontgomery.com/portfolio/portraits-ii/

A couple of shots I took on my way to Flagstaff.