There are a lot of contests and awards these days, but the the one I get most excited about and the one that means the most to me is American Photography.  I let out a little scream today, when I got an email telling me my portrait of Macklemore has been selected into American Photography 30.

Here is a little more from AP about this years book:

“From 9,644 pictures entered by 873 photographers, magazines, agencies, publishers and schools, the jury selected, by a majority vote or better, only 357 images to appear in the book and represent the best pictures from 2013.

American Photography 30 will be printed in full color and distributed worldwide in hardcover immediately after The Party and BIG TALK, November 5-6, 2014 – our two annual launch events in New York City that celebrate the winners. All Selected photographers and entrants will be invited to attend both events with our compliments.”

I’m back in Seattle after some busy, yet fun trips to Portland and LA. Lot’s to catch up on, but I thought I would share a few of my recent iPhone portraits. The project continues to move ahead, and as always you can see more of them in my project section as well as on my Instagram profile.  This is something I have been working on for the past 9 months or so.  I have photographed over 200 people to date so far.  All with an iPhone, and some natural light.  Nothing fancy.  Just getting caught up in a moment, enjoying no frills photography and meeting new people.

A few weeks ago I wrote about my most recent shoot with Macklemore for the cover of The Source.  We also thought it would be fun to share a behind the scenes video to show you how the magic happened.  Thanks for checking it out.  Shout out also to Just 2 Guys for putting this together for us.  Cheers.

Well, you know what they say.  The family that get’s into an altercation with a 65 year old lady with big hair from Texas because she cut in line in front of us at the Nordstrom Santa photo booth together, stays together.  And apparently goes to jail together too.  I’ll admit this is all a bit embarrassing, but as you can see, we were a little tied up so to speak this last Christmas.  Not exactly how we envisioned spending the Holidays, but thankfully everything got cleared up and we are now back home.  I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to do our annual family picture this year, but thankfully one of the guards took this for us, and it turned out pretty good.  It is a part of our story now, so why pretend it didn’t happen I guess.

Oh, and is it too late to say Happy New Year?  Happy New Year everyone.  I hope you enjoy the new Keatley Family Picture.  And some of you thought we weren’t going to do one this year.  Please!

And one more thing.  If anyone want’s to help me pick up trash on the side of I-90 between Issaquah and Bend for the next 6 months, give a holler.  I would love your help.

What!?  That’s right.  We are taking this show on the road to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas this May 28th through Sunday June 1st.
Can you say lazy river y’all!  I think we are definitely going to be ending each day on the lazy river.  Heck, we may even do a shoot on the lazy river just because we can. It’s going to be amazing. We will be in paradise, taking pictures, relaxing, hanging out with some awesome people and of course learning a ton.

What really makes this so exciting is the unique location. I can’t wait to shoot on location and do some things I have not been able to do at previous workshops. We are definitely going to take advantage of our surroundings.  Take a look…

Above is a video from my workshop in Seattle last February.

Lighting The Keatley Way is going to be a blast.  I am going to do a couple of shoots so you can see how it all comes together.  We will be covering natural and studio lighting.  You will also get a chance to create your own pictures and experience the different lighting modifiers.  I will be sharing everything I have learned throughout the years to help you walk away empowered, excited and confident about moving forward to create work that will match up with your vision. Lighting and production is not as scary as it seems.  Sometimes we just need a little help and nudge in the right direction.

Marketing With The Big Boys is a really important class.  I can’t stress that enough. You can be the best photographer in the world, but without a solid understanding of building your brand and marketing it in the right way, you will never make it.  Marketing is king in business, and admit it or not, if you are a professional photographer, you are a business.  Artists hate to hear that, but it’s true. I majored in Business and have been at this for 13 years.  I am going to share with you everything I know and have learned over my career.  There are no secrets.  Just solid advice and a passion to see others succeed.  I will be covering so many things in this course.  Even things like real world estimates and invoices.  What to charge, self promotion, leverage, building a brand, social media and so much more.  My goal is for you to walk away from this workshop feeling excited about business!  I know, I know, but dream big right.

Find Your Style is a half day class for photographers who are starting out, or asking questions like, ‘How did you get to where you are?’  ’How did you develop your style?’  ’How do I find my style?’  Finding your style is more about understanding yourself than anything else.  It all starts with you and what makes you uniquely you.  I will be talking about my journey, and how you can begin or continue in your own successful journey as a photographer, shooting what you love and getting paid in the process.  We may even throw in a fun little shoot too, just to keep things interesting.

Signing up and reserving your spot only requires a 20% deposit, so no need to pay it all at once.  Come alone, bring a friend, bring your partner, bring your whole family!  That’s what I’m doing.  F-Stoppers is putting on quite a show.  There will be an awesome meet and greet, as well as talks on Friday by all 10 photographers who are teaching at the event.  Friday is going to be free, so you can get some great input from many different points of view.  The folks at F-Stoppers have also hooked us up with great rates on rooms starting at $160 a night.  Not to mention flights are pretty dang low right now, depending on where you are traveling from.  Sign up soon.  Spots are limited for each workshop.  Also worth noting, the room discounts will be disappearing 1 month before the event.  Let me know if you have any questions.  I hope to see you in the Bahamas!!!  Let’s do this.  Here is a link to sign up.

My rep asked me to come up with an image for a valentines day promo this year and the assignment was to interpret the color red.  I had the option of using an image from my archive, or I could shoot something new.  I love excuses to create new work, so of course I jumped at the opportunity.  Assignments like this are great because I enjoy having some sense of structure, or a goal, but it also allows your imagination to run wild by leaving things open.  Taylor and I had some fun brainstorming sessions over this, and our ideas were all over the place.  As usually happens with my personal work, we landed on one idea, and then the more we talked about it, the idea began to shift and change until we got here.  Going into the shoot, the idea was to shoot a different angle, but when working with bulls or other crazy animals, there is an element of taking what they give you.  I really didn’t want them to give me the horns so to speak…  Plus I realized while shooting that I liked this angle better anyway.  As much as we plan everything out, it’s always good to try to stay open to changes and improvements that come up along the way.

This shoot came a few weeks after working with Kodiak bears, and surprisingly enough, I was more scared of the bulls.  Almost terrified even.  It didn’t help matters that the rancher we were working with told me horror stories of people being disfigured and killed by bulls for about 15 minutes before he said, “Well, why don’t we hop in.” Sounds good.  Let’s jump a fence into a field of bulls.  Why am I doing this again?

So there you have it.  This was a really fun project from beginning to end.  Big thanks to Ryan Cleary on the beautiful retouching work as well.  Thanks for reading.  I hope you enjoy the image.

As some of you may know, last year I began a little portrait project with my iPhone and Instagram.  It began almost as an accident, but quickly became a project very close to my heart.  I have met some amazing people and heard some incredible stories along the way.  Like Jordan’s story for example.  Within just a few months, I got a call from KING 5 about going on New Day NW (watch video) as well as several other interviews.  One of those interviews just came out this month in Professional Photographer Magazine as a full feature.  As a photographer, it’s exciting to shoot for a feature, but a feature about my work is a whole new level of excitement.  Thank you so much to Jade Price and everyone at Professional Photographer for your support and interest in my work.  I feel like I am just getting started with my iPhone Portrait project, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.

Another amazing shoot with Macklemore!  Goes without saying, but The Source Man of the Year cover is a pretty big issue in the hip hop industry.  I’m so happy for Macklemore and all the amazing things that have happened this past year for him and Ryan Lewis.  The first portrait shoot I did with the guys was 2 days before The Heist came out.  This shoot was just two days after The Heist World Tour came to an end, and that really put it in perspective for me just how far these guys have come in such a short period of time.  Although, that’s not really accounting for the years of hard work they put in before the world started paying attention.  Well deserved if you ask me.  Now go get em at the Grammy’s!

Below are some of my favorite images from this shoot as well as some fun behind the scenes pictures.  We have a behind the scenes video in the works as well, so stay tuned for that.  Enjoy!

And that’s a wrap.  Thanks to my great crew for making this big production come together so smoothly.  I think we wrapped around 1:30 am, but everyone hung in there tough.  Behind the scenes pictures by the wonderful Olivia Lazer.  Makeup by Katya Gudaeva.  Styling by Cara Aeschliman.  Production by Taylor Reed and Pat Vong.  Retouching by Gigantic Squid.  Assisting by Gregg White.  And thanks Macklemore for the hat!

One of people I had the pleasure of working with in 2013 was the beautiful and talented Mary Lambert.  Many people know her as the featured vocalist on “Same Love” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, but I know her as Mary, easily one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard.  I had this old piano moved in for this shot, and Mary played and sang while we set up.  I’m pretty sure everyone on set took extra long to set up because nobody wanted her to stop singing.  It was one of those indescribable experiences, and a highlight of my year.

This shoot was for a great organization called Arts Corps in Seattle.  They do incredible work with young people in low income communities where there is little or no access to art.  It’s a program Mary was a part of when she was younger, and I was thrilled to work with them on this.  You can follow the link above if you would like to find out more about Arts Corps.  Special shout out to Art Director Patrick Mullins!

Here are a few behind the scenes images from the shoot.  I don’t like to brag, but Mary was dying to sing a duet with me, and how could I say no.  It was magical.  People were crying and leaving the room so quickly.  I think it was because they didn’t want ruin the moment.

It didn’t take long for the humans to panic.  Government had been spiraling out of control for 60 years, fueled by greed and corporate corruption.  Mankind had finally taken all it could from the earth, until the earth had nothing left to give.  The humans had long embraced the idea, live for today and take what you want.  The cries of those who recognized the consequences of such behavior were left to the minority and written off as crazy.  Men had convinced themselves they were invincible.  Once the Nelson Report came out, and Amazon’s infrastructure collapsed, people began hoarding resources and grabbing all they could for themselves.  Telecommunications were quickly shut down, and in less than 18 months, the US population had been cut by over 75 percent.  Riots, fires, murder, starvation and sickness spread with very little resistance.

As life has always demonstrated, sometimes it takes the loss of one thing to gain another.  Ironic and painful as it was, it took man’s near destruction of the earth to bring about a new relationship between man and animal as it was in the beginning of time.

The Rider has not survived in the new world these past 5 years because of his strength, or because of things taken.  He has survived because of relationships.  Primarily a relationship with his bear and with nature.  These things, which were seen as weak and useless before, have now become what is held most precious in the dark days.