This is a portrait I recently shot of my good friend and colleague Eric Becker, who is a director / documentary filmmaker.  For over a year, Becker has been working on his film, Sound & Vision, which “explores issues facing the nearshore environment. It is a film about the oceans, told through the stories of people working to clean up, protect, and restore habitat in Puget Sound and beyond. The film is scheduled for release this fall.”  I really like this portrait, because it hints at the chaos of documentary filming, while capturing the beauty of the Puget Sound that Becker’s film strives to preserve.

I was lucky enough to see the film at a pre-screening not too long ago, and it is really beautiful.  Not your typical everybody freak out, we have a problem documentary, but one that explains a problem and offers hope, as well as a call to action.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Becker and I will be leaving for the Philippines with Arts Aftercare next week.  I can’t believe it’s almost time to go.

Retouching by Gigantic Squid.

That being said, at the end of the month, I will be traveling to the Philippines with an organization called Arts Aftercare.  It is a nonprofit bringing the arts to survivors of slavery, which was started by my college friends Curtis and Grace Romjue.  The purpose of the trip is to train care workers in a new art therapy curriculum which will be introduced to survivors of sexual slavery.  I will be photographing survivors, youth advocates, and trying to tell the story of what life is like for people who are trapped in slavery, as well as those who have been freed.  Thankfully, I will be traveling with my good friend and filmmaker Eric Becker who will be telling the same story through video.  It will be a collaborative effort, and I am really excited to start working on this so we can shine a light in the dark places of the world.  I was shocked to recently find out that modern day slavery is a bigger problem today than slavery has ever been in the history of the world.  What’s even worse is that not only are many of the slaves children, but they are forced into sex 10 to 20 times a day.

A friend of mine emailed me me a video this morning about a girl who had been sold by her mother into sexual slavery.  I could only watch about 2 minutes of it before I turned it off.  This sucks.  I hate reading about this stuff, and it is beyond sad.  What is wrong with people? is the question I find myself repeating over and over.  I leave in less than a month, and I thought I should start writing about my thoughts as this assignment approaches.  My hope is that some of you will be inspired to take action, and in turn tell your personal network about the work that needs to be done.  I also feel like I need to do what I can to prepare myself for what I will be confronted with.  As my wife reminded me today, I tend to cover my ears and walk out of the room when I hear her nurse friends talking about something that makes me queazy.  I guess if I am being honest, I like to be comfortable, and I don’t like to be burdened.  Not really the best way to live life, as nobody ever said life was meant to be comfortable.  I also feel like you never know what is possible until you put something out there.

I know there are many of you who are already involved in fighting modern day slavery through organizations like International Justice Mission and others.  My hope is that by sharing this, some of you may feel inclined to help fight for justice by giving of your unique gifts.  Maybe you are a medical worker, a writer, a teacher…  The possibilities are endless.  We are also still looking for funding for a portion of this trip, so there is also a financial need at this point.  If you are interested in becoming involved, you can write me (john@keatleyphoto.com) or Curtis Romjue (curtis@artsaftercare.org / www.artsaftercare.org).  You can donate through the Arts Aftercare donation page and mention this trip in the comment field aftercare.org/donate.  If you have any experience with social justice, or working around such a heavy situation, I would love to hear from you.  It’s going to be a difficult trip, and I know I am going to need help and encouragement.

Thanks for reading.  I hope to share more about this soon.

In addition to John’s photography getting some great attention, the blog has too. Photoshelter’s 2011 round-up gave mentions of the blog, one for John’s VSCO Film review, and the other for the ever-popular Christmas photo and Woodsman short film that accompanied it. If you haven’t watched it yet, do, and if you’ve already seen it, you probably want to again so, here’s the link.

Plenty more great projects in the works, so stay tuned!

Hi Everybody! Just a quick post to introduce myself and express how excited I am to be joining the Keatley Photo team! I’ve recently taken the role of Marketing Director, and couldn’t be more ecstatic about both the role, and the amazing people (and animals) I am working with. I mean, who doesn’t want an adorable 2 year old with self-styled hair and a fist full of Cheerios waltzing past your desk from time to time to keep things light? Or a precocious Pomeranian greeting you in the morning? This all on top of the amazing artistic environment of working with John. We have some fantastic projects planned for this new year, and even in week 4, things are off to an amazing start of exciting endeavors. We are diving in head first, and I cannot wait for you to see the results as they unfold! So, hello Keatley fans, it is nice to meet you, and know this is not the last you will be hearing from me. Oh, and even though I often introduce myself as Elizabeth, many of my friends call me Izzy, so feel free to do the same. Happy New Year!! –Izzy

I hinted at a fun assignment I was working on last month on Twitter, and now I am excited to to be able to share the images with you.  I had a lot of catching up to do when I first got the assignment to photograph Murray Stenson from Art Director Jane Sherman at Seattle Weekly, but it didn’t take long for me to find out that Murray is widely regarded as the best bartender in the country.  Don’t believe me?Just ask Esquire, Playboy and Tales of the Cocktail.  It felt like when you get a new car, and all of a sudden you realize that just about everyone else on the road has the same car as you.  As soon as I got this assignment, it seemed like everyone I knew was going out to get a drink from Murray.  Apparently I was the last person to know.  I was quite excited to not only photograph Murray, but to also have a drink from him.

I did the shoot at Canon, which is a new bar in Seattle where Murray works, along with an all-star group of bartenders led by Jamie Boudreau who is also the owner.  There is a bit of a wait to get in, but I can tell you the wait is well worth it.  I filmed a short video of Murray mixing and explaining how to make an Absinthe Julep, which you can see below.  And yes, I did get to drink it after we were done filming.  Someone had to, and I didn’t want it to go to waste.  We did have to do 2 takes, but thankfully my assistant handled the second one since we were dealing with 124 proof.  For what it’s worth, I made sure the video was the last thing we did so my pictures wouldn’t be out of focus.

Although Murray has been written up in many other magazines, this article is the first time he has told his story.  It was written by Mike Seely, and is a really fascinating read.  Here is the link to the article if you are interested.  Along with the video, I also included a few behind the scenes pictures at the bottom.

Thanks to Jane Sherman for working with me on this, and thanks to Murray and Jamie for being such gracious hosts and subjects.  Photo retouching by the fine folks at Gigantic Squid.

Behind the scenes pictures by Lonnie Webb.

All you have to do to enter and win a copy for yourself is ReTweet our contest tweet with #keatley on Twitter, or like AND comment on the contest post on the Keatley Facebook fan page.  After that, you are entered to win!  One winner from Facebook and Twitter will be randomly selected tomorrow, January 20th at 4pm.  Be sure to check back tomorrow to see if you won.

Thanks to everyone for participating this week.  It’s been fun hearing from many of you, and even more fun giving some awesome gear away.

Be sure to check out more of the great products from Visual Supply, Think Tank, and Vanguard as well as follow them on Twitter for updates, and new offerings – @VisualSupplyco, @thinkTANKphoto, and @VanguardPhotoUS.  Good luck everyone!

I woke up this morning to get a Twitter mention and early Christmas greeting from @Strobist that my portrait of Annie Leibovitz is on the new cover of Spanish Esquire.  That’s an awesome Christmas present, and my first Esquire cover as well.

Big thank you’s go out to Redux Pictures (Lori Reese and Jesi Bevis, who tirelessly represent my stock archive and editorial assignments) and Esquire.

Esquire Spain
Editor in chief: Andrés Rodriguez
Creative director: Clara Montagut (her design department runs this great blog / found via CoverJunkie.com)
Photo Editor: Diego Martinez

Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope you are able to look back at 2011 with fond memories, and look forward to 2012 with excitement and anticipation.  That’s how I am feeling right now.

Here is the highly-anticipated 2011 Annual Keatley Christmas picture.  It feels so good to have this one in the can, and to finally get to look at it.  (You can click on the image to get a closer look.)  This year, we are living the good life, up in a tree, because that’s how we roll in the great Pacific Northwest.  Sorry to break it to you, but red flannel is the new cheesy Christmas sweater.  I know, just when you finally got around to planning that sweater party.  It’s not too late to trade ‘em in for flannel and an axe though.

As you may remember, in last years picture, we were with our yeti in the middle of Fargo.  (You can see all three of our Christmas pictures by filtering the posts with the ‘Keatley Christmas’ category.)  It went over pretty well, and because of that, I put a lot of pressure on myself to repeat or even outdo it this year.  Long story short, I over thought the whole idea and couldn’t come up with anything for about 5 months.  This has been a year of great learning and growth for me as a photographer.  I have had some things I had to really wrestle and struggle with for a good part of the year, but in the end, I feel like I came out with a much better perspective and idea of who I want to be as an artist.  It was only after I made some of these realizations that I was able to come up with this idea.  It was a difficult, but worthwhile process, and  I love how this picture turned out.  I think it’s a lot of fun to look at, and something I am really proud of.  Our dog, Oliver, on the other hand, well, he is just glad to be out of the tree.  In hindsight, it is also probably really fortunate that we did the yeti last year, because I can just about guarantee Isla would have passed out from screaming if we tried that this year.  She was so young last year, she didn’t have a clue what was going on.

If lumberjacks and outdoor types sound familiar to some of you, it is probably because of my short promo video, The Woodsman, shot earlier this year.  You can watch it at the bottom of this post.  It is worth pointing out, that lumberjacks and woodsmen are not necessarily a tight knit group, but they have been known to fraternize from time to time.  All that to say, for me, I guess you could call 2011 the year of the lumberjack / woodsman.  Who knows what 2012 will bring.  Stay tuned.

It’s been really fun to hear from so many of you about how you look forward to our annual Christmas picture.  It means a lot to us, and it makes it that much more enjoyable for me to work on knowing how much some of you enjoy these.  I am already looking forward to creating next years.  Thanks for taking a look, and I hope you will like, tweet, or share this if you enjoy it.

Photo Retouching by Gigantic Squid.