Welcome back Napkin Kin to part 2 of my portraits of 2012.  Yesterday I covered the Second half of 2012, July-December.  Today I am showing the first half with a bit of overlap, January to July.

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Niece, San Diego, CA, 7/12

Niece Jumping at Sunset, Del Mar, CA, 7/12

My drive down from Northern California in July ended with me at my sister’s house in San Diego.  I took advantage of the opportunity to do a photo shoot of my young niece. She was quite the natural and loved posing in the backyard and on the beach where I grew up.  My sister Jackie of course did a little stage mom thing, hovering, directing, etc. But my niece was a natural and didn’t need much help.  She looks a lot like our late mother and that was an extra blessing of being able to photograph her.

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Julia Wade, New York City, NY, 6/12

I went to New York City in June to speak and attend Blog World.  I met up with a dear friend whom I worked with back in the 80s and 90s at Eulipia Restaurant in San Jose, CA.  Then Julia was a struggling student focusing on opera. I did a number of drawings of her back then in various opera costumes for a huge drawing (I never finished).  Now she is now a very well known international recording artist of inspirational/spiritual music.  We found some time to walk and talk early one morning before our days started.  This was taken at a park right on the edge of the Hudson River.  She has a blog called ‘Inspiratus‘. Check out the interview she did with me back in 2009 and then click on home to see her latest entries about her new CD.

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Meredith Wood in Blue, Jacob Javits Convention Center, New York City, 6/12

While I was at the Blog World conference I, of course, needed to eat. Not knowing any good places around the convention center I did what any good social media person would do, I tweeted ‘who wants to go to dinner?’ using the Blog World hashtag. I got a number of responses and ended up going to dinner with Meredith and 2 others. Meredith is from NYC and knew exactly where to go for the best meal, which it was.

Her eyes are almost as brilliant blue as my wife Linda’s and when we returned to the conference I realized her and her eyes would stand out fantastic against the blue that was everywhere in the brightly lit lobby.  The next day we found an extra 10 minutes to take some quick shots. I was up on a bench to make sure I got the best blue background.

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Michelle Linn, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK 6/12

Michelle Relaxing, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK 6/12

I have been doing a photo-collage series for a number of years now called ‘IN Public/Private‘.  It is of reporters and anchors in the Tulsa area.  When my napkins started getting attention and reporters came over to interview me I basically told them, ‘You can interview me if I can take pictures of you’ and that is how it started.  In many cases I offered to take some ‘normal’ photos (my version of normal at least) in exchange for them posing for my collage image idea.  I also asked them to publicize my project to their co-workers to see if they also might be interested in collaborating.

Michelle was very excited about the idea and we met for the very first time at Philbrook to take the photos. Here are a few of the portraits I took of her. She was an enthusiastic delight and has since become a wonderful friend.  Ironically, so far her collage image ended up in a new series called ‘Visual Poems‘ not the ‘IN’ series I had intended her to be in.   You can find her at work in the mornings on Fox 23 here in Tulsa.

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Renaissance Faire Kiss, Muskogee, OK, 5/12

Renaissance Faire Gossip, Muskogee, OK, 5/12

In May I led a group of photographers at an outing to the Renaissance Faire.  The theme of the shoot was ‘stranger portraits’ and I spent some time before hand explaining to the group how to go about asking strangers to pose for you.  Of course, at a venue like the Renaissance Faire, it really isn’t all that necessary to ask since all the participants already know they are going to be photographed and most of the visitors are dressed up and want to be as well.  But it is good to know anyway because you often might have to ask them to move from where they are standing or sitting to get a good shot. Here are 2 double portraits I took while I was there.

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Caitlin’s Senior Collection 1, Waco, TX, 4/12

Caitlin’s Senior Collection 2, Waco, TX, 4/12

My step-daughter Caitlin (whose portraits can be seen in part 1 yesterday) was an Apparel Design major at Baylor University. She had her senior collection show in April of 2012 and I was lucky enough to do the photo shoot for the collection.  We found one of the most beautiful cemeteries I have ever seen to do the shoot, less than a mile from Caitlin’s house.  Here are two of the photos from the shoot.

We also were incredibly lucky to  have our first choice of model to bail on us. It freaked Caitlin out a bit of course but the result was we got Rebekah Campbell as our model instead. She had never done a real fashion shoot before and Caitlin was a bit worried about that. Luckily we had nothing to worry about. She was fantastic in her poses, facial expressions, taking directions and overall professional demeanor.  

In addition it turns out she is an fine art major focusing on painting so we had an instant connection creatively.  I am encouraging her to pursue both modeling and painting as best she can, I have no doubt she will be successful in both. 

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Portrait in Black and White, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, 2/12

Woman in a Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK 2/12

In February I took that same photo group I mentioned above to Philbrook Museum of Art.  This time the focus was on Black and White.  We weren’t only going to have the finished result in BW but actually set the camera to BW so they could see what they were getting from the outset.  

One of the photographers had his wife along with him but she was not doing any photography.   I persuaded her, in spite of her initial shyness, that she would be a fantastic model for those of us who wanted a person in our images.  She eventually got into it and it made for some great images as a result. 

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If you are interested in contacting me about doing a photo shoot you can contact me at the contact page in any number of ways.

If would like to see more of my work go to my website, MAKE Studio | Marty Coleman

All photos © 2013 by Marty Coleman | MAKE Studio – All rights reserved.  Sharing this page is perfectly fine but please do not reproduce individual without attribution and permission.  

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