CollinMartin Photography Blog

Matthias St. John is a friend of mine that I met many years ago through rollerblading. Matthias is an incredibly intriguing character. His passions are in photography and rollerblading. He used to be known for being a giddy straight edge young kid that would bring sparkling grape juice to New Years Eve parties. He broke the edge a few years ago and tests the limits of the world is some wild and weird ways now and I’m not necessarily referring to drugs here. It seems that he couldn’t care less about living and being the norms and is practically impossible to predict. He doesn’t try to go against what is popular just to be different. I think he is actually just on a different, or rather, his own level. He is human. He enjoys the company of others and casually follows the happenings of the world. But what’s strange and unique about Matthias is his interpretation of these happenings. Some may try to explain away his vision as psychosis or simply an oddity. Before I spent this time with him and shot these photos, I didn’t have the slightest clue how to explain Matthias. Now, I suppose I may have less of a clue. However, I can tell you that the person with a psychosis is the person who tries to interpret Matthias through a simple, understandable explanation.

In the Spring of 2011, I heard Matthias was going to leave to California for the summer in a few days. I decided it would be interesting to document his last few days in Chicago while he tried to sublet an apartment in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago that he’d been sort of squatting in. Our mutual friend Nick Norton let Matthias stay out the last month and one week of Nick’s lease at the apartment. Matthias had the idea to try to sublet the last month of the lease to someone and use this money for gas to get to California. Once he got to California he’d live on his link card and skate. That was the plan at least. On his way to California he decided to stop to skate a spot in the West Suburbs of Chicago. He fell and broke his elbow seriously enough to need surgery causing him to have to cancel his trip altogether.

Here are a couple shots of the installation of these photos at Gallery 657:

An article about the Chicago based hip-hop producer Void Pedal featuring a photograph of mine has been published in the Chicago Tribune in hard copy (above) and online.  Void Pedal’s Record Release Party is tonight at the Abbey Pub in Chicago, IL. Click here to buy the Void Pedal LP and CD directly from the Fieldwerk label.

Void Pedal – Looking Glass by fieldwerk

We shot the DLux 2011 Spring Jacket line in mid January on what was likely the coldest day of the season. The high during the shoot was about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. When you include the wind chill at the height we were at, it was literally just about unbearable. Our model, Jon Kleyn, had to change in and out of spring jackets over about a 4 hour period without being able to warm up. Our location was in a relatively remote area where we were unable to return to the car. This was Jon’s first time modeling and he showed that he was down for pretty much anything and was also able to take instructions very well. I’d recommend him to any photographer looking for a fresh face in Chicago.

The location is an abandoned silo just few minutes from downtown Chicago. The crazy thing about this place is getting to the top. You have to climb a fire escape ladder about 100 – 150 feet up. The stairway is missing the first 5 landings or so making the turn from one staircase to the next borderline terrifying. I decided to avoid the hassle of lugging lighting up the stairs and to shoot only natural light. I shot with a loaned canon 50D and a low end 3.5-5.6 lens so noise was a bit of an issue. I’m holding off on buying a new camera as long as I can hoping the Nikon D700X (or whatever Nikon decides to call it) becomes available soon. At the top of the silos are two sets of enclosures. Once inside, you have got to be extremely careful not to take a misstep and fall into one of the many hatches in the floor that are missing caps. It’s much easier to do this than you might think. While you’re looking through the lens of a camera and realizing you’ll need to back up a bit to get the shot you want, it could be easy to accidentally step into a place where the floor is simply missing.

I need to give credit to Dan Busta on the concept of using the backlit dust. Thanks Busta. It’s amazing what you can do with only sunlight!

Here’s a before and after photoshop image I shot for an author. There are three stages shown. The first is as shot. The second is with modest retouching. The third is with heavy retouching.

Here are some shots of another roommate of mine named John Campell and my girlfriend Elizabeth. Another roommate of mine, Corrine is partially pictured as well. We were hanging out and I realized how sweet his yellow/orange wall is in his room so we needed to take some pictures. John is a pretty well known comic artist. Elizabeth is a very pretty and funny girl who likes to read books. Corinne likes to paint with oil.

Here are some shots of a few of my friends (from left to right) Luda, Chrisp and Travis. These were shot while we were hanging out at the studio. These kids just looked too hipster to pass up shooting them. We had some fun. Try to excuse Chrisp’s pubic hair.

Shooting Notes: These images were shot with my D700, 24-70mm zoom at 1/250th (I wanted to see how some images came out if I shot right around my sync speed. I think it looks interesting. You can see the fall off on the left side of the vertical images), f/9, ISO 200, with an alienbee light boomed out directly over my lens for most shots. I did a little toning in Lightroom 3 Beta and thats about it.

Christia is a repeat client of mine who is an entrepreneur. We shot these images for her to use as self promotion.

Shooting Notes: Christia is a fun person to be around and loves to smile. However she is picky about her hair. We had to take special care to place certain locks in certain places because sometimes changing the angle significantly changed the way her hair looked. This image was shot with my D700, 1/160th, f/10, 36mm on a 17 – 40mm zoom, ISO 200. I lit this with two lights, each at about a 45 degree angle to the subject, one light diffused with a large rectangular soft box turned so the long end ran vertical and the other light had an umbrella. The background color is “Thunder Grey”.

We just wrapped up shooting the images for the Jordan Craig Spring 2010 catalog. Here are a few of my macro shots. These images were shot with my Nikon D700, 60mm Macro Nikkor lens and one Alien Bee at full power bouncing off white savage background paper.

As you may have noticed, I moved to a new live/work studio space. I really love it. My rent is lower and my roommates are awesome. It needs some fixing up bit it’ll be great in no time. Above you see some shots of Troy Pryor and Jason Cates after a catalog shoot for Jordan Craig we did yesterday. I used the overhead incandescent light that is inside of this sort of beauty dish shaped reflector and a soft boxed flash rim light. I loosely white balanced for the incandescent light making the rim light a blue tone.

Here is a shot of my new roomate Anthony. This morning he convinced himself that he was color blind. This evening he sees in color.

These are the WSOB girls from the southside of Chicago. They stay on business and flex.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with the labels Jordan Craig and D-Lux for almost a year now. The people there are great to work with. Brian, the art director is very flexible and gives me a lot of room to express my own creativity. The first image above is the cover of the Jordan Craig Fall/Winter 2009 catalog. The image below that is a glimpse at what the catalog layout looks like. For the full look book feature my photography, go to JordanCraig.net. The site is live as of today! Below is a short video of the photoshoot made by Nick Brazinsky.

Jordan Craig Photoshoot: Behind the Scenes from Nick Brazinsky on Vimeo.