Utah Family Portrait Adventure on Film & Review

I love working with Sadie (her art will knock your socks off), Nick and their girls are exactly my kind of friend-clients. Permissive, up for anything, open and creative allowing us to get into a very out-of-time vibe that’s a lot of talk, talk, photo, snap, chat, walk, notice, create.

We made our way up to Utah’s Snowbasin on opening day when the mountains were transformed to one of Sadie’s imagined snowy scenes and the location and togetherness made for a laid-back family portrait session adventure on film (film notes below)

Thanks for the kind review, Sadie…. (keep reading)

“Ashley has a very open and playful way about photographing. She has an ease about her that makes the person being photographed feel calm- she lends a bit of her confidence if you lack some. She's very collaborative about vision and ideas. She's excited about her projects and can pivot on a dime if some other idea pops up. She's willing to take the time, explore till the vibe you're trying to achieve is accomplished. It feels like her top goal is to give you this timeless gift of these photographs, little snapshots in time that are genuine and deeper in content than the standard portraits. She wants to infuse the images with as much realness and spirit as she can, and she does.” - Sadie

Film & session notes:

Backdrop- Ultraviolet Backdrops

Film- Kodak Gold 200

Camera- Rolleiflex 6001 Professional with 80 mm lens

Film rating & development notes- Box rated the film, set my light meter to ISO 200 and “push” the film 1 stop in developing (+1)

Scanning notes: Frontier+borders at The Find Lab

now+film notes: Into it. I was a lil worried the whites would blast out any detail but no! Love!

Gygi on Film

Snowy drive, hot drinks, a winter walk to the meadow with Gygi. A lil talking, a lil crying, a little screaming in the trees.

These last few years Gygi and I have both lost our parents, connected already, we’ve seen each other deeper as we’ve stumbled at the threshhold of death and experienced the strange rebirth that has come in its wake. Her deep presence. Her deep love of life. The way she inspires me to be. I love you Gygi.

Film notes:

Very foggy, snowy day- first snow. Shot rated at 200 pushed a stop on the Rolleiflex 6001.

Film notes:

Camera: Rolleiflex 6001 w 80 mm lens

Film: Portra 800 rated at 200 pushed 1 stop in development. So that means the ISO is set to 200 and then in development you do this THIS which adds a dollar to the cost. WORTH IT.

Lab: Standard scans at The Find Lab Scan with borders on Frontier

the arrow goes where it will go

I’ve had some pretty cool experiences in my life but this one really stands out.

A group of close friends hired me, met me out at the Salt Flats and when we got there the salt flats were flooded. Water everywhere. One of our cars got stuck, we had to get towed. We pivoted together, making something out of the unexpected- beyond original vision.

I hold the ideas that initiate a creative work very lightly. Creative results aren’t beholden to the initiations that bring them into life, anymore than we live genuinely when beholden to what our parents think we should be.

We
steady the bow
and the arrow goes
where it will go.

And that’s good enough.

Client Review, Andrea Updike

“I cannot believe how uninhibited I felt shooting with Ashley. I have SO MANY issues with how I see myself and my appearance in real life AND in photos and I didn’t care about that at all during the shoot. Those concerns that feel like bricks were not even present. I had COMPLETE trust that whatever we were going to create together, I would love.

Ashley also created an EXPERIENCE that provided absolute specific intention and purpose for the shoot. This was not about taking "cute photos where I hopefully look thin to myself and others," NO, not one single ounce of that. This was about something so much more, about documenting motherhood, womanhood, and the human details of my life at this very moment with two heaping scoops of my unique style & personality - none of which is actually tangible and CAN ONLY be presented/captured by artists alike because it is ALL a matter of interpretation.

It is not even about the physical things I wore during the shoot even though I love them, they were vehicles of sorts - this was about all the feelings, emotions, and energy I described above directly associated to the true intention of the shoot.”

Thank you, Andrea. For trusting me and yourself enough to make a magic neither of us could have made alone.

COLLABORATION // A Brief Waltz in a Little Room: 23 Short Plays About Walter Eyer

My continued partnership with Sackerson is a source of deep pride and pleasure. From the actors and artists to the organizers and minds behind each production, I am urged to go deeper and tell evermore true and important stories, more honestly.

Sackerson's upcoming immersive show "A Brief Walt: 23 Short Plays About Walter Eyer" has just been announced today and tickets are available beginning August 23rd. A Brief Waltz is a thought-provoking and intimate experience with heart, story, and feeling pulsing at the heart-center of this worthy cultural story written by the brilliant Morag Shepherd Alex Ungerman Shawn Francis Saunders and Matthew Ivan Bennett.

Images and art direction by Ashley Thalman Photography
Hand painted canvas backdrop by Ultraviolet Backdrops
Actor/Character with Robert Scott Smith

Portraits with Maddie Beeton

I remember the first time I met her. The women crowded around the pine cabin table set off-center in the room. She wore a tank top. Hair pulled back, rings, earrings, jeans, whatever. The soul showed. I held back my feeling of recognition because I was the host this go around and she the attendee but, I knew I had found a friend.

Maddie Beeton is filled with insight and poetry. She is soul wise, curious, brave and adventuresome. We’ve consumed so much coffee and cried and laughed knowing they are the same thing. I like to cook for her, she likes to listen. We like to rip the world apart and put it back together again with time and the time we chose to spend together.

A few weeks after my ex-husband moved out I had a stem cell transplant in my eyes and she was there. She knew the divorce was long-coming. She had been there, she knew.

I wish every woman had the blessing of someone who had been there, and could understand. She knew the pattern that came of sobbing sorrow and the way that good memories come back for seconds, dipping into regret. She was there day after day, tending to my home, my dog, my heart, my strange and specific needs for darkness. She knew that I was recovering from a binge of bravery that only time would sort. And it’s sorted. And Maddie has been that rare friend that cheers me. She loves when I’m doing well, she foresaw a lot of the good that I’ve found and she reflects that back to me with kindness.

Maddie isn’t afraid of being in the middle of life, on the frays of the uncomfortable, uncommon, or wild. We go together like that. She is one of the most dear people to me and I love her without end.

I photographed Maddie at Ultraviolet Studios and we followed the session up with food and talking about aliens and the soul. As we do. You can find Maddie and her adventures on Instagram at @madelinebeeton and at her website HERE.

Seen- Nursing Portraits

Only a few days after giving birth, shirt stained with mother’s milk as she lives and breaths the new life from inside to outside her.

This is one of the myriad ways motherhood takes and gives and changes shape. A peek into the world of motherhood, of the fourth trimester, of the hazy days so precious and heavy and fast.

This is a phase, a phrase, a holy blip of a consequential ritual with tethers that bind us from ancestor to far-flung successors.

Thank you Stephanie for letting me see and share.

Photo of Stephanie Hawkes. Find Stephanie HERE

Canvas backdrops by Ultraviolet Backdrops