This past week I went to Fort Worth to visit my niece Jenna at TCU. While there I determined to finally have a visit with an old friend from my time in Tulsa who moved to Texas back in the early fall.
Brittany At The Modern 1
When we both lived in Tulsa I was doing several large scale photography projects and she was kind enough to model for me on a number of occasions. She’s a friend who is up for anything, often seeing my vision for the image, but when not, trusting my ideas and the images that will come from my often odd posing requests.
Brittany At The Modern 2
She moved away many years ago but we kept in touch as she moved around the country for her career. We said if we were ever in the same city again we would have to get together. That finally happened when I moved to Dallas in 2020 and she moved to Fort Worth in 2021.
Brittany At The Modern 3
When I visit Fort Worth I love to hit their museum area. They have 3 world-class museums, not just for the art inside but for the architectural masterpieces they are housed in. On this day I decided to visit the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth for the first time. I invited her to meet me there to catch up and do a mini-photo shoot for old time’s sake.
Brittany At The Modern 4
I brought out my very old DSLR camera, a Panasonic G1 from 2008. I hadn’t used it in probably 3 years so it definitely needed some care to get it back in shape. It’s pretty archaic by today’s standards (even iPhone standards much less current DSLR cameras). It is bad in low light and can be quite grainy. I had to refamiliarize myself with how it worked, it’s been that long. Way more things to pay attention to than my iPhone, that is for sure. But it’s like riding a bike. Give me a few minutes and it seemed like no time had passed.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
As you can see from this photograph the Museum itself is a work of art. The signature architectural element of the Modern is a reflecting pool that surrounds half the building with 3 stories of long vertical glass panels that look out on the pool.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth – photo By Briaande – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 1Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 2
There are 3 pavilions that jut out into the reflecting pool that you can see from the other pavilions. There is art in each space so it’s interesting to see it through the prism of the water and architecture.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 3
The sunlight and shadows combine with the ripples in the water and the strong structural elements to make amazing visual impressions. The building itself is a work of art.
Earlier Work
Here are a few images from my earlier shoots with Brittany in 2013 and 2014.
Brittany at Philbrook MuseumYoga on the RocksEmotional WInd
‘VISUAL POEMS’ Photo-collage Series
I was doing a photo-collage series at the time called ‘Visual Poems’. She contributed to that as well.
The Meteorologist’s Poem
If you would like to see more of my photographic work, click on the ‘Art’ drop down menu at the top of the page.
She was standing in the back of the vintage store, trying to step out of her closet into the real world. She had found her style, her look but she was still tentative about stepping into the limelight, about getting attention for who she was. But she was halfway out and you can’t get all the way out without first going half way. I knew she would make it eventually.
The Model CS. I scouted out this area before she was done working so I knew I wanted to capture someone’s face with the beautiful light in the tall windows behind me. She obliged.
I spied this couple almost immediately as I got out of my car at the equestrian photo shoot. The woman in particular had that sophisticated equestrian look to her. I waited until after I said hello to the other members of the group to go over to them to ask if I could take their photo.
I predicted rightly that they would assume I wanted take photos of their faces and start to turn to face me so I stopped them before they could by saying I wanted them exactly as they were and that I was going to take the photo from the back.
‘The Observers’
Not many people get that idea, it is pretty alien to most people, and to most photographers. But I got the shot and that is what is important.
Another in my series of portraits. She was modeling for our local photo group. I walked away from the group, looking around the back of this barn they were using. I found this gorgeous rust and metal wall and immediately went back and stole the model away for a brief amount of time to get this shot.
Another in my week of portraits. This is a dancer/model from the Tulsa Ballet who posed for our photo group in the spring of 2008. I don’t know her background, but I see a real Russian look to her with her eyes and bone structure in particular.
This wasn’t really taken in London, it just feels like a victorian London scene, ala Jack the Ripper, so I titled it that.
The shadow is actually me shining a small flashlight on her face during a long exposure. I didn’t realize the shadow would be there but when I looked at it later it certainly had a very cool effect, adding to the content of the image.
I had to drive my father’s belongings back to California from Oklahoma in the fall of 2007. I kept my camera next to me in the rented moving truck and took a lot of photos out the window as I went. The Texas panhandle is one of my favorite areas precisely because there is so little to see there. What that actually means is that the interesting things you do see are spread out, they are alone, by themselves, easy to spot and appreciate.
Sometimes in dense environments, just as in a dense piece of art, it is hard to discern what is there. That is ok in a museum where you have time to look, but on a road trip it is nice to see something coming 2 miles away!
I stopped at a convenience store outside Amarillo and the clerk’s eyes were blindingly bright and blue with the west Texas sun shining in the window. I asked her if I could take some photos of her eyes and, though she was chided by her fellow clerk, she said yes and was a wonderful, albeit fleeting, model.
