Four images by Todd Spoth as they appeared in the 2010 show, "Convergences"

Back in June I was invited to participate in a group gallery show put on by my good friend, Alfonso Cantarero. The show, entitled, “Convergences” featured a lot of amazing work by several local artists from different backgrounds and disciplines. Once I saw that most of the participants were amazing illustrators, painters and street artists, I was humbled to be chosen as one of the few photographers to show. The show held a great opening night at War’Hous Studios Gallery on June 26th and featured some awesome music and good food.

In preparing for the show I struggled a bit with what I wanted to show. My anxiety only increased when I saw that most of the other artists were street artists. After a bit of thinking I came up with an idea. I had been sitting on some nice medium format scans from a few months ago (see this older blog post about the medium format images here) and thought that this was a great opportunity to showcase those. Since those images were square I decided to create a 2×2 grid of square prints. Ideally, I would have loved to have added additional images to make the grid larger, to possibly a 3×3 or even 4×4, but given the time and space constraints I went with 4 simple images.

I consciously chose images that were fairly recent (all but 1 was captured in the last couple of months) as well as images from my archive that were fairly unseen (besides being posted on the blog that is). If it isn’t obvious already, I love vibrant colors, so I wanted the prints to be displayed in color versus black and white.

As for the theme of the images, it came to me while struggling between wanting to showcase my portrait work and showcasing more of my abstract work that is not usually seen by many. I ultimately decided on a compromise and found 4 images that were centered around 1 person, but were still semi-abstract. Since the eyes are one of the most important component in a portrait I decided to choose 4 images where the eyes of the subject were obscured or hidden, giving the subjects a level of animosity and imposing a sense of mystery on the viewer.

Given the feedback of a few visitors to the gallery, I believe my theme was a success. Two of the images are digital captures, the other two are film scans. Each are 20″x20″ print was chemically produced onto Kodak E-surface paper and professionally mounted onto 1/4 inch foam core.

Now that the show is over I will be selling each of these prints for just $75. The proceeds from the sale(s) will help fund an exciting upcoming project. The prints can be shipped anywhere and I can accept any form of payment so please contact me if you are at all interested!

More detailed info on each image is below.

This image is from a playful underwater shoot we did back in May at a very upscale condominium complex here in downtown Houston, Texas. The high-rise had a roof-top lounge pool that offered nice vistas to shoot against. We had access to a very nice (and expensive) underwater housing for our digital camera rig during the shoot and took advantage of that resource. The rig itself was VERY challenging to say the least, but it was a blast getting to try something new. I have underwater housing for my smaller digital rigs, but this was a whole new animal. This particular image was something I had captured in between sessions. Most of the portraits were shot with the models half in and out of the water and this image, shot as the model playfully jumped into the pool after her session was wrapped, was one of my favorite outtakes from the day.

This image, which is one of the two medium format film scans, is actually of my brother, Zach. We had just acquired the Lubitel twin lens camera and had taken it to a family gathering. I took my brother outside and had him pose in front of some foliage in the backyard. Being of that age, he feigned interest and I captured this image of him wiping his face between takes. I’ve loved this image and moment from the first time I scanned it in.

This image is the other medium format film scan of the 4. It was actually taken on the same roll as the above photo, only minutes after that image was captured. It was my first double exposure with the Lubitel twin lens camera. I really liked the brush that was growing in my father’s backyard so I captured an image of that and double exposed a portrait on top. I believe she was touching her face for some reason. This was another in-between moment that I loved. You can barely make out her right eye. We haven’t put many rolls through the Lubitel, but to this day, this frame is still my favorite.

This final image was the only image captured more than a few months ago. It was taken on July 19th, 2009 in the Limpopo province of South Africa. I believe we were in a van headed towards a game ranch in Alldays when I captured this. There was beautiful scenery all around us and I was stuck in the dead middle of a van stuffed with people and gear. I was annoyed at the fact that I did not have a window seat to capture drive by images so after a little thought, I made it work in my favor.

As we wrap up the first week of the new year I can’t help but reflect on the past year. There were struggles as there are with anything, but I’d be remised if I didn’t sit back and be thankful for the good things. I met a lot of great people, made a few new clients, learned a ton of great things and made a few decent images along the way.

2009 was the year I was blown away by being accepted as a participant into the Eddie Adams Workshop.
2009 was the year my first major documentary project premiere to a sold out audience of over 250 people.
2009 was the year that documentary project won not 1, but 4 awards including a Gold Remi.
2009 was the year that I owned the copyright for 100% of the images I captured.
2009 was the year that I got to visit 5/7 continents in the span of 4 months.
2009 was a good year.

Here’s to 2010 being even better. The short piece above showcases about 65 of my personal favorites from 2009. They may not have run, they may not have been the best pictures, but they are my special to me in one way or another, so sit back and enjoy.

I have a laundry list of things to do and update and one of the most important things on my “to blog” list is my images from my trip to southern Africa last July. I spent a little over a week exploring various locales from the coastal villages near Cape Town to the border of Mozambique. I worked on an essay on big game hunting near All Days in northern South Africa so stay tuned for a blog about that. In addition to the big game hunting essay I experienced so many species in their natural habitats just wondering about. Sure, we’ve all been to the zoo, but seeing a pride of lion, a huge herd of buffalo and countless elephants free and in the wild is an experience I won’t soon forget. I don’t think I can ever appreciate the zoo after such an experience. I hope that I’ll have another experience in Africa soon as this past trip was absolutely incredible. A gallery of a sampling of my images from the trip is below.

PUBLICATION OR LOCATION: AFRICA (self-published photo book)
PUBLICATION DATE: January 2010
LINK: n/a
NOTES: This little book has been a long time coming. Back in July of 2009 I spent a little over a week exploring Southern Africa and came away with a diverse set of images from the coastal villages near Cape Town to big game hunting near the border of Mozambique. I decided to take a few of the selects from the journey and put together a nice coffee table photo book. The book is being self-published via Blurb.com and will hopefully look great. I will try and take some images of the actual book when it arrives, but for now you can preview some of the various layouts below. They are in no particular order and are only a small sampling of the actual pages.

During my visit to Africa in July of last year, I spent a couple of days with Joeseph Ramakokovhu and Ruben Mhiangu of the Marula Lodge. The pair of native South Africans from the Venda and Sotho tribes, respectively, work as trackers for the big game lodge that caters to foreigners. The owner of the Marula Lodge, Gerard and his girlfriend and partner, Linda are experts in their field. Gerard knows just about every species of wildlife, flora and fauna in Africa and Linda, being the director over Africa for SCI, an organization devoted to hunters rights and conservation, is no slouch either. Collectively the couple is a powerhouse of knowledge on not only the region, but wildlife and hunting all over the globe.

Being from Texas, I was raised in a culture of hunting, I used to spend nearly every weekend with my father hunting geese and duck, but over the years I’ve grown a bit disgusted with the thought of killing an animal. I’m no PETA member, nor am I even vegetarian, but the only thing I shoot these days is my camera.

The few days I spent with Gerard and Linda made me appreciate the act of conservation and hunting as long as the hunters are actually honest and educated rather than just out for a cool-looking trophy for their wall. They helped us realize that sometimes we have to hunt elephant because uncontrolled, their species, as destructive as they are, can systematically wipe out hundreds of other, lower, species.

I still don’t intend on picking up a rifle and heading out to the bush, but I did learn, and had a great experience while doing it. This short photo essay entitled “Killing to Conserve” is the result of my time on the Marula Lodge. The first 18 images of the slideshow is how the essay appeared in my most recent portfolio book. The sequencing might change periodically. The rest of the images are outtakes.

Intro: Alldays, a remote village in the Limpopo province of South Africa, is known for its abundance of Mopane tree bush, arid climate and diamond mines. Situated near one of the largest active diamond mines in South Africa is the Marula Lodge, a private game reserve devoted to the preservation of the sport of big game hunting for conservation rather than poaching.