Garden and Landscape Architecture Photographer Susan Seubert in Portland Oregon

One of my first assignments was for Garden Design Magazine back in 1998.  It was shooting a story about a landscape designer in Los Angeles named Chris Rosmini.  She not only had an extraordinary garden in the middle of the city, but she also had amazing collections of things.  Suitcases, alabaster statues, and other ephemera were strewn through her three bungalows.  Last summer I was asked by Portland Monthly Magazine to shoot a series of front yard gardens. The assignment was not nearly the deep investigation of space that the Rosmini story was, but fun and a way to learn about garden design from a completely different vantage point.  Here is the story which is running in the April 2010 issue.

The opening spread of Ketzel Levine's front yard garden

a boxwood hedge to keep out dogs and a more formal approach to a front entrance

Ketzel Levine's front yard private space and Marina Wynton's habitat garden

The images were made with a Hasselblad Camera shooting with Kodak 160VC film and a few of the pictures were made with the Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105mm Lf/4 IS USM lens.

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Portland Photojournalist Susan Seubert shoots for the New York Times

I had the incredible pleasure of spending a day at home with Wendy Burden, author of the forthcoming book, “Dead End Gene Pool.” The assignment was for the Homes and Gardens section of the New York Times and the story was just posted this afternoon on the Times’ web site.  We spent the day photographing her amazing collections of ephemera, her arrangements of said objects and, of course, her.  There is an online web gallery of the photographs on the New York Times’ web site which you can see here. The book is scheduled to be released April 1st and promises to be a fantastic read.  It’s a witty memoir about growing up in luxurious surroundings but in a deeply dysfunctional family.  She is an absolutely lovely woman and I’m looking forward to reading the book.  I’ve pre-ordered it from Amazon and am sad that I won’t be in town for her reading at Powell’s (downtown Portland) on Thursday April 15th.

Click here for the web gallery of photos from the shoot

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Travel and Food Photogapher Susan Seubert has stock images of James Beard Award Nominees

I have had the great pleasure of photographing some incredibly talented chefs in Portland over the years.  This year, three of my subjects are up for James Beard Best Chef Northwest Awards.  Naomi Pomeroy of Beast Restaurant and Andy Ricker, of Pok Pok, The Whiskey Soda Lounge and Ping are both up for the first time.  Also, Gabrial Rucker of Le Pigeon is up for a national James Beard nomination for Rising Star Chef of the Year.  I wish all of these talented food professionals the best.  Bonne chance!!!

Naomi Pomeroy, owner of Beast, a six-course, prix fixe restaurant in NE Portland, Oregon whose menu changes every Wednesday.

Andy Ricker holding freshly pressed sugar cane juice at Pok Pok, one of his restaurants in Portland, OR

Chef Gabriel Rucker holding two pigs' heads in his Portland, Oregon Restaurant, Le Pigeon

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Editorial Photographer Susan Seubert shoots Food Travel in Portland, Oregon

My favorite assignments revolve around travel because so much of a destination can be defined by the food of its culture and, of course, I love to eat.  With my latest assignment for Cooking Light magazine, I discovered that my own home town of Portland, Oregon is no exception.   The story is in the April 2010 issue, hot off the presses.  Although I didn’t have to travel far for this story, it was amazing to meet all of the individuals who are blazing culinary trails through the city.  One of my favorites was a food cart called Nong’s Khao Man Gai: Nong serves up one dish – authentic lemongrass chicken – and it’s wonderful.  I also visited Beaker and Flask, Ned Ludd, Laurelhurst Market, Koi Fusion, Simpatica and House Spirits, among others.  I got to sample everything from sandwiches to whiskey.  If you live in Portland, head out to eat!  There’s something for everyone.

The love for Portland food continues in the April 2010 issue of Cooking Light

Go see Nong and enjoy the lemongrass chicken!

All the images in this article were made with a Canon 5D Mark II and either a 24-105mm IS USM lens or a 50mm 2.5 compact macro lens, shot in RAW and processed in Adobe’s Lightroom.

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Multimedia Photographer Susan Seubert films birds in Australia

A few years ago, my husband and I went to Noosa Heads in Queensland for a holiday.  It was our first trip to the island continent and we had a marvelous time.  After spending just a few days in Sydney, which I later photographed for a feature story for National Geographic Traveler, we boarded a plane bound for Maroochydore where we then rented a car and drove north to Noosa Heads where we had rented a condominium.  Our first evening we heard what appeared to be quite human-like laughter.  It was only after consulting my bird book that I realized that we were surrounded by Kookaburras.  It didn’t take long to discover that they are quite tame and enjoy being photographed.

From Wikipedia: Kookaburras (genus Dacelo) are large to very large (total length 28–42 cm/11–17 in) terrestrial kingfishers native to Australia and New Guinea, the name a loanword from Wiradjuri guuguubarra, which is onomatopoeic of its call.  Kookaburras are best known for their unmistakable call, which is uncannily like loud, echoing human laughter — good-natured, but rather hysterical, merriment in the case of the well-known Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae).

We also had wild bush turkeys, currawongs, friarbirds and flocks of lorikeets.  It was wonderful and I made this little film gathered from bird activity around our deck. (apologies for the compression – makes the lorikeet practically invisible) Enjoy!

laugh_kookaburra

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Portland Photographer Susan Seubert shoots for The New York Times

The love for Portland from New York continues to flow in the latest article in today’s New York Times dining section. I had the pleasure to photograph Andy Ricker’s latest venture, The Whiskey Soda Lounge, located kitty-corner from the beloved Pok Pok. It’s a marvelous place to wait for your table at Pok Pok, or just hang out and eat from their menu of aahaan kap klaem, the drinking food of Thailand.  You can read the full article here.

Click on the image to be taken to the page with more photos from the shoot.

Looking for stock photography of this shoot?  Click here to be taken to a web gallery of the Whiskey Soda Lounge where you can purchase stock photography from seubertstock.com

All the images were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-105 IS USM lens, shot in RAW and processed using Adobe’s Lightroom software.

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Portland Photographer Susan Seubert on why to hire an editor

A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to sit down with photo editor extraordinaire, Mike Davis.  If you haven’t visited his web site, you should.  It’s chock full of useful information and good stories.  Here in the backwaters of Portland, it’s rare to be able to have someone with such a remarkable résumé look at your work and give an opinion.  So I found myself at his doorstep, slightly hesitant, knowing where he’s been and who he has worked with and thinking that perhaps what I shoot isn’t up to his par.  My work has largely consisted of travel photography, mostly features for publications like National Geographic Traveler and The New York Times.  In the past, he has hired me to shoot for Mix magazine, when he was the editor there, but there’s something vastly different about bringing a group of photos to your assigning editor versus showing up with a hard drive containing over 600 random pictures just to see how he/she would sequence them.  I don’t know if it was good or bad that it took only a couple of hours to whittle those images down to a group of 24.

I had given my husband the same group of images with the same missive: edit the 600 down to 24.
He is no schlock when it comes to editing photographs.  He definitely has a completely different history: one informed by the complex world of fine art photography which is often out of step with Mike’s world: one that is heavily steeped in the tradition of photojournalism.  My husband is also just that, my husband.  He can’t possibly see my images without seeing me, (and my fragile ego).  Although what’s amazing is that there was a certain amount of crossover.

It’s important to find someone whose vision you admire and then allow them to see your work wholly through their eyes.  Step aside and let them look, check your attachment to pictures at the door.  Mike’s history and experience informs all his decisions about how he sees. His perception is truly unique.  He saw things in my pictures that I never have and never could.  It was a wonderful experience and I’m sad I didn’t take more pictures for the initial edit.  I’m thinking of going back.

Here’s Mike’s Sequence.

The final 24, in order of appearance

These images were made with every possible variety of camera from Holga to Hasselblad.  I’ll be printing this as a small book soon.

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