Justin Woodward named finalist for James Beard Award Rising Star Chef of the Year

Castagna Restaurant in Portland, Oregon not only happens to be in my hometown, it is also one of the finest restaurants at which I’ve had the pleasure of dining.  One of many things in life I’m grateful for is the fact that my husband loves to cook and has quite a talent for making everything – from dashi to demi-glace, simple pastas or seared duck breast with peppercorn infused, poached pears.  Because of this, it’s very difficult to find a restaurant that can out-do what my amazing partner in life creates in our humble home kitchen.  Castagna is the only restaurant we’ve been to together where when we sit down, we prepare for the question that always arises, “how did he do THAT?”  The food at Castagna is art and is often celebrated, (and criticized), for the same reasons.  However, there is one undeniable fact – you can’t eat like this anywhere else West of the Mississippi and most definitely nowhere else in Portland.  The food at Castagna has amazing attention given to not only the quality of the ingredients, but also the beauty of them.  The service is absolutely world class.  The desserts, like this chocolate dish, are some of the best I’ve ever encountered, thanks to the pastry chef,  Eve Kuttman. Although I love the food scene in Portland, I’ve always felt that Castagna is in a class of its own.  This year, the chef Justin Woodward is receiving the recognition from the James Beard Foundation in the form of a nomination for Rising Star Chef of the Year.  Congratulations Justin!  Thank you for all of your creativity, hard work and the delicious, incredible food.

Executive Chef Justin Woodward of Castagna Restaurant. Nominated for Rising Star Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation

The dining room of Castagna Restaurant in Portland, Oregon

cherries, almond ice cream and birch

Cucumbers, salmon cured in cypress and yogurt

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Susan Seubert in National Geographic Traveler’s Best Photos of 2012

Dan Westergren, the senior photo editor of National Geographic Traveler Magazine, has named his ten favorite images that were published in the magazine in 2012.  I am very proud to be included in this selection of photographs!  Last summer, I was assigned to photograph two of the ten Travelers of the Year for the magazine.  Both of the people happened to be in Honolulu, a quick, direct flight from my home town of Portland.  I shoot regularly in Hawaii because I’m based there for four months out of the year.  It was fun and challenging to try and create images that were not only interesting, but spoke to the identity of both nominees.  I blogged about the shoot in a previous post which you can read here.  Dan chose to select the image I made of Theron Humphrey while on assignment for the magazine for inclusion in the Ten Best Traveler Photos of 2012.  Thank you Dan and National Geographic Traveler for this outstanding honor!  You can see all ten pictures and Dan’s comments by clicking on the image below.

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Editorial Photographer Susan Seubert shoots Travelers of the Year for National Geographic Traveler

Earlier this year, I was sent on assignment by National Geographic Traveler Magazine to the island of Oahu.  Two out of the ten people who had been nominated for “Travelers of the Year” awards were in Hawaii – one as a visitor and another as a resident.  Travelers of the Year is NGT’s inaugural celebration of individuals who explore the world with passion and purpose.  I’m often already based in Hawaii,  but it’s such an easy flight to Honolulu from Portland that it was a natural fit.  The story is out now in the December 2012 issue of the magazine.  You can read about all ten notable travelers here.  My two subjects were very different from one another, but both were passionate about travel.

Linda Yuen is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever met.  She’s well into her 80′s and still travels regularly.  She and her husband snorkel weekly at Hanauma Bay Park, a beautiful, protected bay on Oahu that is frequented by tourists and locals alike.  Linda and her husband swim a mile out from the beach once a week, help people who are visiting to identify undersea creatures and walk up and down the big hill to get in and out of the water. I get winded just thinking about it!  It would have been ideal to shoot there, but the park has very strict hours and we would likely have to get a permit, so we had to find a different location for her portrait session.  I thought that the best photo would be of her with her snorkel mask on, in the water.  She was so brave to agree to this!  Most women I know at any age wouldn’t be at all thrilled at the idea of appearing in a major national magazine in a swimsuit, but she was game.  I had location scouted the beach in front of my hotel the night before to see if it would work with light, water depth, swell issues, (I didn’t have a water housing with me), and we agreed that Sans Souci Beach would be the perfect place for a late evening shoot.  She and her husband not only like to swim there, they also like to eat dinner at the restaurant in the hotel there.  A perfect fit!  We had about 30 minutes of glorious light.  Her sweet husband acted as my assistant and held the extra camera gear while I went in the water with Linda.  She has such a beautiful smile and her face is full of life, so it was easy to get a wonderful photo of her.

Linda Yuen, one of National Geographic Traveler Magazine’s 2012 Travelers of the year photographed in the water on the island of Oahu at sunset

Theron Humphrey is a young man who self-assigns projects that take him on adventures with a purpose.  He was nominated for a project where he interviewed people from all 50 states.  At the time we met up he was on his 50th state – Hawaii.  We photographed him in several different scenarios, but my favorite location was one he had found the previous day, in a park on a hillside overlooking downtown Oahu.  First I photographed him on a swing.  This idea worked conceptually because he’s very much a free spirit and swinging into a seemingly infinite space seemed apropos.  The second location was just down the path from the swing, up on a tree platform. Theron gingerly made his way up into the branches of the tree and I followed and stood as far back on the platform as possible, constantly reminding myself that I could easily fall backwards and break my neck!  It was worth the effort even though it’s a more serious portrait. The gaze is straight at the camera and he’s out on a tree limb with no bottom in sight.  When you follow your heart to the extent that he does for his photo-based projects, you will end up out there in the world in new and challenging environments and, quite literally, out on a limb.

Theron Humphrey, one of ten National Geographic Travelers’ “Travelers of the Year”

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Portrait Photographer Susan Seubert shoots for Martha Stewart Weddings

Earlier this year I received my first assignment for Martha Stewart Weddings Magazine.  The job was to shoot a portrait of crafter Denise Sharp who has her studio here in my hometown of Portland, Oregon.  Denise is an extremely innovative designer who can make anything out of anything.  Her eye for materials, color and texture is something of a marvel.  Her studio is packed with the ephemera needed to make such glorious items as paper favor boxes in the shape of the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe, gorgeous paper flowers.  The photo ran small, but everyone was happy.  I encourage you to check out her website, studiosharp.com.

Portrait of Denise Sharp for Martha Stewart Weddings Summer 2011

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Portland Editorial Photographer Susan Seubert shoots for Smithsonian Magazine

One of the most interesting things about being an editorial photographer are the environmental portrait assignments.  Sometimes, the photograph is of a person I meet while traveling who is part of a larger story, but most of the portrait assignments are to illustrate a singular person. For this assignment for Smithsonian Magazine, I was to photograph Laura Kutner, a Peace Corps volunteer who rallied a Guatemalan community to turn plastic bottles and trash into building materials.  It’s recycling meets Habitat for Humanity.  You can read the story here.  For this summer’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which is part of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, Kutner will be recreating part of the project she led in Guatemala.

Peace Corps Volunteer Laura Kutner holding plastic bottles at a recycling plant in Oregon

Here's a blurry behind the scenes of our location. A small scoop is a very different term in an industrial recycling facility!

The shoot was done with a 5D Mark II camera, a Canon 24-105 IS USM lens, a Speedlight 580EX flash mounted to a lightweight Manfrotto stand with an umbrella and pocket wizard radio slaves.

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portrait photographer Susan Seubert shoots for Smithsonian

Last May I had the pleasure of being assigned a portrait session with famed author Paul Theroux.  The image is published in Smithsonian Magazine alongside his article entitled, “The Trouble with Autobiography.” It was a wonderful afternoon spent with him at his home on Oahu not only chatting about all sorts of things, but touring his garden and meeting his pet geese, which had marvelous personalities.  He’s a warm and friendly man, which one would expect given he’s traveled extensively throughout the world and works regularly with other photographers.  We spent quite a bit of the time together with me shooting through a window in front of his desk, from which he allowed me to remove the screen.  It looked much nicer than trying to light the interior of his home which is surrounded by verdant green forests and somewhat dark.  The photograph that was published was a second idea – I was really drawn to the artifacts that he had sitting on a large, wooden coffee table.  I enjoyed his thoughts on autobiography and encourage you to read the article, which is also posted online here.

Portrait of author Paul Theroux in his home on Oahu, Hawaii

All the images were made with the Canon 5D Mark II with the Canon 24-105mm lens and processed using Adobe’s Lightroom software.

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Photographer Susan Seubert finalist in Editorial Portraiture in PDN Faces Contest

It is with great pleasure to announce that my work has been recognized by Photo District News Magazine in their annual Faces contest in the category of editorial portraiture.  The image that won was from a photo shoot I did for National Geographic Traveler Magazine about dining in Sydney.  My editor had assigned me to shoot the project with the broad missive that the images could include anything that had to do with Sydney or Food in Sydney.  That is a broad topic for a relatively short shoot, so we chose a few locations that were iconic to Sydney, Bondi Beach being one of them.  This image was made with a Hasselblad with an 80mm 2.8 lens, hand held, and there’s only one frame.  The swimming club itself is a marvelous place to photograph, and has been probably thousands of times, but this moment ended up being whimsical and unexpected.  This picture was published with the story, “Sydney a la Carte,” was chosen by Keith Bellows, editor-in-chief of National Geographic Traveler, as one of the best travel images in 2009, and now PDN has recognized it as well.  Thank you to all for your support and I look forward to having opportunities to make more inspired imagery in the very near future.

as announced in the July 2010 issue of Photo District News!

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Editorial Photographer Susan Seubert shoots Chris Solinsky for the New York Times

Because I’ve never been known to be a sports photographer, the call from the photo editor at the sports desk of the New York Times was unexpected, as was the assignment: to shoot a portrait of long distance runner Chris Solinsky at the Nike campus.  He has created quite a stir in the running community by being the first non-African to beat the 26 minute record in the 10,000 meter event.  When I arrived Chris looked like he just got off the bus from the Midwest, dressed in a Hurley t-shirt and shorts.  Not until Nike outfitted him in running attire that I could finally see why he is so newsworthy.  We tried a number of poses, but without putting him in a line-up of other runners, whom he would no doubt dwarf, how was I to visually communicate his stature?  The photo that ran in the article was the one that showed off his musculature.  He’s in a push up position and I’m lying on the ground in front of him, with the camera looking straight at him. You can see the blood rushing to his face as he stayed in this pose for a couple of minutes, which also made the muscles in his arms and shoulders tighten and expand.  It seemed to be the portrait that the editors thought to be most successful, as it’s the picture that ran with the story, which can be read here.

Chris Solinsky for the New York Times

All the images were made with the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 50mm 1.2 lens.  The digital files were edited in Photomechanic and processed using Adobe’s Lightroom software.

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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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Susan Seubert shoots for the New York Times

Sometimes, assignments come across the desk which end up being more of a gift than a job. This story for the New York Times came through at last minute: the evening before the shoot was to take place.  Technically, I was already booked, so although I ended up a wee bit late for the other gig, I felt I had to meet this extraordinary youngster.

My favorite quote from Kyra’s story is the following: “Sometimes your dreams get crushed but you just keep going.”

It is my understanding that not only is she an actress, but also proficient gymnast and ballerina.

Let this young girl be an example to us all.

Here are a few other images from the take:

Kyra Siegel, understudy for Abigail Breslin, star of the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, about the life of Helen Keller

Kyra Siegel, understudy for Abigail Breslin, star of the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, about the life of Helen Keller

Kyra Siegel, understudy for Abigail Breslin, star of the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, about the life of Helen Keller

The photos were taken with the 5D Mark II and a 24-105mm f/4 IS USM lens and processed in Adobe’s Lightroom.

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