Hi I'm Tamara Lackey, on this episode of
reDefine show for AdoramaTV
I speak with John Michael and Dalisa Cooper of
'Alt F' Photography about the evolution
of their anti-style and how trend setting
their work has been. Check it out!
Hi John and Dalisa, how are you?
Thanks for coming here to Chapel Hill.
Thank you for having us.
So you came in from Las Vegas via a tour of the United
States photographing families, but I want
to hear a little bit more about the
development of this very unique style
behind Alt F photography.
I've always, kind of like took the approach I, when I
got into wedding photography, because I
was doing portrait photography for a long time
or trying to be successful portrait
photographer. When I started doing
wedding photography, I just like, what am
I supposed to do? What am I supposed to
shoot? And how am I supposed to shoot it?
So I like kind of went away and like
learned a lot of traditional stuff and
posing, and back in the day I even took a
workshop with like the likes of Monte
Zucker and Steven Red, and all that and
back in the, back a long time ago, and so
I kind of like used that as my basis and
I was really good at doing.. doing what I
thought was, was the par for the time but
I wasn't very successful I was wasn't
very happy because my personal stuff was
a lot more on the darker side I
was just trying to like, well this is
what wedding photography supposed to be!
This is what I'm supposed to shoot so I
just attacked it that way, and very
unsuccessful with it, because I didn't
have any, I didn't have the marketing in
place. So even though I thought I
was as good as the market, I just didn't
have, I just didn't have the marketing in
place, and then I decided, I got kind of
frustrated with how, how I wasn't getting
what I wanted, wanted to shoot, and then I
just said, and I had some issues with
going back and forth to work with other
studios and realizing I had to break out.
I got kind of hit a low point and
and my, I failed a couple times pretty
hard, and I'll say you know what? I'm just
going to do it my way,
and so what I would do is like I'm going
do just play around, do stuff really dark.
I'm just gonna show my dark stuff and it
doesn't work, goodbye!
I showed up at a bridal show wearing a garbage man's
shirt and the happiest thing in my booth
was a black and white image of a bride with
her makeup streaming down her face.
Although all the way I only appeal to a
small fraction of people, I booked all
those people, I got really busy.
So let's talk about how your technique evolved,
because it's been really cool, so the
technique that I think I'm becoming
not known for, but what I've been
doing quite a bit lately, is, is it's kind
of a composite technique, and mostly back
since I was, started shooting. I really
fell in love with a painting of light
technique and then when I used to
work in the darkroom I used to do a lot
of compositing, That was like Photoshop
layers, but with enlargers, like five six
enlargers at a time. Yeah, so the
old-school stuff, and then when I got
into digital photography, I've always
wanted to, I've always wanted to like
have more of a light-painted look.
With.. in the middle of the day, because
painting with light, you just got to shut
all the lights off and that's not too
easy do it in the daylight. Yeah and so..
And you're tired, you want to have some
dinner. Yeah so, and I like them, I like I
like things, that mmm, in a regular
photography career you learn, and learn
so much about making everything correct.
Yeah the direction of light always goes
one direction, you don't you don't want,
to see your fill-light, you just want to
see the effects of a key light.
The fill light is...it's supposed to be kind
of invisible, and so everything kind of
blends into a more natural scene, where I
kind of go the other way, I want it to
look very unnatural. So I'll have two
people standing right beside each other
almost face to face, and the light is going to
have different directions on the face so
your mind looks at it, says something's
wrong with this! Yeah. You don't know what
it is. You're, you're conscious mind may not
say, but you're kind of, kind of like...
something's wrong this so you end up
staring at it a little bit longer.
all right also why also then lately I've
been working with stereo. Uh-huh.
I work, actually hyper stereo stuff.
And you mean this from a visual perspective?
A visual perspective..
Yes.
So it basically allows you to kind of
mess with the viewer, because they have
two different audiences ...I am noticing a theme!
Yeah you know my whole thing is, is, is to,
'alt f' with, with, with the mind, other
people's minds.
Yeah!
That's my, that's my, that's my a censored
version of it, since
you have two audiences, one for the right
eye, one for the left eye. If you change
and make it anomaly for one eye, then
your mind has to create something
different, and make either, either
delete something, or make something new.
Yeah.
And so with my stereo work although
what I'm doing for the current project,
I'm doing very simple stuff, but
eventually I'll be doing stuff where
where the images for the right and left eye
are radically different... in a subtle way.
I don't want to like, give everything
away, but it's uh, but that's what I like!
I like to mess with the mind, I like to
hide stuff in my images, and I don't like
things perfect, and my lighting technique
for how I'm lighting, because I
photographed you yesterday, it's
basically a composite, and I work with
the flash, as in really, really close to
subject. So I'm in the image. Right! And so
when I composite them together it
becomes very much more of a surreal look
to it. Yeah! And I can do it in any
lighting situation. So I can take that
and shoot bright side middle of the day
and make it look like twilight. If I
wanted to okay, I can go into dark room
and shoot it so that the technique and
the look, I can do it in any lighting situation.
Like behind me lighting
in front of me.
Which gives you a lot of creative freedom.
Well yeah, well, and well,
it gives me a lot of creative freedom
and but, it also allows me to make all
the light, yeah, so I'm in control of
everything, and but it also allows me for
this particular project to be, have,
have some sort of consistency. Yeah.
Because my backgrounds, and my lights aren't
consistent, I'm, sometimes I am
shooting in the in the evening where
there's no light, and then sometimes I'm
shooting in the noon.
The sun's right there,
there's no, there's no open shade.
There's no nothing, so it was like you have to,
you have to fight with it all.
Right and then the the more kind of
extreme work was a little more visceral
and stuff, will you share a little bit
of of that kind of... Oh...
the anti -, my anti-Bridal stuff? Yeah.
so that goes back...
Which is like, that's again, that's what
catches people's attention.
I think I started doing anti-
bridals.. what I call anti-bridals,
that was my breakout, when I decided I'm
going to do something different, and if no
one likes it.. who cares.
Yeah.
And so, I just, at the time back in
the day, you couldn't take a bride across
wet grass. There's this glorious sunset
lightning strike, and and clouds gathering
in this most beautiful landscape over
there, if I just get you on this little
hill. It's like oh there's wet grass
right there, you just would not walk
across it, and it's like there's all this
glorious stuff, and then and then it's
like you know what, I end up
I wanted something dark, I just want to
take the bride out of context, and the way to
do that as a bridal session. Right.
Like get some time.
My most, the one that actually changed
everything, was this was like, I shot in 2000
there's a fire that burned, a
bunch of mesquite woods.
The anti ad called, and it was
like very dark Tim Burton-esque forest,
was like, this is a cool look, really dark
black charred wood in the ground. I put a
bride in a white dress, and this is
actually the bride, with make up going down her face
Yeah, it'll be awesome...
what, and so I called up three or four
brides that I just shot, their wedding are
over. their dresses probably hanging in a
box some where, and said I have this really
cool idea, I really want do a bridal
session, it'll be really cool, they say oh
that's really cool, I want to do it and
then I explained you'll be sitting in
black ash. They say... no got to go..
they turn me down. I'm sorry!
I skipped a car payment
I bought my own dress. I had
a friend, knows a friend that's
going to go dress the model for me,
and I shot it, showed the pictures off,
and that picture is sort of like, the picture
that was, that was, that was, THE picture.
Then some of the brides saw it said.. oh
I would have done that. It's like but
everyone that saw that all of a sudden that
gave me, that gave me, the passport to do
anything else, right, and so..
There is a heck of a lesson in that.
Yeah and the people that came to me
saw the work as
showing off article actually called showing
off- aka Trash The Dress'. So I coined
that phrase!
Sorry. And then it was everywhere.
But I always did these anti bridles but people came to
me for that kind of work, so when a bride
came to me, and so I like that work, when
after that for that one moment, because I
showed that stuff up before, on the
wedding day, if I said hey I want you
laid down in this wet grass! They would
lay down that way. Anything. It was just a
revelation, I just ended up, I ended up
end up actually marking the people that
were visually in-line with what I wanted
to do. Yeah and it was was out, and they
all said in the wedding photography was
not hard work, right it was fun, and I
enjoyed it, and although I got really
really busy, and that's where it Dalisa
comes in, and I sort of like stopped
answering my calls, because I was like
overloaded, and it's like yeah, so that's
why, kind of Dalisa rescued me, and, and
saved my business, but that's her story so..
All right so let's talk about'Roadside Families'
thank you for swapping!
Since you are more the coordinator and
manager and visionary of how this is
happening, or maybe it's a lot to handle
that we're keeping it under control
somewhat. Somewhat!
So yeah well real quick just to back
up a little bit when you guys met. You
were shooting, and you were in on the business side of
photography. I always have been, always will be.
Right, and tell us a little bit the
story you told me about how when you met
he's like but I'm all good for business.
Yes, yes.. terribly failing!
Yeah great artist! As I said I fell in love with his
work. I was like this guy's so talented
but he cannot answer a phone call or an
email or he brides are calling saying I want to
to just book this guy, and he I call him
like what's going on John? And he's like
well that's like a year away from now.
I can,t I'm working on stuff right now
I have a wedding to edit. I'm like all right yeah.
It mades it, made it, super easy for me
to swoop in and just say let me handle
this. Give me the stuff you don't like to handle and
vice-versa he's a creative side, and I
love taking photographs he's actually
taught me everything I know about
photography, but my heart's in the
business. I like the people, I like the
customer service, I like that aspect of
it. Yes and you're very good at it.
Thank you! Yeah.
So how did the origin, the origin story
yeah, the origin story, of Roadside
Families. So Roadside Families was
inspired by a talk that David Williams
gave at a conference a couple years ago.
He touched our heart with a story that
he told us about his family, and his
father being a photographer for the
family. Taking photographs, beautiful
black-and-white, beautiful color
photographs of him and his sister
growing up. Beautiful photos of his
mother just really really inspiring
stuff and he went through this whole thing
to the very end, I'm going to try not to get
emotional, but he didn't have photos of
all of them together, so this is where I always
get caught up, gets to me every time and
it's been like, I don't know nine years.
Yeah, so um we were actually going on a
tour that year, we were teaching
workshops, and we were going on the road
and we had 32 days to hit, it was
something like 17 cities and along the
way we thought, why not stop and
photograph some of these photographers
that are not getting into the photos
with their their families. And that year
along the road this is how it got it's
name, we were driving from city to city
and people are calling us. Like hey! How
can we find you? And we're like we're on
this highway between this time and this
time. Great, and we were meeting people at
schools, parking lots, truck stops. Random
like side roads, and so Roadside Families
was developed from that. And that
year we shot 37 families. That was 2008
we don't want the image to be timeless
we want it to be dated very quickly. Yeah.
So you when you look at it, it's like I
put again your family in front of your
house. Right we if you look at someone's
old photo
go through, they, like their grandparents
and their uncles photos. You have a
picture of them it's usually a picture
of them in front of their house or in front of
their car, and that kind of dates it oh that,
that's that timeframe, oh I remember that house,
That's the house I grew up in.
That's the Mustang. Yeah exactly, actually I have
a picture in front of my dad's Mustang
when I was a little boy, when I was in Japan
1967/68, and so I remember that, and you
know exactly where you are at the time
frame, in the time period.
Like suddenly you want it, you want it to
be, you want it, to show the time frame
exactly where you are. That slice of life.
I mean, I mean, for regular portraiture we
make it timeless, but I think family
portrait should, should date, very, very quickly.
All right, so from here on out
where can people find out more about
Roadside Families and you guys, and, and
what kind of timeline might they have to
still get in on this round, or maybe your
next one okay very good. So roadsidefamilies.org
is our website, there's also a
blog site, so we're adding all of the
photos that we're taking, as we're
receiving them back from Lavalu from
the edits, so you can see a lot of the
current work there. The most the most
current as far as our travels is going
to be on our Instagram
@Roadsidefamilies on Instagram.
okay and just a lot of us just fun stuff,
behind the scenes, kind of playing around,
but I am also posting photos of the
completed product. All right thank you
guys so much! Thank you.
thanks for having us and it was such a
blast photographing
you and your family.