Mike Larremore

Sploosh

Fall is my busiest season, by far. I think folks panic when they realize the leaves are turning. If my normal Spring and Summer schedule is two to three shoots per week, the Fall Rush averages closer to five shoots per week.

And sometimes everything comes together just so...

I moved to Portland, Oregon in the summer of 2008 because it seemed like the place to be. I think I would have been happy anywhere, but Portland turned out to be a fantastic place to start my career. At that time, in Portland, one could be nearly broke and still thrive. For reference, I was probably maybe making around $15k a year.

From 2008 to 2010, I learned what it meant to be a professional photographer; how to take pictures, how to edit pictures, how to get clients, etc. I'll post work from that time period on this blog at some point, I'm sure.

In 2010, a friend and fellow artist approached me to shoot some images of her textile work for an upcoming interview. Her name is Rio Wren - her work is gorgeous, check it out: https://rawtextiles.com

I see these images as noteworthy not because they are visually up to par with my current work, but because these were pictures for something - for someone. Some two years into my career, I was finally living up to my raison d'être (French: reason for being) a photographer.

Bonus: My first cover. I still have the hard copy somewhere.

Let's talk about nostalgia for a minute.

A) Photographers are constantly trying to find ways to stay relevant - on social media, to their private clients, for agencies, whatever.

B) Purchasing power and brand decision making are increasingly being handled by a generation of people (Millennials and Gen-Xers) who grew up with disposable cameras which used on-camera flash.

C) Current social media trends for Gen-Z suggest that technical picture-taking ability is secondary to moment-capturing ability. Photos don't need to look good as long as they feel good.

Enter, what I have affectionately dubbed, Shittycore.

Shittycore is my attempt to bridge the above categories into a unified whole - it connects A to B to C through well edited but intentionally sloppy photography. It combines the direct flash nostalgia of a disposable camera with the moment-capturing vibes our zeitgeist demands.

This technique isn't new. This technique isn't original. Neither of those things matter.

I declared myself a Professional Photographer in the Fall of 2008. For the next seven years, I steadily built up my business and I earned enough money to survive... barely.

Rent was cheap and I was fortunate to have help from friends and family.

The Summer of 2015 marked a turning point in my career. Up to this point, the vast majority of my outdoor work had been done in urban areas. I thought of myself a city photographer... for no real reason. Maybe I was lazy and didn't want to drive? I was living downtown, after all.

The model with whom I was shooting had orders from her Agency to get some nature-y content so we hit the road and started looking for good fields. We stumbled across a little park in a mountain canyon in Colorado which had a shallow stream and shooting angles everywhere.

What I had really stumbled on was my first reliable stream of income as a photographer. Suddenly, I was a swimwear photographer... in Colorado. Private bookings started rolling in as people wanted their own river swimwear shoots. Agencies reached out and asked if I could get their up-and-coming-starlets swimwear tests so that they could then ship their models out to the coastal markets: LA and Miami.

Now, after another eight years, swimwear content makes up the majority of my fairweather bookings. I adore it - I can think of no better way to spend a day: tromping up rivers, shooting portraits, and avoiding falling into the drink (a story for another post, perhaps).

This was the shoot which started it all.

My early work was sexy. Way sexier than it is now. My early wallet was empty. Way emptier than it is now.

Those two issues are related.

The early years of my career were built on the notion that Sex Sells. I grew rapidly on social media, I built a reputation of being polite, professional, and respectful - and my images were most definitely spicy.

I was learning and I was having fun. By virtue of the content I was shooting, I was also vacuuming up praise from internet strangers who liked boobs and butts. Go figure!

The one thing I wasn't doing... making any meaningful income. I wasn't actually doing the "sells" portion of Sex Sells.

Private bookings can be extremely lucrative, if your client can use the photos you provide them. But sexy photoshoots often exist in this weird, selfish space where only the photographer benefits from the publicity and distribution of the images. The client doesn't want to use, distribute, or share their own naked body on the internet, on websites, in print, etc.

Building a portfolio of only sexy content might make one grow rapidly on social media, but it also discourages commercial clients and their larger wallets from booking.

So let this be a warning to young photographers out there - enjoy your time learning and exploring the industry. Shoot all the sexy content you want! But consider that to survive as a professional photographer, your job is to take photos people will use. If you cannot provide paying customers with images they can use, folks will quickly identify that your business does not provide a worthwhile service. You will be stuck in collaboration-land until you change your content.

For several years I lived in a fancy condo made of concrete and glass. I shot a ton of beautiful work in that space.

I also shot a ton of repetitive and uninspired smut.

Today, my feelings about my work during this time, are bittersweet: so many of the people with whom I worked were nothing more than meat through the grinder. There was no experimentation and no creativity. Just sexy photos in a swanky apartment... for what?

So I present the following set to you now - not because it's "iconic" or remarkable, but because I think it's important to acknowledge that this is what I was shooting.

I don't hate these photos. Quite the contrary, I love this set. But I will also admit that I produced dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of images just like it.

A - July, 2014 - Denver, CO

What makes an image "iconic?"

Is it just virality? If an image gets distributed around the world, or around the web, does that immediately qualify that image for "iconic" status?

Can shitty images be iconic if they're so bad they take on an identity of their own?

People have, on multiple occasions, labeled images from this set as "iconic." I'm not sure if they're just being nice, or if there is something so unique about the images that they have truly achieved iconic status.

You be the judge.

A - September, 2012 - Denver, CO

What is the fate of digital photos once they've been retired from public view? I ask in earnest because I think this is a problem which plagues every professional photographer.

The vast majority of my work - thousands of finished images - sit quietly on external hard drives. Were these tangible objects in a museum archive, they would slowly collect dust on a shelf.

I'm sure there are photographers who might round up the strongest of these archived images to make into a book, but I'm admittedly too cheap for such an endeavor.

As such, I hope you'll accept this humble blog as my way of blowing off the digital dust from my old sets.