Letters Home a visual diary of Matthew Ginn's activities in Portland, Oregon, and beyond971-219-7189
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Barney McDowell
Bernard “Barney” McDowell is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in psychotherapy and couples counseling. I photographed him in his Portland office in early January. This was another one of those assignments where I have a short window of time to enter a space I’ve never seen before, strike up a rapport with a [...]
Portraits in a greenhouse
One of the things I love about being a freelance photographer is that you never really know what kind of assignment is going to roll in next. Naturally, some hold more promise than others. When I was asked to make some portraits of Debbie Warner with her greenhouses, I had a feeling it would be [...]
Porchetta di testa — part 2
Now for the thrilling conclusion to our experience making porchetta di testa. By this point, the matter looks a whole lot more like meat, but if you are easily offended by pictures of raw food, you should probably go away. So when we left off, Perrie and Sam had just cleaned the pig’s head, the [...]
Porchetta di testa — part 1
Before we begin this post, a couple WARNINGs: Some viewers may find the pictures in this post disturbing. Some of those same viewers may enjoy that, which is perhaps more disturbing. Now that everyone is more or less disturbed, the backstory: First, you should know that our friend Sam loves to cook. And she’s good [...]
Connie Hill
Another interesting assignment I had in December was to photograph Connie Hill. As I understand, Connie felt a bit lost when she was laid off from her job in the late 1980s. She was a single mother of two teenage girls, in her 40s, and unemployed. A friend introduced her to drumming and then drum [...]
Darrell Grant
For many of my assignments, I have little to no idea of what I’m going to find when I get to the shoot location. Often I’m meeting a subject at their home or office. How big is the space? How cluttered is it? Are there windows? What props are available to tie the subject to [...]
Elements Glass
I always enjoy the opportunity to photograph people who do cool stuff,™ and one of the coolest assignments I had recently was to photograph the artisans at Elements Glass. Ten years ago, Aaron Frankel and Ian Gilula moved from Wisconsin to Portland to set up a glass blowing studio. Today it is the largest glass [...]
PCC Panthers
A couple of years ago when I was shooting the team and individual portraits for the Portland Community College basketball teams, I did some extra small-group shots where we let the background go dark and just lit the players. They liked that look, so this year we did all of the individual shots that way, [...]
Spreading her wings
The aerospace industry is a very important component of the economy in the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle-Boeing link is well known, but there are dozens of other aerospace companies working across Washington, directly employing nearly 84,000 people. (Boeing’s plant just across the Columbia River in Gresham, Ore., employs another 1500+ workers.) However, the aerospace workforce [...]
Dr. Matthew Maberry
One of the coolest things about my job is all of the different people I get to meet—and photograph. In recent weeks, my subjects have included musicians, electricians, politicians, sailors, athletes, scientists, and artisans. While I enjoy and honour all of my subjects, some I feel particularly privileged to shoot. One such person was Dr. [...]
Getting organized
With my new computer—the first in … too long—due to arrive via FedEx this weekend, my goal Saturday morning was to clean off my desk so as to have somewhere to put the new machine. Like most people whose office isn’t just for show, my desk was covered with the accoutrements of the modern one-man [...]