Two portraits of my friend, Bob Wengert. He moved to Colorado a few years ago. I miss seeing him in the water.
Bob Wengert
Bob, up close and personal
I had the distinct pleasure of photographing Damian Fulton about 5 months ago. Not only is Damian an amazing artist (I’m a huge fan of his), but he is one of the nicest guys you could meet. I’ve gotten to know Damian over the past several years because he is an El Porto surfer.
Damian lives a beach lifestyle, but it’s a beach lifestyle in one of the busiest metropolitan cities in the world (Los Angeles, that is). Damian’s surf art is all about the juxtaposition of beach life and the trappings of an urban environment. I wanted to capture that same vibe in a portrait of the artist. The red and white smokestacks in El Segundo appear in many of Damian’s paintings and I felt that doing a beach portrait with the smokestacks in the background would provide the visual tie between the artist and his art.
I shot the following image using my Sinar P 4×5 on Fuji Neopan 100 black and white film. I used Photoshop to combine the image with a scan of a glass plate negative to give it the old film feel.
Damian Fulton Portrait
My old site had a bunch of portraits that I had taken of some of the surfers that call El Porto their home break. I removed that old gallery of images when I went to this blog format for the site and figured that I would slowly begin adding the portraits back while mixing in some other images from my archives.
These are all portraits that I had taken several years ago using my Hasselblad and the standard 80mm lens with Ilford Delta 100 film. Charley and Rick are still out at El Porto on a regular basis. Ted Robinson moved to Orange County a few years back and we don’t get to see him out in the lineup very much unfortunately.
Rick Noguchi
Ted and Jordan Robinson
Charley Finney