Jess LeClair Photography Blog

Yes, folks, you read it right! My work has been published in the very first issue of a brand spanking new magazine called Catharsis. You can buy a copy of it at their Lulu storefront. You can also download a pdf of the magazine (it’s less, but you still have to pay) just to see it. There is also a free sample of the magazine, but its only 19 of the 55 pages and alas, my image isn’t included in those 19 pages. Bummer.

However. Because I am so nice (and because the image is already up on flickr!) here is the image that was published:

I made this photocollage (AKA a Hockney, a joiner, a photomontage) while I was living out in L.A. (2001-2002). Creating it was about a lot of things for me, but mostly the way that women tend to feel they have multiple-personality disorder about their bodies and the extremes we go with eating or purging. Also the deeply mixed messages we are handed by society and the media, especially in advertising.

I did this with film and prints so no digital manipulation at all. I just photographed it again to get it into the computer. Making this kind of image is one of my favorite things to do. So here are a few more:

I did this one while I was living in Ireland. This is a lovely little street corner in Galway. This was also done with film and put together by just stacking the prints and taping them down. Its really much better to see it big, so if you click on the pictrue and go to my flickr site, you can see it bigger. Also, if anyone is interested in buying a print of any of these, they are all for sale. Email me for more information.

This one is one of my favorites and one of the first entirely digital ones I did. In March of 2006, I flew to Seattle to help my brother move out of his apartment and pack up his little bitty Honda Civic with all his worldly possessions (and a few otherworldly possessions) so he could move back to the east coast (he’s in Cambridge now). On the way, instead of going straight back home, the two of us drove all the way down the west coast and into the desert to Las Vegas so he and my friend James could throw me a little bachelorette party. This image is a record of that drive from Seattle to Las Vegas. Each photo is from a different point in during the two and a half days it took us to get to there. We went from snow and sleet in Seattle through rain and wind and vivid bright green fields to finally arid desert and neon lights. Its hard to see all those pieces when it is this tiny on the screen. Its best viewed at its largest size, so click on the photo and see it on my flickr site!

This is another digital one. Its an abandoned school bus in Belfast that someone is using as a storage bin. Its just jam packed with stuff. So I let it really distort in the middle there. Again, its best seen big.

I’ve also done these types of collage as portraits.  I have lots more to say about that, but this post is getting very long, so I think it will have to wait for another post!

To Be Continued…

One of my very favorite things to do (besides photographing people of course) is to restore old photographs. I love taking something that is so degraded and ruined and making it whole again. We live in a wonderful digital age when restoring old images is so much easier than it used to be. Time was, the only way to reproduce something for which you had no negative was to re-photograph the old image to get a new negative to make another print from the new negative. And anyone who has ever seen a photograph of a photograph can tell that you loose something in the way of quality. Now we can just scan old photos and make another print! We can even scan old negatives! This summer I taught a digital imaging class with my husband at the Hutchinson Center (an extension of UMO in Belfast). One of my students had unearthed some old negatives that his great-grandmother had taken. The fact that his family still had them was cool enough. But we managed to take it a step further. Using the school’s film scanner, we scanned some of the negatives into the computer and made stunning 8×10 prints in a matter of 15 minutes or so. In a chemical darkroom, that would have taken a whole afternoon of fiddling around. How cool is that? As my student said, “My mother is going to freak out!”

So here are a few examples of photographs that I have restored. For information on pricing, please see the Photo Restoration page.

This first one is one of my favorites. I deliberately put up the smallest image size possible because all I had to work with was a tiny little 1 inch square. Notice how a whole chunk of her hat is missing. It used to be that if a photo was ripped or a piece of it was missing, the only way to fix it would be to hand paint (or airbrush) the missing part. Talk about time consuming. And next to impossible if large bits were gone.

And now look! A whole hat! And you can actually see her! I could make up to an 10×10 image of this woman and still have a perfectly sharp clear image.

This image was so faded, you could hardly see her face!

This one (below) was pretty cool as well. This young man is a tintype (also called a “ferrotype”). The image is printed directly onto a very thin piece of black enameled iron, which is part of why he looks so dark to begin with. The black bits you see are actually the iron showing through where the emulsion has scraped off.

Now, I know there are some people who totally disagree with restoring old images. They feel that these items are historical objects, and as such, should not be tinkered with, just preserved as they are. If everyone had the ability to mount and frame their images with museum quality materials and keep them temperature controlled forever, I would say sure, keep only the originals. But let’s be honest. Most people keep old family photos in moldy cardboard boxes. Or worse, found that their parents or grandparents stored them that way. And without some serious intervention, the images would be lost forever. You can’t really tell in the scan, but at the bottom of the original tintype of the young man, the emulsion is flaking off (it looks like a white stripe coming up his pant leg). Had they waited any longer to have the image scanned, whole chunks of the original image would have been lost. And when it comes to images of your family, what is really more important - that you display an original photograph or that you can see the people in the picture? This way, the image is preserved. What you would really want to do with something as cool as a tintype is display both the original and the restored image side by side. Because, let’s face it, there is something deeply cool about having an actual tintype. It is a piece of history. Its not something that is made anymore (except by a few dedicated photographic artists). But they are a bit hard to see and we know they don’t last forever. So having the image scanned and restored ensures that when your children have children, their children will still be able to see it.

There is something really awesome about the moment when you hand back a photograph of someone’s grandmother or great-grandfather that they’d chalked up as a loss. It’s priceless really. Helping people preserve their own history is in many ways just as important as making the images that will become their children’s history.

Gee, I love my work!

With September arriving, and the school year gearing up again, photography is usually the last thing on parent’s minds. But for those with High School seniors, now is the perfect time to start thinking about that all important image, the Senior Portrait. Senior portraits are usually due to the yearbook staff by November or December at the latest. And if you want to have time to book a session AND get prints made up, now is the time to start calling photographers! (or just contact me!)

Senior portraits are a lot of fun for me. Even when I was in High School myself! The year I graduated from Cape Elizabeth High School, I did senior portraits for FIVE of my friends. And the next year? I did three more! My general philosophy on senior portraits is that its best to do them outside when at all possible. Maine weather in general (and especially in the fall!) makes shooting outdoors problematic at best, but I think that overall, it’s worth it. Being in a natural setting tends to make the person in the picture more relaxed than sitting in a studio. And if the location has a strong tie to the person, the image becomes just that much richer.

This (above) is one of my favorite portraits of a high school senior. That really is a real live bird he is holding in his hands. We had just barely started taking pictures when the little guy flew into the window of the building we were standing near. We could tell the bird was alive, but it looked a little loopy. Loren (the guy in the picture) ever so delicately picked up the bird and warmed it in his hands. The moment was just so delicate I just started snapping away. Five minutes later, the bird had regained its equilibrium and flew off without a scratch. And we had this amazing photograph. And even more amazing is that one of Loren’s passions was ornithology - the study of birds. So in addition to it just being a cool picture, it was really meaningful to him and to what he was interested in at that point in his life.

Here is another great example of a less than traditional senior portrait. Amos was (and still is!) a very talented musician and was deeply interested in Indian music when he was in high school. One of the instruments he enjoyed most was his sitar. So we found a way to incorporate it into his portrait.

This is a more traditional, but still outdoor portrait.

This one was taken at Ft. Williams, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Ft. Williams has always been one of my favorite places to take portraits. You get everything from the ocean to open grass to forest-y to old stone buildings all in one park. The variety is just wonderful! It’s hard to go wrong anywhere on the coast of Maine though, and Belfast has all sorts of amazing locations to choose from as well.

My goal with these types of portraits is that the subject feel really relaxed with me. And to that end, I try and keep things as low key as possible. I recommend people bring at most one or two changes of outfits (though I find most are happiest with clothing they feel comfortable in which is usually the first outfit they chose and the one they wore to the shoot). As with all portraits, when you choose your outfit, you want to stay away from loud prints, bold stripes and any checker board type patterns. Subtle is good when it comes to clothing (unless of course you WANT the portrait to be all about your wacky wardrobe, but then that is another discussion!). Also think about if you have a specific prop you want to include in your portrait. Love horses? Bring me down to your stable! Spend a lot of time on the beach? Show me where your favorite spot is! Love the barn at your grandparent’s house? Lets go there! I’m very flexible about location and content. This is your time to capture how you are right now. And of course, still have something nice to send to all your relatives!

I have always loved cemeteries and graveyards.  Some people may find that strange or morbid (or a slightly pathetic attempt to be goth).  A friend told me recently that she finds it disrespectful to be in a cemetery when you don’t know anyone there who has passed.  She felt that cemeteries are for the grieving and as such, should be left well enough along.  I disagree.  Cemeteries are for the grieving certainly, and must be approached with respect, but they are also a place where people go to remember the people they love.  Cemeteries for some act as a place they can go to be near the ones they have lost.  People put up beautiful monuments to honor the love they have that lives past death.  And people can do some pretty cool things when they love.  So grieve, yes, but remember and love, too.

There is also a slightly sentimental part of me that feels sorry for the stones of people who died so long ago that no one living remembers them.  So I visit them to make them feel less lonely.  Silly, maybe, but I find it leaves me feeling very peaceful to walk among the monuments to the dead.

Anywho.

I’ve mentioned before that I lived in Ireland for the first half of 1999, while attending the Burren College of Art (see the post about my friend Alahna). One of the projects I worked on while I was there was a photographic study of the local cemeteries and graveyards. More specifically, the things people would leave on graves to remember their loved ones.

The things I found most often were these little globes. Filled with a small plastic religious icon (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were the most common followed by any number of saints and holy people), water and fake flowers, they were simply every where.

Each slightly different, each beautiful and eerie in its own way.

The graves themselves were often covered with gravel and/or small colored stones (the kind you’d find in a fish bowl, only slightly larger) instead of grass.

Some had been there so long they’d broken or simply just rotted away.

This was one of the last photos I took while photographing the series. I’d seen other graves with a small stone platform, low to the ground, with an elegant engraving encouraging the visitor to “Kneel and Pray”. This family must have simply run out of money for the professional engraving, but wanted the sentiment nonetheless. The idea that their love and faith was stronger than their lack of money was moving to me. In fact, I found the image so powerful that it became representative of the whole group of images and I eventually used it at the title for and main image of my senior show at Brown.

I was lucky enough my freshman year at Brown University to be hired by the Theater Department as their Staff Photographer. It was quite the accomplishment. Little 18 year old me beat out 5 other candidates for the job. Our job interview was that we all had to photograph the same dress rehearsal and then they looked at the pictures we’d taken and gave the job to the one they liked best. It was more than a little nerve wracking.

Colored Museum, 1996

That job was easily one of my very favorites EVER. I was paid to photograph all the publicity stills for the newspapers and then I would come in during the final dress rehearsal and photograph the whole show for the lobby photos and for the theater archives (and what ever else they might need them for - newsletters, programs, posters etc.). It meant I got to see every single show put on by the two main stage theaters at Brown all four years I was there. Plus I got extra free tickets if I wanted to take other people with me once the show officially opened. Because of that job, my work was published in 11 different Rhode Island and Massachusetts newspapers and publications (under my maiden name, Brakeley, of course). Not bad for a college kid!

Arcadia, 1996.

Our Country’s Good, 1997

Las Meninas, 1997

Keep in mind, I was shooting with plain old Kodak color film and a little Minolta SRT101 (from the 70s). No digital, no retouching, no flash even. Just what ever came out of my camera. I didn’t even have a zoom lens! I was forever jumping up and over the empty seats in the theater and zooming up and down the aisle to get closer or farther away from the stage.

Sweeney Todd, 1998

This was one of the publicity stills for The Bacchae that was published in the Brown Daily Herald in the spring of 1998. They had this deeply annoying habit of not publishing my name, just saying “courtesy Leeds Theater” even though the theater always gave them my name with the photo. Whatever.

This is a page from The Independent, another local Providence paper. The show was Cymbeline, 1998.

Camino Real, 1998

A Flea in Her Ear, 1999

Passion Play, 1999

Artistic Licence, 1999

Marisol, 2000

Spring Dance Concert, 1998


I also photographed the dance concerts held each spring on the main stage. Dance is next to impossible to photograph if you haven’t seen it before. It was one of the few things I would ask to come in for the pre-dress rehearsal just so I could see what was coming. With theater, at least you can have an idea of what is going on and where people are going to be by what they are saying. But dance is all movement and no words! Its impossible to guess when something truly photographable is about to happen!

Spring Dance Concert, 2000

On my father’s side of the family, I have become the “go-to girl” for family photos. Every year, my grandmother sends out a holiday card with a photo of everyone in the family. Now it used to be that if you missed the day, tough luck, you weren’t in the photo that year. Very few people ever missed photo day for just that reason (well, that and my grandmother also tends to throw kick-ass parties on photo day). Alas, we have now entered the digital age. If you weren’t actually there, you can now be Photoshopped in! Amazing! And this is now my job. This is the photo I was given for the 2006 card. There are two people NOT in my family in the photo who had to be taken out, six people MISSING from the photo, and my Uncle Dave was blinking. D’oh.

With a bit of patience, a little digital magic, and photos of everyone who was missing, VOILA! A whole new historical event! One where Uncle Dave didn’t blink and the WHOLE family made it to the party!

This year was even more challenging. There were TEN people missing from the photo. TEN.

This is Before:

And here is After:

I think we all look pretty good for being at an imaginary event!

Taking people out of or putting people back into photographs seems like such a simple thing now a days. With a tool like Photoshop and the right lighting, you can put yourself anywhere in the world! But people have been manipulating photographs almost as long as photography has existed. Just ask Nikolai Yezhov.

I met Alahna when I was living in Ireland in 1999 and attending the Burren College of Art for a semester. Amazingly enough, she was also from Maine and struggling with so many of the same issues I was. We bonded very quickly.

I photographed her a lot while we were in Ireland. She is infinitely photograph-able and put up with me quite well.

I mean really, how could you not like this woman? Besides her kindness and HUGE heart, she is just, like, totally adorable!

Though this picture is kinda crappy (taken with a disposable camera in low light - yikes!) it is a great reminder of all the fun we had (and all the Guinness we drank).

One of my favorite photos of myself in Ireland is this one that Alahna took of me:

It really has nothing to do with the photo itself and everything to do with the story behind it. We were at the Cliffs of Moher (for probably the 3rd or 4th time) and Alahna noticed this little display that was playing Irish music. And she said, “Oh! Music! Stand in front of it and I’ll take your picture.”

Um, you want to take a picture of me with the music?

Hence the look on my face.

Our friendship survived the long voyage back across the pond and has strengthened so much in the intervening years. We both finished college and struggled with what to do next in our lives.

And then this guy happened.

And then this happened (as these things tend to).

She is five months pregnant in this picture. I took this at her baby shower in August of 2006.

At the time, she and Tom (the guy) were (and sadly still are) living in Colorado. So when she was home in Maine on a summer visit, her parents took the opportunity to throw her a big ol’ party. It was amazing and sweet to see the huge outpouring of love for her and this new life growing inside of her. The party was held in the gym of the elementary school where her mother works and where Alahna attended once upon a time. I stole her away from the party for a few precious minutes to take some photos.

Much to my dismay, these are the only pictures I was able to take of her during her pregnancy. The next time I saw her was almost a year later and by then the baby was very much on the outside.

Armando Mael, AKA Manny, is almost 8 months old in these pictures. Hes got such a great expression on his face here. Like he is not quite sure what the thing strapped to my face is or why its pointed in his direction.

Alahna can make him laugh SO HARD. There are very few things better than baby giggles and his are some of the best.

Alahna and Tom were both very excited I caught this face on film. Evidently he makes it all the time, but this is the first time they’d gotten him to do it for a camera. Holy Strange Face, Batman!

I love how concerned he looks in this picture.

Alahna’s sister is also named Jessica, so I will be his Auntie Jess while she gets to be his Aunt Jessie. Terribly confusing, I know, but what else are we to do? He has to call me something! Hopefully they’ll all move back to Maine in another year or so when Alahna is finished with her advanced schooling. And then I’ll have this little guy and his momma to photograph to my hearts content! Just as with Laura and her family, it is so much fun to have a whole new generation of friends to play with. I love my work!

Mary is a gifted psychic and medium (and the mother of the bride Maggie!). She wanted a new head shot for her website and asked if we could do a small shoot before the wedding! This one (above) is, I think, my favorite.

On August 11, I was honored to be the photographer for Maggie and Steve’s wedding reception in South Portland, Maine. Having been officially married exactly one week prior on the island of Samoa, this was the big party for friends and family back home who weren’t there for the real thing. It was a great party!

To see the full set of photos from this wonderful event, please visit my flickr site.

For about as long as I can remember, I’ve loved photographing people. When I was in High School, one of my favorite things to do was to take some friends, grab my camera and have an adventure. I’d find someplace interesting, plonk the friend down in the middle of it and somehow together we would tell a story through the pictures. Very often, we had no idea what the heck we were saying, but that was beside the point. The photos were what mattered.

In college, I was the same way. Most of the time, shortly after making a new friend, I’d pop the question: “Can I photograph you some time?” Even developed a few full blown narratives with pictures. Duane Michals was (is) my hero.

But I always enjoy returning to the single portrait. There is something about catching that moment - that fraction of a second - when the person you are photographing drops their pretense and just is. Even make-up-ed and in costume, that moment is still there. You just have to be patient. I love that moment. Its another one of those things that makes what I do so very worth it.

People have so many different reasons for asking for head shots. I’ve done my fair share of actors just getting into the biz, but lately it seems I’ve been working with people with very different agendas. For example, Gary here is a piano player and radio DJ.

And Billi is a personal chef and baker. I did an extensive set of portraits of her and her farm last summer as she was setting up her website.

She loved having images of herself outside in her garden instead of the very stuffy studio shots one often sees of professional chefs. She wanted a variety of images for lots of different purposes and was very happy with what we ended up with.

For more images of Billi and Firefly Farm, please visit my flickr site.