Staff Post - Taylor Mahoney

Moi, Monsieur Photographie (one of my many aliases) 

Continually creating collectively causes continued creation…I love alliteration, that one isn’t my best, but not bad for something off the top of my head…Really though, I feel like this sums up the experience of thevisualCollective quite well. A group of creative types doing things together, and producing content in various mediums; we are feeding off of each others energy and getting critique along the way, which helps drive us (or at least me, I can’t speak for others) to greater creative heights.

As an angst ridden youth, my favorite part of art class was getting to be around other creative people (who were at least as weird as I was, if not more so), seeing what they were doing, and getting their honest opinion of what I was doing. It is only by tearing apart your work and looking at it critically that we can grow as artists, this is what I get out of and love about thevisualCollective, it’s like art class for adults. 

here are the “adults” of thevisualCollective v1.0 on night one.

This trip to Death Valley, Calif. was really good for me for a lot of reasons. Firstly, my only mode of transportation is a pair of Vans, so i don’t get out of Flagstaff very often. Secondly, for the reasons already mentioned, getting to be around a group of fun creative people with a common goal of being fun and creative. I have posted some of my content on my personal blog here… please check it out but come back here for more. Now, I will use the rest of this post to display my later cuts. 

Andrew the Colorado River boat captain. 

Andrew the Colorado River boat captain, Matt the VAL and the rest of tvC v1.0 team

Ashley was a great model, and the Bad Water Basin Salt Flats were a great location.

For those of you who follow my work, you know that I currently specialize in alternative portraiture. I hope to bring a strong commercial edge to my images, while keeping a funky twist as well. Although the sky was fairly over cast, there was a TON of light out here, keep in mind that for miles around in all directions the ground was a giant white reflector. This series was achieved by blending two strobes attached to VALS and pocket-wizards with the ambient light and naturally beautiful background. There was no wind, so i had Ashley move her hand from her knee around to her shoulder to get the movement in the fabric to replicate a wind type look.

Andrew the VAL (voice activated light-stand)

Before I was into studio lighting, I came from a fine-art and journalistic background, I was able to produce some of these type of images as well…

sunset at the sand dunes

Majestic Matt modeling manly male mini (skirt that is) *kidding* 

I also shoot actual film from time-to-time, here is the salt flat shoot in pre-production

Katie’s on a boat

Kyra shooting the sunset, or maybe a bird, at the Las Vegas campground near Lake Mead.

Well that’s about it from me for now. Hopefully you enjoyed reading my rant and looking at some of my photos. In a week or two I will be departing on thevisualCollective v2.0 tip to Zion Nation Park, which of course I can’t wait for. I can’t stress it enough how valuable this experience is to me and how much I love all the people that are part or thevisualCollective.

Till next time…Eternally Expounding Eloquent Exchanges Exclusively En Espanol

~taylor