Rachel Verhaaren Photography

From August to December I worked with Urbanite Magazine as their photography intern. Urbanite is a free, print magazine based out of Hamden that focuses on the lifestyle and culture of Baltimore as well as issues that effect the community.  It was a really amazing learning experience and gave me some legitimate insight into the inner workings of a magazine. I photographed a wide variety of subjects, from occupational portraits to food- a lot of things I had never done before.

The magazine gave me ample room to photograph any scenario how I saw fit (which was frustrating at times when I wasn’t given enough direction) but I was able to learn first hand how to work with clients- again, something I did not have much experience doing. They pretty much kicked me out of the nest and told me to fly- most of the time by the seat of my pants.

While I did not receive any pay or credit for the internship I still felt that it was ridiculously rewarding. I have the start of a commercial portfolio, some great on-the-job knowledge and I’ve officially been published! Here are some images I took while working with Urbanite:

a very lovely bed and breakfast near m&t stadium

an elementary school that was learning about caterpillars and butterflies

donna’s delicious seafood soup (i got to eat it after!)

a great new market in mount vernon

‘tree of life’ necklace from a jewelry store in harbor east

baltimore print studio!

a truffle tree (not sure what that means)

i have been obsessing about this photo for months now. i think it is quiet and beautiful. i’m usually not the snap-shot type but this has so much more consideration than just a point and shoot that i can really enjoy its casual quality.

as this is first official blog post on my first official website (the other posts are from a previous blog), i would like to introduce myself. my name is rachel verhaaren and i am at this moment twenty and one quarter years old. i am a student studying photography in baltimore, maryland but i am originally from long island, new york. while my major at school is photography i also love theater, music, singing and dancing. i’ve always had an interest in fiber arts as well. this website/blog was built for me by my amazingly talented boyfriend Anthony Mattox, who also attends school here in baltimore.

while the portfolio portion of this site will mainly contain finished pieces and series pertaining to my photographic work, i hope i can be consistent enough to make the blog an outlet for looking at:
brainstorms for projects
other artists i find interesting
additional art i make that might not fit in with the work in the portfolio
events and other fun happenings!

so sit back, relax and don’t hold your breath because it might be a while until i gather some speed!

when i first came to MICA the photography class i was most excited to take was alternative processes. i came out of the class not necessarily thrilled with what i learned or what i had produced but i still think it was an important class to have experienced.

we worked on a project that threw me for a bit of a loop at first- a negative exchange during which i was handed abstract pinhole images i had no interest in. but i was on this circle kick and i think these turned out ok. they’re paper negative collages scanned to create digital negatives and then contact printed with the van dyke brown process.

we also had to make images from our own negatives. i printed digital negatives and suspended them by pins away from a cream piece of mat board. these are just the images sans fancy display stuff but i think you get the idea.

for our final i chose to scan 8mm film that my mother gave me. the film is from when my grandparents were young, my family has copied the film onto VHS so i could do whatever i wanted with it. i enlarged the images and made wintergreen transfers of two sections of the film, sixteen frames each since 8mm film runs sixteen frames per second. these are just some selections from one of them. i think it is my grandmother but i’m not sure.

Lynn would give us an assignment and two weeks in which to complete it. we had one week to work on the project on our own before she presented slides of images that related to the assignment. then we would have another week to work before critique. i thought this was a great way to have us think for ourselves as well as showing us inspiring images from other photographers.

so here are some images from the class!

single image narrative

multiple image narrative
*printed twice, viewed both backwards and forwards*

final
images presented in a handmade book

agh! sorry for the image overload! i’m really going to try to update this regularly so it won’t just be a million pictures at once.

figured i needed one of these eventually. i don’t have the computer skills to make a real site for my work yet so, like everyone else has done before me, this will be a place for images of work/work in progress/inspiration/annoying musings/etc… i don’t have any of my work scanned from this semester- none of it was done digitally. so once i have a chance to resize some stuff from last semester i’ll get it up.
hey, it’s a start.