Paul Elledge ♥’s You

© Paul Elledge 1998

This month’s image “From the vault” mixes things up by showing another aspect of Paul’s work outside of his well known portraits.  For several years Paul and Leasha traveled the world for “Travel and Leisure Golf”.  They had the pleasure of visiting exotic countries that were home to some of the finest golf courses, hotels, and restaurants.

This month we feature an image from T &L Golf taken to illustrate the beautiful city of Sydney Australia.  It was a rainy day and Paul needed to make the best of inclement weather.  Paul with camera, and Leasha with umbrella had to visit many sites that day.  The highlight image was taken in the center of Sydney in Hyde Park.  A stunning location,  combined with a long exposure to get gather enough light and add the magic motion of the patrons of the park creating a striking black and white landscape.  Enjoy!

©Lillian Bassman

One of Team Elledge’s favorite prints at Art Chicago was by Lillian Bassman.  Her style with it’s use of bold black and white illustrated a mid century world of elegance.  In a story much in vain of Martin Scoreses’s HUGO her work with it’s interest in pure form fell out of style in the 70′s.   She then tossed out her life’s work of negatives and prints.  Fortune would have, that a forgotten cache of work was discovered and was re-appreciated in the 90′s.   Passing at 94, she continued her personal work into her 90′s.  Lillian Bassman was an inspiration, and we morn her passing.

©Lillian Bassman

We want to share our latest video of “Dependability”.  This is the fourth and final piece from a fantastic project for Maytag that we worked on in 2011.  This was created in a documentary style using the Canon 5d and 7D.  We traveled to various featured Boys and Girls Clubs around the country photographing and filming these special subjects.  The four featured “faces of dependability” have all touched many young lives and have helped shape the next generation.

© 2010 Paul Elledge

We would like to send our condolences to the friends and families of the lives lost and still missing on the Costa Concordia near Isola del Giglio.  While creating images for the San Diego Mia Francesca,  Paul and Leasha spent time on the island and photographed near the disaster site a year and half ago.  They had the good fortune to experience the magical island culture with all of it’s natural beauty during better times.

©1991 Paul Elledge

This month’s image “From the vault” features rocker and both Grammy & Acadamy Award winner Trent Reznor.  This image was taken in 1991 during the “Pretty Hate Machine” time period of his band “Nine Inch Nails “.

Paul photographed this image backstage at the very first Lollapalooza in Chicago.  This is an early example of what the studio calls a “Lunar Portrait” which is a reference to the lighting set-up.   Lunar portraits started out as a style Paul created for a series of personal portraits that quickly  became a signature style in the early days of Paul’s career. The first images, like the one of Trent, used the Hasselblad 500 CM with an 80mm lens shot wide open at f/2.8 using either using Tri-X or in this case,  Agfa 3200 asa transparency film.   In order to more closely connect with Paul’s point of view, this method of creating images  migrated to working with the 4X5 format within a year of this shoot.

The inspriation for this “look” came from Paul’s childhood love of vintage photographic imagary.  Paul was enchanted with the connection of the eyes, and the smooth tonal scale of early photographic portraits he discovered at flea markets and thift shops.   “My aesthetic has always been grounded in the honest portrayal of the common person in early photographic portraiture.”