Letters Home a visual diary of Matthew Ginn's activities in Portland, Oregon, and beyond971-219-7189
info@matthewginn.com
portraits
Sam Erickson
Another recent assignment was to photograph Sam Erickson, senior planner for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, better known as the RTA. Since the theme of the issue was health care I met Sam at the East 93rd Street stop of the RTA’s Health Line, a bus rapid transit route that runs along Euclid from [...]
Rotary Club of Cleveland
This was the first commission I received in Cleveland—a portrait of Mark Wipper (center), president of the Rotary Club of Cleveland, along with Jerry Jarzabek (past president) and Karen Melton (president elect)—shot for a local business magazine in the Nautica Complex on the Flats. Like most of my new town, the venue was new to [...]
Investigating elder abuse
One of the last assignments I had before leaving Portland was to photograph Ashley Carroll, who is the Abuse in Later Life Project Coordinator for the Children, Youth & Families Division of Clackamas County’s Health, Housing & Human Services Department (why do local government officials always have such long job titles?). After contacting Ashley, I [...]
Oregon WWII Memorial
Apparently Oregon is one of just six states without a World War II memorial—but that will soon change. A team of veterans and other volunteers has been working to build a memorial on the state capitol mall in Salem, and it’s nearly ready. At the beginning of February I had the opportunity—and honor—to photograph some [...]
Michelle McAfee CD
Here’s a shoot I’ve been waiting to blog about for months. Way back in September, Oregon musician Michelle McAfee contacted me to do some photos to use in her press pack in support of her upcoming CD. After some back-and-forth about the type of photos she wanted and where we could do them, waiting for [...]
Sarahjoy Marsh and Jay Gregory
Playing catchup, a bit here. These photos came from an assignment for a Valentine’s Day story to photograph Sarahjoy Marsh and Jay Gregory. He is a psychologist specializing in couples’ therapy, she is a certified yoga instructor, and together the couple conduct workshops called “Learning to Love: Mindfulness, the Heart of the Nervous System.” The [...]
Ken Eshelman
Ken Eshelman has been on staff at the Fund for the Public Interest for nearly two decades. Never heard of the Fund for the Public Interest? You may have seen or heard from them, but not known it. To understand what the Fund is, here’s a bit of history: In the early 1970s, public interest [...]
Carol Johnson
Here’s a story I photographed recently about Carol Johnson, a woman who makes art with dried flowers. She gives most of her work to Women of Purpose International, a Portland-based Christian organization supporting and empowering women in their relationships and through their spiritual gifts. Carol, 61, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her 20s, and [...]
Jonathan House
A few weeks ago, I photographed the men’s and women’s basketball teams at Portland Community College. We made some nice portraits of the players and coaches but, as occasionally happens, my favourite was one of the test shots. This is Jonathan House, the fine photographer who helped me with the shoot, simply standing in for [...]
Jeanie Butler
For many of my assignments, I don’t know much about the subject (or the details of the article) in advance, and don’t have much control over the location of the shoot. I typically have a brief phone conversation with them to set the time and meeting place, and try to get some kind of idea [...]
Judy Donovan
I recently had an assignment to photograph Judy Donovan, the vice president of the Beaverton Historical Society. Her love of Beaverton history is personal as well as academic: Judy is a direct descendent of the Denney, Fanno, and Vose families, who were among the first to settle in Beaverton. Several roads, creeks and schools are [...]
Pepe Rafael
I often write here about the fascinating people I get to photograph, but Pepe Rafael really stood above the others. Pepe, leader of the band Pepe and the Bottle Blondes and member of several other groups, is a natural entertainer. How’s this for a resume: after quitting school at 13 to work as a welder, [...]
Little Big Burger and Boxer Sushi
Here’s a clip from an assignment I did for Oregon Business a couple months ago, along with some of the out takes. I was sent out to photograph local restauranteurs Micah Camden and Katie Poppe at their flagship Little Big Burger store in the Pearl District, as well as their new restaurant Boxer Sushi. It [...]
Change of expression
It’s amazing what a slight change of expression can do for a portrait. The man on the left could be Santa Claus in the off season; the man on the right could be tired of his neighbor’s reindeer pooping on his lawn. Of course, neither (to my knowledge) is true. Both are, in fact, Richard [...]
Naturalists
As much as I enjoy exploring the world on my own, it’s even better when you’re in the company of an expert: a geologist or a local historian, for example, because they can point out and explain so many things that you’d never see. A few weeks ago I got to walk through Smith & [...]
Marianne Buchwalter
As I’ve written repeatedly, one of the best things about being a photographer is all the interesting people you get to meet. One recent pleasure was Marianne Buchwalter, a truly fascinating individual whom I photographed to accompany an article about her memoir, Memories of a Berlin Childhood. Marianne and her family came to Oregon after [...]
East of Omaha
One of the benefits to following this blog is getting the inside scoop on new projects I’m working on. OK, that may not be a benefit, but you get it anyway. So today I’m presenting a new personal project I’ve been working on for a few weeks, called East of Omaha (which would be somewhere [...]
Andrea Nakayama
Andrea Nakayama is a nutritionist I photographed recently for a newspaper. She recommends a diet based on whole foods, including things like yoghurt, nuts, kimchi and fruit, and eliminating refined sugar, dairy and gluten. We made some portraits of her on that theme in her kitchen—she even recruited her son Gilbert for one of the [...]
Newberry House
One of the most interesting assignments I received recently was to photograph Carl VanderZanden and his home. VanderZanden is a pretty interesting guy in his own right. For instance, he spends a lot of his time living and working in the less-traveled parts of Africa, most recently Madagascar. However, the especially unusual thing is his [...]
Photographing a photographer
A few weeks ago I was put in the unusual position of photographing a photographer. I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that before, and I have to admit that when I arrived at the assignment I was feeling a bit self-conscious. However, my subject turned out to be a totally down-to-earth, cool guy and besides, does [...]
Jim Tessier’s can art
When you live and work on Johnston Atoll, a 1-square mile island smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there isn’t much to do when the working day is done. For a non-drinker like Jim Tessier, even less. So he started making models from discarded beverage cans. Now 75 and living north of Portland, [...]
Carl Grimm
At some point, every kid dreams about the kind of job he or she will have when they grow up. Firefighter, doctor, and ballet dancer are common aspirations. I’m fairly certain that no kid ever planned to be a Natural Gardening and Toxics Reduction Planner—and yet, that’s what Carl Grimm became. Among other things, his [...]
Jenna Alexander
I’m no food shooter, but I did enjoy this assignment. These are actually some outtakes from the shoot. The images that the magazine ran are good, but I like all of these better. Oh well. Jenna Alexander teaches classes in healthy eating, with a focus on the elderly. I photographed her in the newly-remodeled kitchen [...]
Barney McDowell
Bernard “Barney” McDowell is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in psychotherapy and couples counseling. I photographed him in his Portland office in early January. This was another one of those assignments where I have a short window of time to enter a space I’ve never seen before, strike up a rapport with a [...]