Its All Connected

Each U.S. city has its own of cultural flavor. NYC has nightlife, Broadway, a melting pot of cultures and is the fashion capital of America. Chicago has Oprah, frigid winter winds, deep-dish pizza and the Cubs. Los Angeles: beautiful people, Hollywood, palm trees and tofu. When you get to San Francisco, this spot has style all of its own: magnificent hills with cable cars, World Series champions the SF Giants, plus the Golden Gate Yacht Club, home to America’s Cup 2010. San Francisco is also the place where the United Nations was created and the UN Charter was signed. And don’t forget that native community up on Castro Street.

Imagine being a photographer in a city with such diversity and novelty. Even better, imagine a career capturing the flavors of its avant-garde populace. Kingmond Young Photography, housed in the Bernal Heights region, is a full-service studio with expertise producing advertising, marketing, editorial photography and video. The studio works with 35mm, medium format, 4 x 5 view and DSLR cameras. Owner and lead photographer Kingmond Young oversees the casting, set building, site scouting and creative needs for makeup and hair styling. He’s chief photographer and the lead on retouch work.
Young has photographed for Kodak, Westin Hotels, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Papyrus, Safeway, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, Asia Foundation, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He’s shot for Moody’s Risk Management and is a contributing photographer to World Tribune and Living Buddhism Magazine.

Walking Around the Block
Business is vibrant, but that’s because Young is putting ample effort into marketing and getting in touch with clients. In 2010, he hired a marketing assistant and cordoned off an underused space in his studio—turning it into a retail corner. Last April he started toying with panorama imagery, stitching together 10–50 photo files using the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon G9. He next invested in the newest GigaPan Epic unit and began producing pics of his neighborhood. He showed a few residents and business owners and is now fielding orders.

“People see these panoramas and GigaPan images produced in their backyards, and the first thing they do is start looking for their car, their home, themselves!” Clients are also responding to creative panos where they themselves are presented multiple times, he says. Adding, “I think the appeal for this style image is a desire to feel connected to environment in a new way. Seeing yourself three to four times in the same still (with great lighting) is novel.”

Of all the campaigns worked in the past 26 years for commercial and editorial assignments, there are a few that he really lights up when asked to discuss. A clever smile crosses his face and he starts shuffling through a tall pile of folders, on the hunt for something special. Even though the body of work he’s trying to put a finger on was produced a while back, it remains a favorite. Clients love the images and readily give feedback. The project in question is three years’ worth of calendars for the San Francisco Aids Housing Alliance (AHA) “Desperate Divas,” calendar series; a labor of love for which Young earned a Best Corporate Calendar accolade by PDN magazine.

Far From Desperate
In 2006 he initiated work on the first AHA calendar (for 2007); he also produced ‘08 and ‘09 editions. Each year, 13 calendar candidates were chosen by the Housing Alliance during a fundraiser beauty pageant. It’s been Young’s coveted honor to turn the creative vision to the completed project—staging, styling and shooting the stars of each month according to theme. This calendar isn’t just another calendar, but a parade of fiction and fantasy acted out by wickedly talented and clever gender illusionists. Young shares, “The word diva aptly, yet fondly, describes each star when it comes to both looks and attitude.

Each lady absolutely embraced her character. This embrace yielded great images, but these divas went beyond entertaining, straddling adjectives like challenging, temperamental, fussy—you name it!”

Young notes that shooting this series was both technically and spiritually challenging. On the technical side, the biggest challenge was remembering that this male cross dresser had to interpret true to character; all hocus-pocus makeup and styling tricks could not be visible. “Fake eyelash layers were doubled up, added body parts are the norm, there was a heavy application of putty applied over eyebrows using gum spirit, hairlines had to look natural,” he shares. “Let’s not forget that male skin, plus heavy base and powder, does not photograph, nor reflect light in ways anticipated.” He gives great credit to tricks learned at an Eddie Tapp session. “He turned me on to one of Monte Zucker’s portrait filters and it’s saved the skin in many of my sessions!”

Chuckling, Young adds, “By and large, drag queens are not very wealthy so they must make do with what they can afford. In addition to adding all sorts of hair and makeup aids to our set bag, we’d toss in pins, pads, needle and thread, Hollywood tape, latex paints, duct tape, hot glue guns, glitter, sequins, Lee Press-on nails.”

Through it all, the Barbary Coast native developed a repertoire of photographer’s magic that countered most cosmetic, apparel and physical challenges. He figured out appropriate techniques to downplay male features; learned how to make the beefy look like the beauty. “It became apparent that shooting from above yielded the most believable gender bending perspective. By ‘believable,’ I refer to visual cues we see before deciding if our eyes are looking at a woman or man!” he says. “These cues include makeup, hairstyle, cleavage, high heels and clothing/props we link to female archetypes that are ingrained in our psyches.”

Back to that Spiritual Challenge
Aside from technical wizardry, Young stresses that the spiritual helps bring about a truly great photo. “Spirituality is our innate sense to recognize the interconnectivity of all things animate and inanimate. It is when we separate or isolate ourselves from the universe that we suffer,” he shares. “With my camera I naturally try to find the beauty in all things. Being tight inside or skeptical never got me great photos; being adventurous, trusting of situations and having faith that I will recognize beauty around me has delivered great results.” Continuing, he espouses words from Ghandi: “Become the change you seek.”

For Young, this means allowing his subject to play. “I’m there to encourage, experiment and stay open to what comes next—with a lot of listening and adding to the dialogue.”

Case in point, when refining ideas for each month with AIDS Housing Alliance/SF Director Brian Bassinger, Young would pile idea upon idea. “It was hysterical. We kept coming up with wilder and wilder ideas and feeding off one another. Best part—we succeeded in creating these visions with very little budget.”

They determined the ‘07 calendar to have a focus on housing; ’08 to be transition; ’09 was animals. During pre-visualization for each, Young strove to determine sets, and then paired the appropriate madam to each month. The ‘07 calendar was particularly challenging, as every model and member of the creative team was an amateur. There was a lot of Photoshop flying around.

Metro Male Beauty
For the July 2007 shot featuring BeBe Sweet Briar, Young produced three input image files—sky with sunset, city hall backdrop, model in a box. The shots were produced around 7 p.m. on a rainy July day using his 5D and a 24–70mm f/2.8. “I had BeBe lie down on the pavement immediately in front of city hall. As you can tell, she’s curled up inside her cardboard dwelling, underdressed yet resplendent in jewelry made from plastic ice cubes. We placed a small pen light at her face and illuminated the body using a Dynalite Jackrabbit.” It took about 50 photos in all. The three images were merged in Photoshop CS3. “During post, to increase a feeling of night, I added blue to areas outside the box and kept BeBe Sweetbriar’s face on the warm side. The clouds, although dark and foreboding, contained just enough sunlight to offer hope.”

Throughout the three years shooting this series, Young eventually fell into a groove photographing the divas using soft boxes and bounce lighting directed into foam core v-shaped wall sets. “In some cases I used a Dynalite 2000WS head with custom made, 18-inch deep stainless steel reflector that was covered with ½-inch tough spun diffusion,” he notes. “My style is to bring most lights close to the models. This helps soften shadows and pores. I tend to get bored with traditional beauty lighting, so I used an 18-inch reflector to give more of a daytime feel.” In some instances Young added a 20-degree grid spot. “I usually shoot between f/11 and f/16; I almost always soften in post.” When outdoors he chose open shade situations and only used a tripod for two of the 36 plus calendar sets.

Jumping Through Rings
In 2009, Young tackled what to be his last AIDS Homeless Alliance calendar with the theme of insects and animals (funding for the calendar was not extended). He ran the gamut from butterflies to Dalmatians, from bat girl to zebra.

For June, a circus set with leaping leopard was built. Young lucked out: his ringmaster was John Maxwell, project prop stylist and dresser for both San Francisco and Seattle operas. Maxwell built his own ears, tail, hoop. Makeup, as applied by top MAC artists Louise Zizzo and Victor Cembellin, took eight hours. The actual shooting time took less than half an hour. “I first photographed the leopard arching his back on a tall stool with ringmaster in the background. I tried different perspectives knowing that the ring of fire would have to be added in post. I had to show a good view of ringmaster for the photo to be convincing.” It took a 12-hour stretch to create all images.

Young says, “I shot everything at eye-level, putting the viewer ringside. I pre-visualized lighting. Fortunate for me the leopard (Baby Chase) was trained in the circus arts, so he was physically able to give a convincing leap!” In post, Young used Photoshop CS3 to work a repeating cobblestone base, airbrush out a chair on which the leopard balanced, add flame action to the hoop and pop in a bit of vegetation.

Beyond Desperation
In all the years he’s been shooting, the past few years have been the most challenging. He is spending more time looking inward to get in touch with what really matters personally, professionally and for his family. “A world famous Buddhist leader and mentor for me said, ‘Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other’s souls and foster mutual understanding.’ ”

While Young continues to build culture and community close to home through his panorama photography exploration, he’s on the trail of more commercial success that brings about understanding. Interestingly, he laughs and shares that understanding can even be found in chaos. After all, “The three years of Desperate Diva resulted by throwing a lot of seemingly disconnected things together.”

Despite the initial disconnectedness, Young feels the viewer will perceive a process or a way of life in photo—the message being to live with diversity and find beauty in one’s environment. “In today’s society we think too much about end product and spend too little time examining how we live.”

To see more of Kingmond Young’s work visit his Web site at www.kingmond.com.

Martha Blanchfield is creator of the Renegade Photo Shoots and a freelance marketing and public relations consultant.