What's The Doppelganger?

Andrew Hetherington doppelganger. © Ryan Schierling

It's said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. I don't shoot square format or rock the Q-Flash, but for Halloween this year I went as swashbuckling editorial photographer Andrew Hetherington. Don't worry if you're not quite sure who that is. I was convinced that only friends William Anthony and Jonathan Saunders would "get it," and that's pretty much how it came off. But, it's my party and I can be who I want to. Hopefully I did Mr. Hetherington proud.


Go check out his blog What's The Jackanory?

Schierling as Hetherington. © Ryan Schierling

There is no one left to talk to...

...so we use our telephones for taking photographs. © Ryan Schierling, via iPhone.

"After the war started, and we lost the internet, we stopped writing on our blogs, and went back to writing in our notebooks.

But we didn’t change what we wrote, or how we wrote, we only changed where we wrote it.

We still wrote about what our days were like, and what we’d had to eat, and why it had been so long since we last wrote.

We weren’t sure who we were writing to, or why, or whether anyone would ever read what we had written.

We realized we were praying."

© Kevin Fanning's whygodwhy.

Influences: William Anthony

William Anthony. © Ryan Schierling

I came across his music photography when he was donating time to local radio station KEXP, and we sent a few emails to and fro before meeting for stiff drinks at Moon Temple back in 2004. Since then, we've collaborated (along with Bradley Hanson) on "3 Punks," a project documenting one night in the all-ages punk scene at The Vera Project, which was followed by a commission from Bumbershoot organizer One Reel to shoot the festival's 35th anniversary in the same style. The result was "End of Summer," a gallery show with more than 8,000 viewers over three days of Bumbershoot the following year.

Bill's honest portraiture and subtle lighting have certainly been an influence, pushing me from an old-school photojournalist's detached observational style to one more personal and refined. Too many portrait photographers rely primarily on location and equipment to make images, forgetting that the most important part of the equation is their connection to the subject. And if they can't, or won't, give enough of themselves to make that connection, it's not a portrait. It's just one more technically accurate, sterile representation of what that person looked like at that given point in time. Bill makes connections, and his photographs are testament.

Check out his newest project, 90021, which is a fresh look at his new neighborhood in L.A.

I am glad to have crossed his path, proud to call him a friend and I am truly honored to be the best man in his upcoming wedding to Finnish supermodel and professional tennis player Pamela "Bjorn" Sunnarborg.

Influences: Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze, 1988. Wichita, Kansas. © Ryan Schierling

Everyone's going nuts about the movie trailer that was released today for the Spike Jonze-directed Warner Bros. movie "Where The Wild Things Are," and I can't blame them. I'm a little excited myself. 

First of all, the book was a dog-eared favorite when I was a kid. Secondly, it's no secret I'm a fan of Spike Jonze. He was one of the reasons I picked up a camera in the first place, and that goes back to his work with Freestylin' Magazine in the late 1980's. It seems like a lifetime ago.

Letter, 1988.