| If you're not familar with Robin Bartholick's work you're in for a real treat. Robin Bartholick's work transcends simple commercial imagery and crosses over into the world of fine art. His whimsical turn of the century images makes him on of the top photographers working today. His list of clients is long and include Coke, Nintendo, Microsoft, Starbucks and many others. John and I had an opportunity to chat with Robin recently about his career, his education and photography in general. Edward Mendes: What originally got you interested in photography?
Robin Bartholick: My dad was a fairly well known architect and my mom ran an Arts and Crafts school, she was also a potter. So, when I was just a baby I was playing with clay and was always around art and my parents would send me off to art camps and stuff like that. When I was about 12 was the first time I printed in a darkroom. My dad always had a Rolleiflex (camera), so I was playing with that even before I was 12.
After school I would have to go to my Mom’s Arts and Craft school and wait for her, sometimes she wouldn’t be done until ten o’clock in the evening so I had a lot of time to kill and started taking art classes and one of them was photography. I was probably about 14 or 15 then, but it was always a hobby. Of course all of my parent’s friends that were artist, or photographers, were starving artists and I had no idea that photographers could make a living. Later my parents looked into the Rochester Institute of Technology and National Technical institute for the Deaf and I ended up going there, and it was probably the best thing that happened to me. I ended up learning a lot about photography and commercial photography and learned that you could make a living at it.
During the summers I assisted for a fellow named Larry Hudson, he was a pretty well known photographer in Seattle and he also did TV commercials. In fact, he went on to be pretty successful doing TV commercials for Budweiser and McDonalds, so I learned a lot of movie lighting from him. After that I worked for a few other people then went out on my own.
John Ford: At what point did you realize photography was going to be your profession?
RB: When I learned about commercial photography.
EM: At RIT/NTID is commercial the emphasis they place on the photography program, or do they also dive into fine arts and portraits as well?
RB: Well you had a choice. There was either “Pro Photo”, that was for your BA degree, and I believe the other one was call “Photo Illustration” and that was for a BFA. I think for commercial photography “Pro Photo” was the course to take.
EM: So by that point you already knew you wanted to go into the commercial realm
RB: Yeah, well I knew I needed to make a living.
EM: Do you consider Larry to be one of your mentors in the photography world?
RB: He exposed me to a lot of stuff early on. I had one year in college and then the summer off so I went and worked for him and we were just doing all these commercials, famer’s dairy commercials, kind of like the “Got Milk” ads and I learned so much early on; things that they would have taught you in college in your third or fourth year. So when I came back for my second year I already knew more than almost everyone in the whole school unless they had experience with other photographers.
EM: I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a few college classes and a number of students think they’re going to jump right into their own business right after graduation. How important is it to work for someone else and learn the industry?
RB: In college they teach you a lot of little important details, we had a course called photo science, and we learned a lot about chemistry and the zone system and all of these things that you would never learn from another commercial photographer. So, they give you a foundation in college but they didn’t necessarily tech me how to work in the real world of photography. Working with someone else is where you’ll get that experience.
EM: Have you had other photography related jobs?
RB: No, I assisted for other people like Chuck Kuhn, he was a guy similar to Larry, the hot Seattle photographer. Then there was Bob Peterson, who is a great photographer, he use to work for Time Life and of course he did primarily commercial work.
EM: Your work really blurs the boundaries between the fine art world and the commercial world, how did your style come about in relation to commercial jobs?
RB: I’ve always liked fine art and I’ve always experimented with fine art. It just seemed like the more creative I got the less money I made and the more commercial I  got the more money I made. I kind of went back and forth, trying to find a unique style that could be my own and would also sell in the business world. That’s the key thing, to make a decent living and still be on the fine art side as much as possible. I just started thinking about how can I do commercial work that would fit into the business world and I thought about these vintage images. If you think about vintage, images from the turn of the century, everything was black and white. There was a vintage clothing store and I’d find the right models that had a vintage look and dress them up. I would spend a lot of time on concepts, challenges that would work in the commercial field and then go out and do them.
EM: Growing up, as a child did you have a love for the circus and for the turn of the century Vaudeville?
RB: I’m actually legally deaf and I wear a hearing device, but in the early days they just weren’t very good and I just couldn’t hear. I still can’t hear movies and my dad would take me to these old silent movies, Charlie Chaplin films that didn’t have sound, so I was exposed to that but it didn’t occur to me until I had been making some of these vintage images for a while that I thought back and realized they kind of reminded me of Charlie Chaplin (movies) so maybe that was an influence from my early childhood.
EM: Charlie Chaplin and the silent movie genre of films is the first thing that I think of when I see your images; in particular some of your more playful images such as the Weightlifter walking across a tightrope. Obviously you’re not photographing someone walking a tightrope with heavy weights above their heads, what goes into the creation of one of your images?
RB: Fortunately I have an illustration background. I guess if you look at some of my earlier black and white pictures, there is a film guy with a film reel and there’s one with a woman in a globe, those are some of my first images doing the vintage look. The problem with  those is they took so many hours, I spend so many hours in Photoshop trying to create a good design and putting pieces together and having the lighting be right. Some of these images took three or four days so there was a problem trying to get paid for all those hours and getting clients to want to buy an image like that. So I started simplifying my images and that’s where some of the simpler black and white images came in. Normally the simpler it is the less time it takes in Photoshop.
You were talking about the tightrope image, which was a little more complicated than some of the others. I found the fellow that had the right look and went out and got him the jumpsuit, which was shot in my studio. I had him stand on a pole and he held just a bar up and then everything else like the rope I photographed separately. I then illustrated the post and the basket, and the background is all pretty much illustration. I had some audience photos and added some lights and ropes and stuff like that.
EM: With your images you mentioned your mixing photography with illustration. In terms of percentages how much is photography and how much is illustration?
RB: Most of it is photographic, but then I have to manipulate a lot of it.
EM: With all the work you do in Photoshop, how did you get your background with the program?
RB: I just took a couple classes. My former wife was in graphic design and I use to do a lot of work for the Aldrus Corporation. I saw the work they did with Photoshop 2.0 and 2.5, the only thing I was good in terms of computers was fixing my wife’s and installing and setting up software, she had an old Macintosh SE, which was in the 80’s. For photographers the computers weren’t fast enough to put out the quality that we needed. Later they got better and I think in 1995 I took a couple classes and I was able to create my first image. The first image I did was a job for Nintendo and it turned out perfect. I had another friend who was an illustrator and he would output to LVT, a film recorder, because digital print output wasn’t mastered yet.
For me the computer was so easy, before that I use to do a lot of special effects in camera, a lot of multiple exposure and light painting, complicated stuff that was fairly difficult. Then we’d have to run the film to the lab, wait two hours and check it to see if we got the shot, then go back and fix whatever we had to fix, it was nightmarish. Of course we would used Polaroids but they weren’t crystal clear so it was hard when it came to special effects. When it came to computers, Photoshop is just a program that you draw with and you use the same tools over again and it was really easy compared to what we were doing.
JF: How difficult is it keeping the lighting conditions consistent when you’re dealing with images created using so many different elements?
RB: That’s real critical and one of the reasons I went with vintage images and choose overcast lighting, because it’s more even lighting and easier to work with. There are some images I did with direct sunlight but it is very difficult to mask objects and all of the objects have to be lit from the same angle or it looks fake.
EM: How do you think of ideas for new images?
RB: Sometimes at night I come up with ideas and I write them down. Sometimes I have really good nights where the dreams and ideas are really flowing. The ideas are easy; I have an entire book filled with them. But not all of the ideas will be successful in the business world or sell well as a stock image. So I spend a lot of time analyzing them and try to determine how successful they’ll be and narrow them down. The hard part is creating them, some of them are just too complicated to use. You may spend an entire week on an image and it isn’t a big seller, so you have to make good judgments.
EM: What type of work do you photograph for yourself, personal work?
RB: I think the black and white vintage images have become personal, I’ve had a couple shows and they sell really well, they’re the type of images you can put in a house.
EM: You work with a lot of large companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo, Starbucks and Boeing. When a company like that comes to you for a commercial image how much flexibility do you have to put your own artistic vision into the idea they give you?
RB: It really varies, I find that the larger the company the tighter the layout they’ll  have. You can play with lighting and the composition somewhat but as far as where the object goes, it’s pretty nailed down. But it really depends on who you’re working for, I’ve done a lot of work for a design firm called Hornal Anderson who has done a lot on a national level, Intel, Starbucks and they created the logo for the Sonics’ basketball team. They’re a very good design firm; some of their designers may not have a layout or have a rough layout( before the shoot) and when we get to the studio we start playing, they’re really flexible with the layout, the bottom line is making the product look good.
EM: Is your Black and White work used for stock and editorial the majority of the time?
RB: Yeah, we (the industry) have gone through a lot of changes, in the early days it was mostly assignment work. Ad agencies and design firms would create layouts and then hire a photographer to shot for the packaging or ad. Now stock photography have become so popular it’s the other way around. Photographers go out and shoot images and when ad agencies come up with a concept they search for an image, through stock companies that will fit in their ad. So when I started doing the black and whites they were mostly for stock.
EM: How did you get started shooting stock?
RB: A lot of changes were happening and I saw a lot of people making good money in stock so over time I just starting building in that area. One of the nice things about it is it gives you a lot more freedom to go out and do what you want and be where you want. I use to live in Seattle and for me to live and survive I had to be in Seattle. But now I live in Bellingham, a small town a couple of hours north of Seattle and I’m out in the wilderness doing all my work out here.
EM: How many stock images do you have in your portfolio?
RB: I have about 700 images out there in stock companies.
EM: So you’re not someone who shots anything and everything, throwing 30,000 images out there in the hopes that some will sell. You photograph an idea you have in your head that you think will sale?
RB: Yeah usually, but I’ve kind of dabbled in a little bit of both. I’ve shot quality to make a little bit of income but I tend to do more specialized images that take more time.
EM: How do you approach creating a new stock idea?
RB: A lot of it depends on the trends and what’s selling. With Corbis, who I’ve been working with, I created a list of ideas and they picked out what they think would sell and they’ll tell me what the trends are. Right now the trend is going green and a lot of stuff related to the environment so I’ve been doing a lot of things in that area.
EM: Do you ever update some of your old ideas from your portfolio, so the idea will have a new, updated look?
RB: I’ve never done that, when I look back on my old ideas from twenty years ago I kind of laugh at them.
JF: You mentioned you work with Corbis, how did you get started working with an agency?
RB: The case with them I submitted a portfolio of my work and they ran it through a panel.
EM: Getting into a Corbis or a Getty is all but impossible to do right off the bat. What other agencies have you worked with?
RB: I’ve worked with a couple but I’ve also sold a lot on my own. There have been times where I’ve sold more stock images myself then with an agency.
EM: Trying too sale the images yourself you have to do the promotion for that.
RB: Yeah and I was in the Black Book for quite a few years and that was where I was getting my customers.
EM: What type of promotional things do you do at this point in your career?
RB: Well not enough, I haven’t done any for a while. I’m basically keeping the clients that I have, some of its word of mouth.
JF: What advise do you have for people trying to promote themselves and get into the business?
RB: When I started out it was a lot easier than it is today and I was making a lot more money than I am today, of course it was a different type of photography I was doing  back then. But the industry did go through a major change and there are a lot of photographers out there that are hurting, you know it’s changing all the time and it’s getting harder all the time.
Basically the top photographers who have distinctive styles are the ones who are surviving. Then there are a lot of things like catalog and fashion photography that really didn’t change except now your shooting with a digital camera. The main thing is to do a lot of promotion and the nice thing about email is you can do email promotion which saves quite a bit of money. With electronic promotion and electronic portfolios you save money where in the past we’d have to mail out printed pieces and that would cost several thousands of dollars to have them laid out and printed, then you have to have them mailed. It seems like when I’ve done the best is when I’ve been in major source books like Black Book, Work Book, American Showpiece or Klik. They would get me national work and I’d send out postcards for local work.
EM: So you stayed away from postcards and printed materials for national promotions?
RB: Early on I did but later I sent them out. My work is a little harder sell in smaller markets, so I used the source books to get work on a national level, then the right kind of clients would come to me.
JF: What are some of the photographers that inspire you?
RB: In my earlier days it was people like (Henri) Cartier-Bresson, Irvin Penn, (Richard) Avedon and Bruce Davidson, who is actually one of my favorites still and went to the same college I went to. He was going into Harlem with an 8x10 camera, and then there’s Pete Turner. Cartier-Bresson inspired me the most when I was young, he had a show that came to Seattle, he would wait on a street corner all day for something to happen and that showed me how important design was and composition. Then there is Eugene Smith, who thought it was most important to capture the image and he didn’t care about quality. Then he would spend days taking a bad quality image and making a good print from it.
EM: A lot of people don’t know you’re hearing impaired. How do you think it has effected both your career and before, that your education in photography?
RB: I think it helped me to focus; I think one of the most important things to be able to do is to focus on your work without getting distracted. Not being able to hear so well kind of isolated me from society; it’s difficult for me to go out to a bar and hang out with friends because I can’t hear them so I tend to say home and work, and put more energy into my work.
EM: Did you use RIT’s deaf program when you were there?
RB: Yeah I did.
EM: I know it can be difficult making out voices over background noise; educationally did you have trouble growing up?
RB: It was really difficult and to tell you the truth, when I was in high school I didn’t  have any support services, I couldn’t hear and I think my grade point average was about 1.6. When I went to RIT I had all their support services, mainly it was note takers. I didn’t know sign language that well so I relied on note takers and with their help I was on the honor roll every quarter.
EM: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us
JF: Thanks Robin
RB: Thank you both.
*All images appearing in this article and Master's Gallery are courtsey of and copyrighted by Robin Bartholick Links If you'd like to see more of Robin's work you can visit his website or view his portfolio in the Whitespider Master's Gallery Podcast AlertYou can also hear our interview with Robin Bartholick in our newest podcast (March 1, 2008). The podcast includes some bonus insights into commerical photography and other subjects that didn't make it into the written interview. Check out the audio interview Here! Other Whitespider Master InterviewsYou can read, listen or watch our other Master's Series Interviews with photographers like William Neill and Kim Weston by clicking here . | 
