Brittany Bailey

Finding beautiful imagery  that temps your  palate  through texture and color.

Brittany Bailey

Brittany is a natural born artist located in Seattle.   She graduated in 2011 with a BFA in Commercial Photography from the Art Institute of Seattle.  Brittany not only had a scholarship she also graduated with honors.  As a kid she used to take photos with disposable cameras.  She still has boxes of random photos of friends,  places she went to, and pets.  In high school is where an art teacher saw her natural talent and "eye".  This is where her teacher reworked her art assessments in class to allow Brittany to be able to compete with a camera rather than watercolors or pencils medium.  

“Reality is that which, once you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Philip K. Dick

32 Spice Count

What kind of subjects do you shoot/or what are you currently working on?
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My work spans the gamut of subjects. Anything that might catch my eye or inspire me can turn into a project. Currently I am working on portraits taken at thanksgiving of my cousins and myself. While visiting family for the holiday, I noticed the photos on my grandfather’s wall had not been changed since my grandmother passed in 2008. Being the photography in the family, I feel it is my duty to take over for my grandmother. To update the images and add those great grand babies my cousins have been having to the wall of grandkids. At the same time, I am working on editing a recreation photo. They seem to be a big trend at the moment. On my laptop the background is a photo of myself and my grandpa when I was 3 years old. You only seen the back of my head but looking at the photo and my grandfather being a creature of habit, besides normal changes in my growing up and he growing older, most of background is the same. He still lives in the same house the photo was taken, with the same kitchen table and chair set, the same dishes and he still wears plaid and reads the paper in the same spot every morning. Part of me is really excited to be able to recreate the photo at this time. I am 26 and my grandfather turned 80 this year, so how much time we have left we will never know.

Cedar Wood Fired Salmon

Crab Avocado Salad

What inspires you as a photographer?
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Sometimes it is how light or shadows are falling on an object, sometimes it is the object, color or texture itself. My candle light portraits and technique developed one night while a friend was visiting and the power went out. Drawing inspiration from the lighting as well as Rembrandt's portraits, I saw candle light to be very forgiving having almost a painterly quality. I have seen images that were drawn so well they look like a photograph, but I had not seen photographs that were lit to look like paintings, so I set out on the challenge myself.  

Celene Candlelight

Andre Candlelight

Tom Candlelight

“Nothing is worth more than today”- Anonymous

Who is your biggest inspiration? 
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I really love the art of the old renaissance painters such as Rembrandt (my favorite). In many ways, I look at other photographer's work to see what they are doing, so I can do something different or something that is not being done. At the start of my college career, I saw many of my friends with makeup, though hardly ever without. Not being a fan of make up myself, I wanted to show other’s natural beauty in comparison to what their painted face would be. I called it the Naked series, as most of the gals I worked with felt naked without their makeup on. It was not more than three months after I finished the project, all the stars and make up companies started doing the “natural” look and posting images without makeup, or very little makeup at all. When this happened I discontinued the series, as I do not want to do what other people are doing if I can avoid it.   Other inspirations are just everyday objects, most of the time in nature, but sometimes it is inanimate objects that in my mind, come to life. Like Danny, my teddy bear, who was the subject of MANY of my school projects.

What are your goals as a photographer?

As far as goals, I would like to show my candle light work in a few galleries next year in the Seattle area. A few exciting projects I have worked on were my candle light photography series, in which I build a keylight system to light my subjects with candles, and my work with a few local hotels in Seattle for food photography. The cedar wood fire salmon was featured in Alaska Airlines Magazine.  

Advice, when and if you get a digital DLSR camera, read your manual and if you take one workshop or class do not expect everything to click right away, it can take months.  Never give up on your passion. 

“Photography is like golf, you never master it, but you can always get better.” - Anonymous

Check out more of Brittany's photos at ​brittanybaileyphotography.com

Each artist that I introduce I would like to inspire just one person.

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