Alex Landeen

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“I’m going to put it back for the next guy”

July 25, 2016 by Alex Landeen Leave a Comment

“You see what I am looking at?
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Facing left.”
“Yeah.”

The cast hit the water sixty feet from the bow of the boat.

“This is going to be about a seven second countdown.”
“Okay.”

I striped back towards the boat, then stopped.

“There?”
“Yeah, now wait.”

I counted in my head. Kevin counted out loud. We visualized the fly in our heads, moving down at about one foot per second towards the dark spot against blue-white bottom. The count ended.

“Small strip.”

I striped. The line came tight. I strip-set and swung the rod to the right, then striped again to build some pressure. Cameron and Kevin cheered behind me and I couldn’t see them but could feel the arms raised in triumph, fists beating at the sky, a winner’s celebration. But there was a problem. A problem with the pressure… it was constant. No headshake, no run. Sometimes people momentarily snag things and claim fish, but deep down they know. We know. Even for the smallest moments, when there is life at the end of the line, we know. And we know when there is not.

However, I can say without any doubt, that this is the best guided, casted, and hookset stick of my fishing career. It fooled us all. Good on you, fishy stick.

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-Alex who thanks Cameron Mortenson for the photographic documentation.

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions, Photography

My Bloody Truth

July 18, 2016 by Alex Landeen 2 Comments

landeen_bi_web-8793 I wish I liked tomato juice. I really do. I like tomatoes as much as the next guy, I guess. Thin, deep-red slices on a hot grilled chicken sandwich with green chili and mayonnaise on a warm toasty roll are as necessary as delicious. Fresh from my folks garden with a little salt, pepper, fresh basil, and a dash of balsamic? Shit, yeah. Salsa? Duh. And of course ketchup. Anyone who has ever said “I can’t believe you don’t like tomatoes, do you like ketchup?” is a moron. Ketchup tastes nothing like tomatoes.

I like vodka. I like Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, celery (I suppose, as much as one can like something that tastes like crunchy stringy nothing), olives, pickled vegetables, and various delicious salted and cured meat products. Goddammit. No drink I have ever experienced begs for extravagant overindulgence than the bloody mary.

We have all seen the garnishy ridiculousness: hamburgers, fried chicken, cocktail shrimp (this one isn’t too bad), brisket (slightly impressive), grilled salmon fillet (what?), sushi, etc. But art is not excess. Art is in the balance of taste, aesthetic, and the functionality of the thing itself. If you can’t take a walk out to the porch with your drink without fear of some catastrophic structural failure, that is a problem. Balance, my son.

That being said, Danny Reed is an artist. Literally. So when I saw him working in the kitchen of the Fisherman’s House during that first bad weather day, I was delighted and also slightly scared. I knew that he was about to create something special, that I would need to partake, and that I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as it deserved. That thought made me sad. Like a colorblind person at a Rothko exhibit, I felt I lacked the ability to really appreciate what the man was doing. I thought I would be shunned. Humiliated. Outcast. Like when you tell the smug, judging, skinny-jeaned hipster bartender that you don’t like IPA’s. But I was wrong.

Partially.

The kitchen was thick with the smell of bacon. I stole a slice of Smoked Beef Snack Stick from the cutting board and popped it in my mouth. I was headed toward the jar of pickled okra when Danny turned and held out my drink. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at me like a medieval armorer handing out implements of war in the face of a fast-moving enemy front. He had thirsty men who needed cocktails, and the quicker that I took my weapon of intoxication, the faster he could arm the next weather-day warrior.

I took the cold pint glass with care, softly, as if it were sharp, dangerous. The red rim was lined thick with old bay and salt. A piece of bacon leaned casually on the rim, crispy and content with itself. Toothpick-speared pickled vegetables and cured meat products clung to the edge behind the bacon looking fearful of sinking beneath the ice into cloudy orange-red liquid. I plucked the brussel sprout off the top of the wooden spear and the pickle relaxed a bit. A long celery stick shot out at an angle adjacent the bacon, crunchy and indignant.

I raised the glass to my nose and breathed deep into an olfactic cacophony: discordant and harsh, but also pleasant and good in a way which I find difficult to put into words, like trying to describe a color.

I put the rim to my lips and closed my eyes. The thick potent liquid poured into my mouth, over and through the spices and danced around my tongue. The velvety cold mix was perfectly balanced. I let out a sigh as the flavors rose like a fire. Those flavors… that taste…

My face contorted and I stifled a gehbleh in my throat as my eyes began to water. I quickly ate a piece of smoked beef stick, a pickled okra, and half the piece of bacon followed by a bottle-shot of vodka for good measure.

Fucking tomato juice.

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—Danny’s BI Bloody—
Grey Goose vodka
McClure’s Bloody Mary Mixer
Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco
Old Bay/Seasoning Salt rim
Okra, pickles, brussle spouts
meat stick, salami, fresh bacon

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Danny Reed can be found online at CrookedCreekHoller.com, and on Instagram @crookedcreekholler

-Alex who thanks Danny for the cocktail and good company.

See all the Beaver Island 2016 Photos

Filed Under: Opinions, Photography Tagged With: beaverbash2016

Definitions

June 20, 2016 by Alex Landeen 2 Comments

2-Alex2

Propensity /prəˈpensədē/ an inclination or natural tendency to behave in a particular way.

Fish eating dries are like single women at bars; if you position yourself to get a good idea of what they don’t want, it is easier to come up with something that will trick persuade them into your net company.

-Alex who has been known to have commitment issues.

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions

Business as Usual

June 16, 2016 by Alex Landeen 2 Comments

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Roughly two feet tall and eight feet long, the pile of magazines slowly grew and collected dust on a low concrete shelf surrounding the cold fireplace in the southwest corner of the converted master bedroom. An addition to the house sometime in the mid-seventies, the roughly 600 square foot red-brick room has served pretty well for my photographic purposes, even though it is not plumbed for either heat (hence the im-my-opinion-totally-useless fireplace) or for cooling (hence the 70’s era wall AC unit that makes strange noises and once tried to kill me with fire).

“One of these days I will get around to cutting all my work out of those damn things.” I would say, usually following someone pointing out the stacks with a raised eyebrow. Early this year that day came, and ended up be a slightly more massive project that previously anticipated, but it was neat to be able to walk back through time and see the progression of the magazines themselves, as well as how my photography grew with experience and gear. The early switch from continuous lighting to strobe, as well as the adoption of a PCE (tilt-shift) lens being probably the two biggest noticeable points. To see all that work in the clean plastic pages of the ITOYA 11×17 Portfolio binders was well worth the effort, and the weight of the combined pages gave a physical presence to the decade-long effort to create good looking, competitive artwork.

January marked ten years of photographing guns and law enforcement related subjects for Harris Publications, and the morning of April 28th seemed business as usual. I woke up to editors copying me on gear and product requests, issuing work orders, and the general hectic banter of email chains that seem to accompany any communication business. The main project needing attention this morning was regarding a feature piece for a new magazine called ARMED. The feature was going to be called Threads, where I would take a model and outfit him with clothing and gear that followed a common theme, similar to building an avatar for a game character. I was working with a dozen companies to get gear and accessories for the initial project, which accounted for about half of the emails on this particular morning.

At 10:47am, everything ended.

The letter was simple enough. On company letterhead and addressed “To Our Valued Partners” the letter quickly announced the closing of the Harris Publications, blaming the “rapid ascendance of digital media, changing consumer content preferences, magazine wholesaler struggles, and consolidation in the supply chain.” And further saying they have “tried mightily to persevere against these forces, but have been unable to overcome these challenges.”

Obviously it was a shock, but I felt mostly for the employees. Editors, assistants, layout designers, and all the other people that had become my friends over the last decade, people who had just had their financial throats slit and given 24-hours to clear out before the doors were locked on 1115 Broadway, New York, NY.

In a freelance or independent contractor situation there is always the potential for the work to end without warning. That is just the way it goes, and I have experienced it before with publication companies in the past. People get shuffled around, the art direction changes, one photographer shoots a style someone thinks is more appropriate for a certain publication, or an editor gets a note to “tighten the belt up a bit,” so no more soup for you. At least, until they find an empty spot on the worktable for you to occupy. That is just the way it is. But this was unexpected, to say the least.

But I would be lying if I said I hadn’t seen some writing on the wall. Two years ago, there was a pretty large cutback in work orders, and the decline was especially noticeable at the big party Harris throws to all their vendors, advertisers, and supporters at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas. However this last year everything seemed back to business as usual and the work resumed, increased, even. I can only attribute that to the theory that the powers that be at Harris wanted to keep the pretense up as long as possible, keeping even their most senior people in the dark. Also, when I met Stanley Harris’s predecessors at the SHOT party last year, I got the impression that these people (his son(s)) had little interest in the publication business, let alone anything regarding guns. However this is only speculation and assumptions on my part, and like Sgt Schultz, “I see nothing, I know nothing, I was not here, I didn’t even get up this morning.”

Consider this a belated shout-out to my people; Nino, Mike, Linas, Shirley, Cara, Richard, Rory, and all the others who appreciated and approved work orders for my blackhawk rides, tactical excursions, silly opener layout concepts, Rio Grande gunboat lounge-abouts (working on my tan), mountain ranger treks, felony warrant ride-alongs, and the countless product projects that ran through the studio. I would be less without your appreciation and direction.

But the show must go on, and it does.

There will be more on this, as one landed editor has already reached out from the ether looking for a familiar face.

-Alex who enjoys the company of good people.

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Note – It is currently 2:50am, which already disqualifies me from keeping to my own timeline, but hey, whatcha gonna do.

Filed Under: Firearms, Opinions, Photography

Like the rolling stone

June 14, 2016 by Alex Landeen Leave a Comment

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It is not that I felt particularly mossy, really. Well, not more than usual, I guess, but there were outside forces, events that were out of my control that led to decisions to attempt a higher level of rolling-type behaviour that is good for the cleanliness of the soul, but difficult on the perceived thickness of one’s wallet (even in the most basic of accommodations), which can be an issue when the aforementioned “outside forces” are directly responsible for the filling of said wallet.

“What the hell have you been doing?”
Well, pretty much the same as usual.

What does that mean? Well, hopefully if I can keep my shit together for a week and a half, I will be writing a post a day up until I leave again for Beaver Island.

Yes, folks. The Beav is happening again, and it will be gorious.

Tomorrow – The demise of my biggest freelance client, and my thoughts on the state of the gun-photography nation in regards to my immediate workload.

But for now, here is a photo of me flashing the New Mexico desert my hairy man-nips.

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-Alex who still keeps this signature style because K8 from the Rogue Angels once a long time ago said she liked it.

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions, Photography

I met a poetic, dirty girl

July 18, 2015 by Alex Landeen 17 Comments

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What is the first thing that people notice about you?
My beauty. Haha. But seriously I am good looking. It’s true I am a big, but that just means there is more to love. (#BBS) My mountains are some of the best around. I can be a little wild and it is true that my lowlands are pretty marshy, so remember your rain gear and rubber boots. If you are the adventurous type and feel the need to go tromping around in my bush I’m always game, but you should probably bring a gun.

What’s the most important thing you’re looking for in a person?
A sense of adventure. Real people. Rugged, with flannel and gortex and callused hands who don’t mind getting a little dirty.

The 4 things your friends say you are…
Most of my friends live pretty far away, but Hawaii and I stay in touch. Canada is nice to a fault, but a little boring. My ice-sister Russia… we had some wild times back in the Beringia days, but we occasionally have a hard time seeing eye to eye. Russia is one of those places that outside of a party environment is difficult to understand and impossible to know truly, but we probably still have more in common than I like to think. But as far as what I think they would say about me: Wild, fun-loving, dangerous, and strong.

What are you most passionate about?
Remaining true to myself. Being pure. Clean living.

How do you typically spend your leisure time?
My current occupation keeps me pretty sedentary, but I enjoy watching the boats. There is poetry in their movement like the tickling of the first snowfall or the cleansing of the spring runoff. Summer is busy and winter is long and slow but it’s my favorite time. It is the most real, I think. Those who remain are known and familiar. There is a quiet seriousness in the cold twilight that affords reflection. I have to admit, though, it can get a little trying. Times when I feel I can no longer take it I just drop a line to Russia. She’s always down for a good time.

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-Alex who is definitely interested in a second date.

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions, Photography

A Matter of Perspective

June 17, 2015 by Alex Landeen 2 Comments

landeen_blog-8018From here you can see everything. You can watch the movement and the flow. You can see where it has been and where it is going. There is perspective that affords the ability to feel smug with knowledge and secure from the pulling and twisting and josseling. Here it is easy to stand and pass judgement, to be stationary and watch things go by and say “yeah, I saw that coming” and pat yourself on the back. Here it is quiet and safe and water like time passes at the same speed while the scenery remains the same. Here is known and familiar. You are safe and rested and stagnant and feel in control. There is danger but it is known: Don’t fall.
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Jump.
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Here it is loud and it pulls and you have to fight to stay in control. There is drag over the slick rocks in the fast water and it can be hard to get traction. Here is pulling, twisting, josseling. It is difficult to see what is coming and dangerous to look for what has passed. The only judgement is how well you navigate and the current is strong but with a little practice you can maneuver in any direction. With or against, in straight lines or wandering curves, planned and strategic and floundering and improvisational. Here it is fresh and difficult and the scenery changes. There is movement and exists much danger, but you can’t fall.

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Which looks like a better time?

-Alex who’s planning things.

Filed Under: Opinions

stubborn

February 18, 2015 by Alex Landeen 2 Comments

landeen_blog-5890
stubborn“How’s it up here?”
“‘Bout the same as down there.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you have on?”
“Black.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if you catch something, ask it some questions. Figure out what the hell is going on around here.”

——————————

“You want to go down?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you want to go up?”
“Possibly.”
“Do you want to stay here?”
“I don’t know. I think I am just going to sit here for a bit.”
“Sounds good.”

——————————

“Stained water is good for streamer fishing?”
“Yeah. Well, I think so. Shit. I don’t know, I thought so.”
“What are you guys going to do now?”
“Drink.”

——————————

“Evening, boys! How’d ya’ll do out there?”
“Very productive day.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes, ma’am. I found a perfect spot to take a nap.”

——————————

sjconvo

-The Mule Men of NM

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions, Photography

Tell me a story, Uncle Tosh

November 11, 2014 by Alex Landeen 1 Comment

Tosh Brown has been telling me stories.

I flip through chapters like episodes of a television show — The Spanish Fly meets It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Frog legs and “hea-shuns” and Bob from Boston.
Flip.
Winds and tides and pirana fillets and the robust inuit lady-shoppers of Eek.
Flip.
Fat nurses and musky fluffers and the assholishness of snook.
Flip.
Flip.
Flip.

I am greedy. I am tired. I am jealous. I am excited and laugh, hopeful. I feel the sun burning my nose and the stinging of line burns on my tired fingers as I read on — watching the clouds build, hearing the swirling figure-eights, waiting for the flood tide, feeling conspicuously shy of experience. If this is halfway through a fly fishing life, I better get busy.

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Camp casual with Top of the Flood.

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Thank you, Tosh. And thanks for sharing.

I bought this book. You should, too.
Have Tosh tell you stories.

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions

Expanding Horizons

July 4, 2014 by Alex Landeen 3 Comments

landeen_blog_storm_text-2338As I have said before, I don’t do a lot of landscape stuff.

It might be because I have little patience for mother nature. (Even though fishing can be exactly that, but the idea that next week, or tomorrow, or even ten minutes from the moment you leave may be ten times better makes me twitchy.)

It might be because I feel that besides having a good grasp on how your camera functions, this kind of thing is a lot about luck and being in the right place at the right time. (It is)

It might be because I have never found a flash bright enough to light a mountain range. (Most likely)

But seriously, I think there is something about relying solely on natural conditions for success that makes me weary. (Even though, again, this is pretty much exactly like fishing) I want more control, I want to be able to force the good photo, which is a problem. I don’t like driving around,

That being said, I had a friend move away during summer for work. She asked me to send her photos of the monsoon weather, as she is feeling a little homesick. So this season, I am going to commit to try to capture some good Tucson storm stuff, and in doing so perhaps polish this skillset in the process.

The image above is the result of the actions below. This was yesterday evening, and my first hurry-up-and-wait storm session of the season.

Fingers crossed.

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-Alex who should probably buy an umbrella.

Filed Under: Opinions, Photography Tagged With: monsoon2014

Take Your Speedlight to Work Day

July 1, 2014 by Alex Landeen Leave a Comment

I have a problem.

And I have a solution.

Unfortunately, the solution is part of the problem. This, however, usually turns out to be a good thing.

If you said I was a lighting photographer, I would probably agree. I don’t remember the last time I took my camera somewhere and didn’t at least bring a couple speedlights. I guess I just feel better having them around. Like a safety net. Or a crutch.

“But why, Alex, would you consider that a crutch?” you may be asking. Well, I occasionally think that automatically going to the use of artificial light for subjects may cause me to miss a better (subjective) and easier setup using only natural light. Also, it usually means a few more pounds of crap to carry around and while I appreciate the muscle toning, usually lighter is better.

Now, that aside, I think that the combination of natural and artificial light is one of my favorite things in the world. Potentially on par with bacon. And that’s saying something.

Where the technique shines is in examples like the one below from a few weeks ago.

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landeen_TIA-7561-500 You can see in the image on the right that the natural exposure on this guy makes the sky look pretty colorless, which sometimes is exactly what I want, but generally I like some color.

Adding one flash and exposing for the sky did the job, and gave me the photo I had in my mind.

Which makes me happy.

-Alex who likes being happy.

Filed Under: Firearms, Opinions, Photography

Octopus tacos, and other outdoor percentages you can never know

May 27, 2014 by Alex Landeen 5 Comments

landeen_blog-0405 He asked me what I wanted on Wednesday. Said, if I had any thoughts to let him know.
“Grilled Octopus tacos.”
“Octopus tacos?”
“Yeah.”
He turned in his chair and looked at me, probably to see if there was any bullshit on my face and didn’t find any there.
“Octopus tacos. Hmm.”

It makes me wonder how far away one would have to search to find another person or group of people in a camping situation with 1) octopus in their coolers, 2) that was destined to be grilled and then, 3) eaten in a taco.

Probably a good long ways.

And even if by some strange luck you were to find another set of octo-grillers with accompanying corn tortillas, I would have to bet that ours was more delicious. Actually, I am just going to say that I am sure that ours was more delicious. Partly because it was the best octopus I have ever had, but mostly because there is no way to prove me wrong.

Filed Under: Fly Fishing, Opinions, Photography

Why Blue Force Gear is the most awesome

May 1, 2014 by Alex Landeen 2 Comments

1) Terry Clauson

blue_force_tactical_raptor-6618It’s not that they have a Velociraptor. Or that they named him Terry Clauson. Or that they brought him to SHOT, or even took the time to make a website dedicated to the worlds first tactical dinosaur:

With a very high size to carnage ratio it poses a green solution to warfare. How does one stop a cold, calculating raptor running around wreaking utter havoc on the enemies of freedom? The Tactical Dino is equipped with the world’s most advanced load carriage solution. The ultralight, raptor-tough gear carries the necessary navigation and telemetric equipment in a low bulk, fluid setup that does not hinder slashing, gnawing, and mauling.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Firearms, Opinions

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