From the Haugen Heart

It is time to celebrate! No, I am not talking about the studio’s 30th anniversary, or Nels and Danielle’s upcoming wedding, or Anna preaching her first sermon to her home congregation, or Lars reading his first chapter book. They are all things in our life that we are celebrating right now. This time the spotlight is on Neil. Drum roll, please! Neil has earned his Master of Photography degree from the Professional Photographers of America! This is harder to achieve and therefore more meaningful than any academic degree. You earn merits toward the degree through teaching, judging, attending accredited classes and service to the organization but you must also prove your talent by entering prints in the PPA competition and have them accepted as "merit prints". That is the big challenge. Let me tell you a little bit about the process. Every year, you go through all the images you created over the last year looking for the very best. You can only choose four each year. Then you ta...

By Autumn Hofer Presentation Director My family became part of the Haugen’s family fourteen years ago when my sister chose Haugen’s for her senior high school portraits. For the next four years, the large wall portrait was displayed prominently in our hallway, as part of our family portrait gallery. And fall of 1997 found me packing up my beloved cat, Mattee, along with my entire wardrobe, for my Haugen’s experience. Soon after, my wall portrait joined my sister’s on the wall of honor, where both have graced my family home ever since. Who could have guessed that the summer of 2007, some ten years later, I would join the Haugen’s family as an employee? And, in addition to my enjoyable work, I have continued the portrait tradition as well… my husband Tim, son Dylan (age 2 ½) and I just sat for our first Haugen’s family portrait. I have a feeling that portrait will soon join those of my sister and me on my mother’s wall, expanding the memories of family love that these special portraits c...

By Eleanor Wershow, Director of Operations When I was seventeen and a senior in high school, I knew exactly which studio was going to do my senior portraits. It was the same studio who did my siblings’ senior portraits and my uncle’s wedding. Oh! And my siblings in 1979, me and my siblings in 1980, me in 1982, and the list goes on and on and on. The photographers who took all these photos? Why, Haugen’s of course! I was lucky enough to grow up with an aunt and uncle who are amazing photographers. When my sister got married, and then my brother, there were no questions about who was going to do their wedding photography, even though my sister was married at the Grand Canyon and my brother in St. Paul, MN. My mom retained Neil and Miriam for both weddings. This included travel & lodging, of course, as it does for all destination wedding photographers. This seemed completely normal to me, to commission the best photographers to commemorate the most important events in our lives. Then...

By Eleanor Wershow, Director of Operations Here’s a question for all you trivia lovers out there: How many times have the two Haugen photographers won Best Portrait of a Teenage Boy? I grew up with Haugen’s (see the article “Growing Up Haugen’s”) but until last week I didn’t have a clue how many awards Neil & Miriam had won. Then I found a box of trophies gathering dust in a corner. A big box. With LOTS of awards. So many, in fact, that we now have a whole display case filled with trophies and a wall covered in plaques. All of these awards are from the Professional Photographers of Oregon and Profession Photographers of America yearly print competitions. Every winter Miriam and Neil review the images they’ve taken in the previous year and choose eight (four per photographer) to send to competition. In 2007 alone, Neil took home the trophy for Best Social Candid Wedding Division while Miriam won Best Teenage Boy and the Fuji Masterpiece Award. Since one of them seems to win at leas...

I (this is Neil talking) get asked every once in a while what is it that I do here at the studio, besides use a camera. Like many other things, my duties changed quite a bit with the switch to digital. I’ve always been the new information grunt of the studio , meaning that I am the unfortunate soul who is assigned to read about new or changed or re-discovered ideas or equipment that may be of use here in the studio. In another essay, I noted that we used the same cameras for twenty-plus years. The biggest “workflow” change in one long period of years came when we switched film speed, or sensitivity to light, of our basic film. We had to re-test to establish the best quality exposure at what “speed” or ISO rating, and then adjust our hand-held light meters to that setting. It took about five days, mostly waiting for the film to be developed a couple times as we tested and re-tested. Ah, the good old days. Now, our “film” (i.e., camera) needs changing every couple of years or sooner, as ...

It is just weird these days ... for the first 25 years we had the studio, a camera was a camera was a camera. And now, it isn't ... at least, it's not the same. The main "tool" we thought we worked with for all those years was the camera. By my third year, I'd settled on the Mamiya RB67, and we also purchased one for Miriam when she joined the business. We then used our RB's for the next 22 years . (That's the old RB in the image with me. Lotta metal, huh?) Now we change every cameras every couple years. Why? Well, it has to do with WHAT has changed with the digital revolution, and we’ll talk about that in a moment. Film cameras are either small format, medium format, or large format. Our old RB’s were medium-format cameras, as they used 120/220 sized roll film. The negatives it produced were 6x7cm, or roughly two and a quarter inch by two and three-quarter inches, with ten on a 120 roll of film, and 20 on a 220 roll of film. "Small" format came...

I (Miriam) just got a nice email from a mom that made me feel like it is all worthwhile. “Thanks again for the wonderful session. You were so thoughtful to take time to get to know Eric, and thus captured the essence of who he is. I have been telling everyone about you, and look forward to doing business with you in the future! Fondly, Annie Nelson” Here is one of Eric’s portraits - and it was a pleasure to get to know Eric and his mom!