Lens on the Horizon: The photography of Chipper Hatter
For over a decade, Chipper Hatter has been on the cutting edge of professional architecture, design, and fine art photography. His work has been published internationally and he spends much of his time traveling to meet the needs of his clients, shooting everything from modern skyscrapers to intimate Zen gardens. Out of all the beautiful things he’s captured on film, one of Hatter’s favorite subjects is just outside his back door. When I caught up with Hatter, he was about to go shoot on the beach behind his Carlsbad, California, home. “This evening it’s really low tide, and the fog rolls in during the late afternoon. I love this weather, this time of year. I tell my wife Jennifer I’m going to go get lost for a few hours. Me and the camera feeling the elements, the smell of the air, the way the water moves. I don’t go down with a specific game plan; I just try to capture the mood.”
For Hatter, emotion is key. “I read something Ansel Adams wrote once where he categorized the commercial work as ‘without’ and the personal work as ‘within,’ but I try to put what’s ‘within’ into all of my work. One of the things I love about professional photography is problem solving. I know what the end result should be, and the question is how do I best accomplish what the client envisions? It’s not a matter of taking hundreds of pictures and hoping a few good ones come out. It’s a slow, tedious process sometimes, waiting for the sun to set or rise or move to one part of the sky. It’s technical in that sense, but you also have to put some heart and soul into everything you do. I’m always looking to create a mood or an emotion, even in interiors. At the end of the day, my goal is to have someone look at that image and feel something.”
Hatter’s landscape photography uses mood in a more subtle, meditative fashion. He sculpts each photo around one silent, graceful moment, crystallizing the underlying architecture of his natural surroundings within the frame. “A lot of people say my work is quiet to them. I think that’s accurate. I like overcast, gloomy days. My work is very introspective in that sense.” Hatter still shoots landscape photography on film, which he sends off to get developed and then scans into his computer. “My computer is my darkroom now,” he says. “I still use film because there’s a feel, a romance to it that digital just can’t duplicate.”
Photography is as much about impulse and intuition as it is about technical skill. As in Hatter’s art, so in his life; his history is marked as equally by dedication and hard work as it is by passion. “As much as I do go on a ‘feeling,’ I do think things through. I draw from my belief that if you work hard enough and want to achieve something, you can achieve your goals, whatever they may be. So, in the back of my mind there’s always that drive and persistence to make it happen.”
Hatter got into photography during his sophomore year in high school when he signed up for a photography elective course. “My guidance counselor tried to convince me not to take it, and boy am I glad I didn’t listen to her. After one semester, I knew it was something I really wanted to pursue. That teacher became my first mentor, and he introduced me to the greats like Ansel Adams and Edward Westin. I still keep in touch with him. I fell in love with working in the darkroom, seeing an image develop…there’s something very magical about that process,” he says. Hatter went on to study at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara. One of the shining moments in Hatter’s tutelage was a workshop with John Sexton, the famous protégé of Ansel Adams. “To see these prints with your own eyes, to visit Ansel Adams’ darkroom…the energy is incredible,” he says. “In terms of architectural photography, I had the opportunity to work under Peter Malinowski. He was a mentor to me, really my first inspiration in that field who showed me that it was something I could really enjoy and see myself doing in the future.”
At Brooks Institute, Hatter also met his wife, Jennifer, a portrait photographer from Baton Rouge. They married within eight months of meeting each other (much to their parents’ consternation), and after graduation decided to head down to Louisiana to launch their careers. “Any success that I’ve enjoyed has been in part because of Jennifer,” Hatter says of his wife of 16 years. “Her photography is drastically different than mine, and because of that we’ve always been a perfect team. We’re each other’s biggest supporters and harshest critics. She forced me out of my safety zone. I’m still drawing on things she taught me in college.” After starting their careers and a family here, the couple decided to move back to the California coast. “It was never part of the grand plan that we’d come back to California. Like everything else, it just kind of happened. The opportunity arose, and we followed it, but Louisiana will always feel like home to me.”
Louisiana definitely got into his blood, because Hatter is largely inspired by music. “I love to look at photography, but I am probably more inspired by music. I remember first starting out and wanting to capture my own “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” (one of Ansel Adams’ most famous images). I spent time literally searching for an image like that, but at some point I realized that I was attempting to emulate it rather than drawing inspiration from it. Music, on the other hand, invokes moods and emotions for me that I then see in images.”
While Hatter does sell prints of his landscapes, he says shooting them is more of an opportunity to energize, recharge, and clear his mind than anything else. “No matter what, I get to do what I love. Sometimes it’s for other people and sometimes it’s for me, but it never feels like a day of work.” ✦
Chipper Hatter
3460 Marron Rd #103-350
Oceanside, CA 92056
760-500-9905
chipperhatter.com
