When I ask Eugene-based photographer Wind Home to describe his work in three words, he thinks for a few moments, lightheartedly agonizing over the task, then laughs. “Love. Love. Love,” he chuckles. “Like my mom always used to say.” With a carefree name like Wind — and hippie parents easy-going enough to name him that — it’s not too surprising to hear this prolific photographer takes such a calm, cool and collected approach to his craft when it comes to capturing his signature sleek images of some of the most beautiful and impressively crafted pieces of glass. After all, it wasn’t his intention to become one of the most sought out glass art and cannabis photographers. It wasn’t until one of his friends, Greg Adams of Trident Glass and Lore Haus, asked him to shoot some pictures that things started to take off in the cannabis industry a little bit. Even then, it was still a struggle to get solid footing. Piece by Hamms WaterWorks. “Photography is a tough industry to get into in general. So, to make it in the glass art industry was pretty difficult at first,” he said. “I had to develop a certain amount of trust between artists and myself because they would need to be willing to drop off a rig or who knows what to me. I was being entrusted with valuable items and that’s a big deal for people who may not know you.” Growing up in Eugene, Oregon — a region now considered one of the meccas of the glass art scene — definitely played a part in getting him established and catapulting his career to where it is now. “Luckily, I had a little bit of an ‘in’ here just from having grown up in the area around so many glass artists,” he said. “So, when it came to the newer or bigger artists, I had a bit of a reputation I could rely on thanks to guys like Greg and Marcel (Braun) who were familiar with my work and could vouch for me.” These days, he’s booked to the brim with hundreds of clients every year, from glass shops to independent glass artists to cannabis farms and is shooting up to 12 products in a single day. He’s become a go-to in the industry because of the quality and attention to detail he brings to each photo. He has mastered the art of capturing the intricacies of each handmade glass piece — the swirls of colors and patterns, a range of textures and shapes — without losing the functionality of it. A Yoda OG shows the beginning stages of flowering. “Really, what I’m producing is an extremely high end product shot out of a really fine art,” he says. “I do try to do very minor editing on my shots, because what I’ve done is just fine tuned my skill over time by paying close attention to the balancing of light or softening the light with the reflective black background that I have found people really love.” Home said he absolutely cannot stand to see my photography from three or four years ago. “Although my style has remained very much the same for most of the time I’ve been doing glass art photography, I’ve definitely improved my technique and honed my skills,” he says. “I’ve learned to really focus on the details and bring out the best in each piece I photograph. It’s a labor of love, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
