Adya Queen Of Orange

Model: Adya

Make Up Artist: Lauren Weber

For some reason the image color is not right on the internet. It looks to desaturated and the orange isn't quite right. I tried fixing it but it still doesn't look right. I don't get why on the internet the colors and values tend to change so much. To see the correct color and values you'll just have to come to my show in August :)

As mentioned this shoot was mainly about playing with the color orange. I'm looking to do a series of colors inspired by fruit. I love color and always like playing with it in different ways. Since this was more of a classic portrait, no elaborate set, I decided to go with a round frame. I think once I have a whole series going the round frames will look nice next to each other. I also liked how the round shape broke up the linear composition of the image. Simple and elegant is what I like. As always I learned a lot on this shoot, it was the first time I played with colored gels. The next shoot will be a lot easier. I did the hair and hacked together the dress, not perfect but I was happy with the outcome. I might still post one of the images where I played around with Vaseline.

Adya Queen Of Orange - Preview

The awesome Ms. Lauren doing her thing and looking cute.

Ms. Adya suffering for my art not to mention she had to go home with all the make up on cause there's no shower.

The only space heater working, which simply was not enough in that big cold space.

The two words that would describe this shoot best would be orange and cold. I've found that on eveyshoot I either forget soemthing or something small (or big) goes wrong. This time I forgot my cell phone (which is important because you can't get into the building without contact with someone in the building) and the power went out. The cell phone wasn't a big deal but the power outage was. In a way I am lucky because I work mainly with flash lighting so those are battery run and don't need power but it was getting DAMN COLD. There is no heat in the studio so usually I use space heaters. Wasn't too big a deal for me since I could just layer on clothing but the poor model who was scarcely clad,.... not so great. Right before we started shooting one of the outlets got power back so I was able to run one heater right behind her. This helped a bit but the poor girl was still cold and if you look closely you can see she has goosebumps in pretty much all the shots. But Adya is a true sport and never complained even with the obvious discomfort. I haven't seen Adya since 2008 so it was fun catching up and working with her again. Lauren and I had a blast. She's awesome and always gets my directions and nails my visions. Love working with her. I did the hair myself this time which was interesting not that it was fancy. Oh and I hacked together the dress which was a lot of fun!

The shoot was fairly simple, it was all about color, I just wanted to play with the orange palette which was fun. No fancy set. I'm going to try to stick to a colored series this time. Each shoot a different fruit and color. Haven't decided on the next shoot yet. What was different this time is that I worked with colored gels and did some quick experiments with Vaseline on the lens in a few shots. Learned a lot, the next shoot will be better.

Group Show at the Visual Arts Center in Summit

New shoot this Sunday, yay...

I have two pieces in the group show at the Visual Arts Center in Summit, NJ. It's a really nice space and the show is all art mediums not just photography which I think is great. It was put together by Joan Young who is an associate curator at the Guggenhaim Museum. It's a nice collection of pieces, if you have the time go check it out. It's up until March 18th.

Here are the two pieces that are in the show.



You can see all the pieces that made it into the show here.

Art Blocks For Ghana

More photography coming soon but for now here's my submission for the auction. I'm never happy with the way the wood stuff scans, it always looses line detail and the values are off. I had a lot of fun creating it. I love to draw.

"And when the moon is on the rise...",
graphite, micron pens, india ink, varnish on wood 8" x 8"

I was very happy and honored to be invited to be part of the Art Blocks For Ghana art auction. It's part of the Picture Book Project Foundation which is a charity art auction of original works created by top artists within the animation and illustration community to provide boarding and education for orphaned children in Ghana, West Africa. Besides this being for a great cause our work will be published in a wonderful book and there will be two group shows displaying everyone's work.

If you'd like to see or buy some original art work by some of the best in the animation/illustration industry then save the date:

February 26
New Art Center
580 8th Ave. at 38th St.,5 fl.
New York, NY 10018
http://www.newartcenter.net/

March 12
Gallery Nucleus
210 East Main St.
Alhambra CA 91801
http://www.gallerynucleus.com/

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A bit late....

My next digital shoot is scheduled for January 23rd with ADYA (slime girl). She's coming in from Kansas that week. Super excited! I haven't seen her since that last shoot which was in 2008. I hope she is as awesome as I remember her being :) As always, I'm so not prepared and nervous that I can't get my shit together by then.

I actually had time to shoot some film AND develop it over the holidays! I was so happy. It's been close to a year since I last spent time in a dark room and I almost forgot how much I love it! Developing film is so much fun and so satisfying. One of my new years resolutions is to shoot and develop more film. I want to get better at it. I also feel like shooting film really helps me shoot my digital work with more care and more efficiently. Anyway, here are a few shots from my TLR. There's a few more on my philm phoblography site.

My two nephews