Tamara Queen Of Grapes - Preview

Well I thought this shoot would be a lot faster and easier then the orange one was since I thought I had worked out a lot of the technicalities (like composition, setup.....) but it was not so. It turned out to be a long and difficult shoot. I blame part of it on fatigue, I was tired when I got started and exhausted by the time we finished. The two main things that took longer then expected were the light color balancing and the outfit. I knew I had all the fabric colors balanced but I was trying to be tricky with the lighting (by playing with gels) and it was hard getting that to work. In the end it wasn't exactly what I wanted but I did get the warmth and coolness I was looking for but boy it took me probably an hour to get that to look good.

I had initially picked a red apple for Tamara. For some reason I just couldn't wrap my head around the apple with her. Then last week I suddenly decided the grape would be better. I think she reminded me more of a greek/romany type lady which is also why I draped the dress across her chest. I thought the grapes were also kind of fitting with that theme. Overall I wasn't trying to be true to that area or anything but thought it would be fun to have a few things inspired by them.

It was my first time working with Tamara. Working with someone new is always time consuming because I'm not familiar with their body types yet. I know that just because certain poses work well for one person it does not mean they work for anybody. It's always interesting to see how people differ. What was awesome about Tamara were her facial expressions. It might not look like much in this shoot but it's soooo hard getting good facial expressions from people who've never modeled before and she was able to give me a variety of expressions. If I worked with her again we'd do better since I know her strengths and weaknesses now. Lauren did the make up and was great as always. I know she was struggling with the eyebrows, I wanted them to disappear into the skin color and eye make up and it turns out this is not an easy task (who knew). It was funny watching her cake on from glue stick to multiple foundations and powders. She's a trooper and never complains about my obsessive instructions. I love working with her. Oh and Nikki did the hair!!! I wasn't sure she'd be able to pull off what I had in mind. All I did was find some reference online for a dutch braid and explained how I wanted the back to read behind the braid. Nikki totally nailed it. It was exactly what I wanted I was totally amazed. I'm super psyched to have found someone who can do up-dos. Yay for my new team.

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

The Rocken Family

This is actually not a posed picture they just happen to all be aligned that way. Looks kinda like a music album cover doesn't it? Clearly my mom is the lead singer. LOL (This was taken in Simi Valley, CA).

It's been far too long but work has been kicking my butt plus I've been trying to wrap my head around what I want to do next. The new exciting news is that I have my next solo show lined up! The Spirit Gallery in Connecticut has graciously invited me to show my work there in August. It's a nice space and it's quite a bit bigger then the last place which means I have to get my shit together and create more stuff. So my next shoot is booked for January and I'm hoping to do another in February. This time I'm doing a bit more of a series. Should be interesting and I'm excited to get started. I also need to finish editing my last shoot (sheep) so I'll be busy in the coming months. Hope you guys are doing well,.... whoever you are :)