I went into a jewelry store in Tulsa looking for something specific for my wife. I didn’t find it but had a great salesperson help me. She was informative and thoughtful. The whole front of the store was facing south with big windows and it was winter time so the sun was streaming in. It bounced off the floor and glass cases and landed on her in a wonderful way. I asked her if I could take some photos of her and she obliged me.
I did a collage and showed it to her a few days later. She was upset about how it looked, thinking I had made her look rather ugly. I didn’t think it did, but I didn’t post it out of respect for her discomfort. I did this one later, working with less manipulation and distortion and I think she was happier with it.
I love this piece because of how I got the hair and the line of her face to match up. She is the same top to bottom but then a second look obviously shows something isn’t as it should be. Just a bit of a skewed perspective on the portrait.
The Cake Seller – The Stranger Juxtaposition #7
The cake seller at the outlet mall and the cake and the TV image of the flamenco dancer that I shot in the Bose store demo movie in the small dark theatre where they showed off their sound systems which I did not buy but I got a number of shots of the screen that I liked and then realized how the fit and imagined a story of love.
January 31, 2008
Parallel arms, lit pillow in the distance, sleep, warm skin tones, feelings, all combined so that I really liked this image. It is from a commissioned photo shoot, January, 2007.
I saw her across the large field as I left work. she was a tiny dot of fun in a field of darkening ice at dusk. I walked across the field with my camera and cleats and told her it would be a shame to witness someone having that much fun and not get a record of it. She was happy and polite and filled with joy. It was in her head, as it can be with any of us. She made me smile.
Bruce Anderson was a fighter bomber pilot in WWII with the VSMC 243 Goldbricks, my father’s squadron. He was the flight officer, he got two distinguished flying crosses then, and another in Korea. He was very upset about the truce in Korea, we should have gone in and finished the job he thinks. Same with Vietnam. He lives in Florida with his wife of 60 years. His daughter came to the reunion from Utah, where she likes her Mormon neighbors.
This woman was a customer at my hair salon. I had just got my digital camera a few weeks before and was anxious to try some ideas. She was actually getting her nails done, not her hair. I took some photos of her and the nail lady doing her work then asked her if I could take some close ups of her eyes. We walked outside in the shade (but with a very very bright parking lot right behind me as I faced her. She had the most gorgeous green eyes. I took photos looking straight into each eye so I could just see the side of her head at the same time. I combined the one in front of the right eye with the one in front of the left eye to get this look. I then layered the words, copied the collage onto a new layer and turned it grayscale, then cut out all the grayscale image that did not act as a background for the words. I then spent a great deal of time manipulating her face and eyes to get the color and depth I was looking for.
