Portrait of RM with Heat
The brilliance of the sun on her and the chair and the piercing nature of her look were so intense that not only was it hard for her to open her eyes, it was hard for me to not be blinded while taking the photo.
Portrait of CS With a Window Behind Me
The Model CS. I scouted out this area before she was done working so I knew I wanted to capture someone’s face with the beautiful light in the tall windows behind me. She obliged.
Portrait in Reflected Light
She was at the front desk, then in the gallery as I looked at the exhibition. We got into a long discussion about the images in the show and that led to a discussion about my work which led to me asking her if she wanted to create some art with me which led to her saying yes which led us outside to take some photos I will use in a collage and also some straight portraits, of which this is one.
Composition with Fire Truck in the Fall
First series taken with my new camera, the Panasonic G1. I was doing a shoot in my home and we had her sillhouetted against the window when we realized there was a fire truck in the lonely subdivision on the other side of the park. I asked her to go outside and look at the truck through the top of a broken picket in the back fence. She was a trooper and did so, even though it was windy and cold! I love the pose and the reverse voyeur feeling of the nude looking over the fence at the fire truck.
Sisters in the Heat
This week is about black and white portraits. I have a weakness for that look that has light showing off the skin, it’s texture and details. The one yesterday was about that. This one is from around 1990. It is a film shot so the skin details aren’t there the way I can capture them now, but you can still see my interest in getting the feeling of light and heat on the skin.
Plus, what’s not to like about the late 80s early 90s look of hair and clothing, right?
The Hostess
Often I will just play with an image just to keep in practice regarding my Photoshop skills. I spent about 2 hours on this one, just trying different things, not having a particular agenda since it wasn’t commissioned. I like having some time to do that and it is essential for any artist to spend time just ‘goofing’ off so to speak. Without it your work can become so stale and uninspiring that you cease to do it any more.
Wings and a Star at the Fair
Today you get a double treat of tattoos at the fair!
I noticed the black straps surrounding the tattoo and was intrigued by the writing that was only partially showing. I asked her if I could take a photo and she was very happy to allow it.
I gave her my card and told her if she needed any other photography to give me a call. Her friend piped up and they were from out of town, working one of the booths in the expo building selling shammies I think.
But she said she gets around so she would keep my card, just in case.
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I was eating my required fair meal of italian sausage and notice this couple talking at the table in front of me.
The guy was clingy, wrapping his arms around her again and again, kissing her cheek and generally seeming to want to possess her. She on the other hand simply sat there eating and talking, never once turning to him.
The wind blew her hair and I notice the star tattoo. I went up and asked her if I could take a photo of it and the guy butted in and answered quickly and authoritatively, ‘sure you can’. I looked to her and she said ‘yes’.
I later saw them walking towards the parking lot and he still had her wrapped up in his arms. It didn’t seem to be a good type of wrapping.
A Snake in the Eulipian Grass
Another in a short series I did using co-workers at the restaurant, Eulipia, where I
worked back in the 80s and 90s in San Jose, Ca. This one was a result of a photo
shoot with a few people who had freckles. I was in the middle of doing a series of
pointillist photo-collages where I glued photos of freckles on top of full-color
reproductions of pointillist paintings I had in a big art book.
This collage came about after I saw the possibility of making the negative background
space of the sky in the prior collage into a solid positive part of the image. In
this case the grass no longer just acts as grass but now has a shape and symbolism
that makes it into a real/not real object.
A Seldom Seen Stretch of the Eulipian River
I worked at a restaurant named Eulipia in San Jose, California from 1981-1994 while I was going to graduate school and starting out as a college art instructor. I finally left when I moved to Tulsa to start a new career in Interactive Design.
This collage was a result of a photo shoot with three of my co-workers from the restaurant. We did the shoot in one of their backyards while they were sunbathing on a hot summer day. I had been creating a series of collages that used body part close ups combined with sky or other neutral colored backgrounds.
This collage resulted from having all the photos on my drawing board which was a large door actually attached to two drawing board bases. As I laid them out I started seeing a flow to the images. I originally had only one row, with the body below and the sky above. At that point it seemed like a landscape. But I had a lot of photos from the shoot and I laid out a second row to see if those photos might have a different rhythm and flow to them.
I got the idea to turn the top row over and the blue matched up and became a river in my mind. Then it was just a matter of finding the right place for each photo so the flow of the river was pleasing to my eye.
She Dreamt it Into Being
I love doing portraits with one eye closed. There is something so disconcerting about
it at first. But it then also allows you to think about two different aspects of the
person at the same time, and how they coexist. Plus it just looks really cool.
