On Set and Behind the Scenes

These are some recent images I shot while on the set of a short film my friends Nicholas Mah and Travis Alford are doing. I don't want to give away too much but it does involve a typewriter (and not in a good way!) If the actor here looks familiar it's probably because you've seen him in Nick and Travis's film Sobaka. ...Or probably not, but he has been in many other wonderful things where you may have seen him, including the "Bood Light" ad from a couple of years ago. Yes, the one with the mind of mencia guy. Anyways, his name is Boris Kievsky and he was a really nice guy and a joy to work with. Please check out his IMDB here and you can find him on facebook and twitter of course. My thanks to Nick and Travis for granting me access into the belly of the beast and everyone else on set who tolerated me getting in their way. I do what I can.

a portfolio

More Color More Squares Less Circles

Having to do with Minimalism and color. These squares and the circles inspired by this fellow here.

More Experiments in Color (and B&W)

These were taken before "the walk", but the difference here is that the color wasn't intended. Originally I had in mind they would be B&W, which some of them still made it to be, but I got to experimenting with the color with some interesting results and I thought, "well, this isn't something that I would normally do, sooo, I'll do it! Yeah, that's a good idea!" I should also add that this is a piece of white plastic shot with the same "ghosts and ameoba" technique. About a 5 second exposure in low light and during the exposure I zoomed in or turned the camera which was on a tripod. The color comes from blowing out the saturation in post.

Explorations of Color on My Way to My Car

These are a few images I shot while walking out to my car the other afternoon. Maybe they could be used as an argument for shooting in mid-day sun as opposed to sunrise or sunset. Colors are more vibrant and saturated in full daylight. I've never been one much for shooting in color, so this is a new way of looking at things for me. But I did throw in some b&w for old time sake. Anyways, my version of William Eggleston with a bit of Aaron Siskind and a painter, Clyfford Still, thrown in for good measure.

ghosts of amoebae

These are some extra shots I had from the series I recently posted at Osmosis. I like all the amorphous shapes that were formed out of this madness. I can't decide if they look more like ghosts or amoebae. But maybe amoebae have ghosts too, so perhaps it's both. Like I say in the post at Osmosis, I wanted to break the image down to basic light and dark tones to create something completely abstract. I went about this by shooting white styrofoam balls of varying sizes on white corrugated paper next to a large window facing west. I shot as the sun was setting so the light was coming directly through the window, which created sharp shadows from the styrofoam. That is where I concentrated my shooting, on the shadows, the "nothing in between" area. Then when I took the pictures I used several techniques simultaneously to really exaggerate the forms, the "abstraction heaped upon abstraction". First, I set my camera to overexpose the image making sure that the shutter speed was slow enough so that I could use camera movement as another effect. Then, I purposefully set the lens as out-of-focus as I could. When I took the picture I moved the camera in a variety of ways; across, up and down, zig zag, etc. at varying speeds. Then in my post-production, I added another level of abstraction by increasing the contrast as much as possible blowing out the highlights and darkening the shadows. I wanted to get as far away as I could from the way the actual "thing" I was shooting looked. I really like the way these images came out. Not sure if I achieved "a common truth of the human experience," but that is why I keep doing it and you never know it might just happen once.

New Osmosis Post

My latest Osmosis post is up here. It's the closest I've come to a manifesto. I wanted it to work not only as a sort of artist's statement, but also as a manifesto of what I am looking for in the artists I feature on the site. Artists who can elucidate something about the human experience and connect us all through that experience.