rock_ continues

So this is luis or "rec overflow". Victim 2 of the series about madrid musicians.
I like this whole contact sheet thing. It´s not the final presentation, just a way for me to compare-contrast...

“Here’s the dilemma and the strength of photography. It’s the easiest medium in which to be competent. But, it’s the hardest medium in which to have personal vision that is readily identifiable.”

-chuck close

I think this is very true. I learned how to use a camera in about 15 minutes at age 12 to take photos of a basketball game for the yearbook. A 2 month stint as an assistant showed me how to light with strobes at 23. Years later, I´m still struggling to find my readily identifiable personal vision. I´m taking a master´s level documentary photography course from Fosi Vegue via blank paper. Just having time to talk and work through a personal project, look at other people´s work and also look at some of the greats will hopefully help. It´s been a long time since I was last in school.

Fosi challenged me last week to rethink letting go of my black and white vision. I´m really good at seeing effective light for black and white images. I guess I feel this pressure to shoot color because it´s what what people are looking for these days. But then there´s people like Trent Parke, who´s done some of the most interesting black and white documentary work I´ve seen in a long time. He´s trying out color and it doesn´t really work for me. Color is hard, and many times unnecessary.

My main hangup with using black and white is that I used to shoot black and white because it was free in school via the newspaper, and had to send out via mail my rolls of color and lacked a decent scanner. Once I got my hands on a digital camera that all changed.



So these portraits are my adventure back into black and white. The point of the work is to shoot musicians, producers, djs, etc not doing music but being human beings. Shooting your subjects nude can help you get to the essence of them. Sometimes just taking their guitar, turntables, or Macpro away can be just as disarming helping to get to the person behind the music. We´ll see how this works out.

rock_via issuu

optical illusion

ideas...I was looking at optical illusions for a project and am working through these ideas.

kaleidescope 2

This is the shot that actually really got me thinking about using this filter a bit more. It´s fun to create interesting things like this without the help of photoshop, in camera like the good ol days of what you get is what you get. No, I´ll just do it in photoshop later. An exercise in faith (in your own talent in vision mind you) if you may.

kaleidescope

So, I had a good friend lend me a kaleidescope filter. Crazy stuff. It´s hard to use and not get just the expected, but when you get something interesting it makes it worth it.

photoshelter

I am featured this month in Photoshelter´s showroom this month. Check it out here. Buy some photos if you fancy.

I just spent a weekend in the south again, in Loja, Spain. It´s nestled in the mountains between Granada and Malaga, in Andalucia.

So I´ve finally shot something I´m proud of using long exposures on a tripod. Enough that I´m going down south to shoot a weekend of similar work. Wish me luck...samples below, but remember, one per customer please....









these were done at around 30 seconds, some at night, some early morning the next day.

Today I went out and played street photographer. Funny thing is I´m extremely excited about a couple of shots here below. Hope you enjoy.

This is a quick peek at this series from today´s walk with my new photographer friend Alejandro. We stopped by blank paper, had a nice discussion there and went for a walk around madrid to take advantage of the fleeting light.

Call for entries and other stuff

Just thought I´d put out the info for the 3 people who read my blog about Gomma mag. They´re looking for photographers to collaborate. So if you shoot, take a look here and submit your best unpublished work.

I´m meeting with a collaborative group of photographers/agency here in madrid called Blank Paper. They do some pretty incredible stuff.

Oh and FFFFound! is pretty amazing when looking for a little bit of inspiration or need to find some stuff that at least doesn´t make you puke in your mouth.

So I decided I´d look a bit more thoroughly through my loja pictures from last year. The first few are from the august fair that happens every year and the others from holy week. All of this is shot with my super takumar smc 55 1.8 via an adapter on a 5d. I really want to revisit all of this subject matter with a film camera so I´m not limited on how large I can blow some of this stuff up. I just have to figure out how I can get my massive monorail 4x5 to Spain from Chicago. I have a couple of packs of film just itching to be shot.

new landscapes

So today was another road trip between loja and madrid and this amazing fog was everywhere. I liked these shots but now love them as a series in groups of two. Sometimes two different shots, sometimes the same shot just reflected with subtle differences. Either way, these are going to get printed and put up somewhere, just not sure where quite yet...

Yesterday afternoon I had a gig shooting Malcolm Mclaren for a couple of magazines here in Madrid at a Beefeater gin event covering the history of London punk. Normally using punk to sell something doesn´t sit well, but this is a vice and seems fitting. Anyhow, I met the next biggest thing in spanish fashion, Carlos Diez Diez and we took advantage of the fantastic location and did a few impromptu shots. This is my fav. For some reason some strange points of colored light where on his forehead so it looks like he was face down in the gutter....




Then I took a bunch of ambient shots of the old parking garage transformed into a fantastic party zone...








and this shot of a model getting made up.