In search of the seriously beautiful…
Exactly eleven days after the last post, this is what that same tree looks like. Just amazing. I really do prefer the first image – but I can’t get over the opulence of the second image. Spring is on a rampage!
And catch the orange California Poppies below – our state flower, and one of my all-time favorites!
According to National Geographic, Spring officially arrives on the vernal equinox, which this year occurred today at 1:48 am Eastern time. I am soooo ready for it this year! Longer days, more sunshine, warm soft breezes… It’s my second favorite time of year, right behind summer.
I shot a special project today – I can’t talk about it yet, but soon! The image above may be a little hint…
I’m still working my way through all the images I shot in Chicago – two concerts and one portrait session, and four more mini-portrait sessions – it’s a lot. But yesterday I got a series posted of Bobby Kourelis at Hammerfest. Seeing the images all together in one spot, you really get just how passionately he plays – he’s something else! I also have some engagement shots to post tomorrow that I shot on Monday here in California – beautiful, beautiful couple!
Oh, and I met a photographer in Chicago – totally random – you just never know who you’ll bump into! I checked out his portfolio today and he’s good – his work is really modern and clean. If you need a headshot in Chicago, he’s definitely worth checking out! Hans Rosemond at hansrosemond.com.
Isn’t Spring just the best?
Bobby Kourelis of the Lovehammers, at Hammefest 2008, at the House of Blues in Chicago, Illinois.
Dino and Bobby Kourelis, at Hammerfest, 2008.
When I interviewed the Lovehammers back in early 2006, I remember being impressed by the way they talked about their fans and the huge shows they put on in their hometown of Chicago. And I sort of decided then that if I ever got the chance to shoot one of those big shows, I’d take it! I’ve always wanted to go to Chicago…
The opportunity came last weekend – two years after that interview – some things are worth waiting for! Hammerfest is a big deal and this year it was at the House of Blues in downtown Chicago. Great venue! All brick, two balconies that circle around the floor, and it feels small and intimate yet holds a LOT of people. I went with five friends – two who live in Chicago, and three others that flew in for the weekend. We spent the whole weekend together, but they were good sports when I abandoned them during the show.
Shooting any show is always intense – but the Lovehammers multiply that intensity by ten. Their shows are incredibly passionate and vital, and there’s movement and color and action everywhere. It’s an amazing thing to see live – and capturing some of that magic in a still photograph is one of the most satisfying things I can think of to do. They create magic onstage, and I tired to tap into that vein, and mine some of their magic in my images. It was a blast!
This image is one of my favorites because of the orange and violet lighting – the colors of RockBandLounge – and to see Marty Casey, our RBL Ultimate Rock Star bathed in those colors was great fun!
To see more images from the show, go to:
http://rockbandlounge.com/news/2008-03-lovehammers.asp
One big benefit to all the rain we got in January and February, is the wildflowers in March! I was out in the desert today – out by Palm Springs – and everywhere you looked there were wildflowers in full bloom. It was a gorgeous day too – warm and sunny with a big beautiful blue sky.
For some reason I can’t really explain, I really like this tiny little house. Maybe it’s the colorful window coverings? Maybe it was the quiet? The only sounds were some chickens clucking in the distance. Maybe it was because it was smack in the middle of the best field of wildflowers I found? Yeah, that’s probably it.
When I got out of my car, a jackrabbit came crashing out of the brush only a few feet away from me. I love jackrabbits! They’re like mini kangaroos with massive hind legs and they soar when they jump. He wasn’t too afraid of me, he only went a couple of dozen feet away, and then sat and watched me as I worked. I kept expecting him to hop away, when I turned my back, but every time I looked over, he was still there, sitting totally erect, with one eye on me.
Can you find the jackrabbit? It’s tough. If you look at the two brown cactus in the center of the photo, he’s sitting right in front of the base of the cactus on the left, and he’s in profile.
I also saw a few healthy bees. Lately all I’ve seen have been dying bees, on the ground, walking in circles. It’s a real crisis, so I was happy to see some bees doing what bees are meant to do – hopping from flower to flower and helping to pollinate the world. We need the bee!
And I saw lots of wildflowers and cactus and brush – really pretty stuff!
I love both these images – shot yesterday – but the second one positively glows. It looks like a watercolor painting to me. It was shot at f1.2 at 1/2000th of a second, and only the petals nearest to the camera are in perfect focus – the rest are just a beautiful blur.
I’ve been shooting the old Fruit Packing Plant in Fallbrook for years – I’ve blogged about it before.
The renovations are almost complete, and I wanted to get a shot of the building at this stage – that was my main goal today. But I also wanted to play with the plastic sheeting, and chain link fence on the west side of the building. The way the sheeting was looped and tucked, and the way it blew and shimmered in the breeze was compelling to me, and I knew I could get some fun images of it.
And my final goal today was to get a shot to submit to a Day in the Life project some friends were putting together – today is Leap Day, so what better day for a bunch of photographers all over the world to all submit one photo, and then create a slide show that takes the viewer all over the world, all on one day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. Fun!
So those are the documentary shots. Now onto the fun stuff!
And finally, this is the shot I submitted to the Day in the Life Project. It’s the lock on the front gate – and I love the way the light hits the fence, and the shadows on the sidewalk. It’s a very simple image – just a picture of a gate – but I love it!
Some beautiful light, a few flowers in my own yard, and instant art!
Yesterday I blogged about an iconic image – an image that I created – that defines me as an artist. It’s an image that defines my art, my business, and my style.
But I’m not always the one taking the photograph…
I think that everyone has a favorite image of themselves. I have several! And I want to share them, because if I have one wish for my business it’s that I hope to give my clients images they love of themselves as much as I love and treasure these images of me. Everyone deserves that! Everyone deserves a little magic – and the right photograph can give you that.
This first image is in my opinion, the best image ever taken of me! It was shot by one of my closest friends at the time – the incredibly talented Kevin Mann during his first semester in a beginning photography class. We were in my backyard, it was dusk, he had a cheap clamp-on lightbulb, and he insisted on spraying me with a hose. I thought it was a little nuts! But he believed firmly in what he was doing – and he was right – and he shot a magical portrait. He printed it huge, and it still hangs on my wall in my bedroom. When I think of myself, this is the image in my head.
This next image is my first real headshot – from my hugely successful acting career in LA. Not really… I took lots of classes – from a well-known teacher who had published a book on acting – he was the real deal. But auditioning in LA was very different than auditioning in San Diego, and I was just not ready. So I decided to take a break, moved back and started to study photography, so that I could shoot other actor’s headshots when I went back to LA. But I fell in love with photography, and never went back to LA. It was not the plan, and I never would have guessed I could love something more than acting – but I did and I do and I have no regrets. But I still love this headshot! It was shot by Willa Burns in Oceanside and I was 22.
And this one was shot by me! With a plastic camera, a big fan, a tiara, and some BBQ tongs so I could trip the shutter – really weird setup, but I love the results. I shot this in 2004 as part of a whole series of self-portraits – but this one is my favorite!
So those are the three iconic portraits of me. Everyone should have at least one!
This last one is not iconic – but it is fun! I found it as I was looking for my first headshot, and wanted to share it too. It was shot at the very end of my big acting career – right before I started to study photography. I wasn’t very happy as an actress at that point – and I think you can see that in my face. I just look a little off. But you gotta love the hair!
In 1994 I got my first job as a photographer. I wasn’t hired because of my portfolio, or my education, or my skills – I was hired because of my enthusiasm and passion for the art. I REALLY wanted it, and luckily the person doing the hiring thought that was a big asset and took a chance on me. I got a little training – basically set the camera and the lights up like this, use these poses, and work as fast as you can, while making sure the client has a great time. It was a great job! But after a month or so I got bored with the standard poses, and I started to focus more on finding the perfect angle for each person I shot. I started looking for the beauty in that person. And my sales shot way up! I got used to having at least one person dissolve into tears each day – because they never thought they could look that beautiful. It was a very very cool time in my life!
But I started to get bored… I wanted more. I wanted to change the way the lights were set up, I wanted to move the camera, and I wanted to go outside and shoot. I wanted to actually understand how the camera and the film and lights worked. I didn’t want to just set it and forget it, and follow a standard set of poses anymore. Was that asking so much?
So I left that job and started to take photography classes, and then spent the next ten years in the darkroom. I loved everything about the darkroom – the smells, the chemicals, the way you work all day to get one perfect print. There’s just nothing else like a black and white darkroom…
During that first year of school I shot an image that still perfectly defines my style as a photographer. I consider it to be one of my iconic images. There are several very sweet shots on that same roll of film, but this one image, with the wet hair, and the thumb in the mouth, and the big dark eyes – it just says so much about me, as a photographer. I initially titled it “Pure Rock n’ Roll” and I still think that’s a very fitting title.
I’ve thought about retiring it – it was shot in 1995, so it’s nearly thirteen years old now – and I’ve shot thousands of other beautiful images. But something about this one is just so special, and so rock n’ roll, and so me.
For me, it’s an iconic image. It’s who I was at the time I shot it, and it’s still pretty much who I am now – all these years later.