Beats//Art//Eats

I have been chosen to show work at a local arts showcase

Pomona Valley Mining Co.

1777 Gillette Road

Pomona, CA

 
Please come by and say Howdy if you're in the area, there are many great things planned for the evening!

No One To Blame

And a Very Special Thank You to my very amazing Muse, Pearl, who submitted the work that got us invited to be a part of this event!

Silver Screen

 Pearl will also be there in person to meet everyone.

Way Of Life

 I will be showing up to 8 pieces and have the choice spot at the venue, right next to the FOOD!! 

Pieces Of Me

"Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today." ~Edward Abbey

Minnesota

I was in Minnesota this past weekend, still trying to catch up.

Jen & Lili

 It was a good weekend seeing family and friends.

And a very nice service.

Palmyra American Lutheran Church

 This country church is undergoing a renovation, it's good to see one more landmark saved.

As soon as I get get all caught up I'll be back to posting semi regular.

"Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like." ~David Alan Harvey

 

 

Rejection

The bitter taste of defeat.

Breathed Upon

We all hear it, we've all been through it, we deal with it, we move onward, it's an unpleasant and necessary part of life I guess and an inevitable part of the arts. Several times I've found models on sites like Model Mayhem who I felt would make an amazing contribution to my work, only to have them look at my images with complete indifference, you can't please everyone. It happens to models just as often, they find a photographer who's work is exactly what they've dreamed of doing, only to have the photography ignore their requests. 

Heaven's Plane

Pretty much along the lines of asking someone for a date, and that's just one form of rejection, all the subjective comments and opinions about a model, a photographer and their work by perfect strangers will lead to further rejection. When what you do is in the public eye, there will be those that will feel compelled to seek you out so they can let you know just how they feel, good or bad.

Harmony & Me

You have to really love what you do or enjoy rejection because once you reach the point that you believe in yourself enough, you can begin sending work to juried gallery shows and publications calls for work, where a 5% acceptance rate is considered awesome. And to me this only means one thing, never give up.

Medicated

"Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down." ~Lance Armstrong

RocksAnne

Meet RocksAnne

There's Only One

So one day I'm out in the desert cruising around in my SRT4 when I came to a part of the road that dips down through a huge wash, I make it to the other side and up the steep grade, then ugh, I can't get over the crest in the road because the car bottoms out. I tried another angle, same result, there's just not enough clearance to make it, I was stopped in my tracks. I had to back down the hill, maneuver a U-turn and get out the way I came in, that was it, the moment I had my eye on a Jeep.

On Location - Harper Lake

Within a few weeks I did a little research and decided on a four door Jeep Wrangler, one of my better decisions, RocksAnne has been all over the desert and then some!

Have Fun Out There

She's gone 94,000 miles through some of the most beautiful country I know of, she's also gotten me out of trouble when I got brave (read stupid) and ventured places I shouldn't gone.

Smooth Ride

Two of my most favorite companions out on an adventure, aside from my camera, a beautiful art model and my beloved RocksAnne. It just doesn't get any better than this.

Conundra On The Playa

The unconscious obsession that we photographers have is that wherever we go we want to find the theme that we carry inside ourselves. - Graciela Iturbide

The Chess Set

By Jason Grace, Jase is a photographer in Newquay, Cornwall who I have followed for several years and I'm glad to feature one of his current works, The Chess Set.

Inventive, creative and an awesome use of lighting, this is a great example of imagining a concept and then  bringing it to life.

More of Jase's work, and the complete "chess set" story can be found on his blog: http://blog.jasonscamera.co.uk/

Where light and shadow fall on your subject - that is the essence of expression and art through photography. - Scott Bourne

Marketing

"Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made." ~Mel Brooks

Matinee Septembre

One of my favorite works, painted in 1912 by Paul Émile Chabas 'September Morn' won a gold medal at Salon de Paris but received very little public acclaim, that is until a print appeared in the US and became the center of a court trial in Chicago. What made the painting famous was all the attention it received when the moral censors of the time attempted to have it declared indecent and in violation of the municipal code, which banned the exhibit of "any lewd picture or other thing whatever of an immoral or scandalous nature."In hindsight it would seem the do-gooders choose the wrong painting to declare immoral, but, was it really their choice?

A print of September Morn went on display in the front window of Fred Jackson's art store in Chicago and drew the attention of the Chicago police department. While there are several different accounts of the story including a later repeat in New York, it was 'how' the painting first drew the attention that is the key. It seems at the time Fred Jackson's young son would stop by the store with his friends on their way home from school, the art business was slow and seeing the small group of boys looking at the various works inside the store gave Fred an idea. He moved a copy of September Morn to the front window and then gave his son and his friends each a penny to stand on the sidewalk and look at the painting. Next, it seems Fred Jackson made a few phone calls (one undoubtedly to the local newspaper) to complain that there were school children being exposed to indecent paintings at a Wabash Street art store. The police responded to the complaint and sent a detective who ordered the print removed from the window, which Fred refused to do, as a small crowd gathered in front of the store to see what the commotion was all about.


The story of the lewd artwork on display of course made the paper and soon there were people showing up from all over the city to see the offending print, sales skyrocketed and the rest as they say, is history. Of course today times have changed quite drastically from the way things were near the turn of the Century, getting the attention of the press these days isn't easy to say the least and becoming the center of controversy, well, fact is I have entertained the idea. 

Poster Girls

I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable. - Richard Avedon

Magic

Then there are times you are there and nature gives you magic.

Magic

One of my most, and at the same time least favorite things about working in the desert is that you never really know what the weather, wind or sky has in store for you. About all you can do is make an educated guess based on prediction, it's even worse when your time is limited because too often I hear "oh you should have been here yesterday, the sky was amazing".

Shades Of Gray

When the conditions are good the desert is even just that more special.

The Audience

Location works much the same way.

Last Light

Nothing has ever made me feel the way I feel when I've captured an emotion, when my balance of timing, place, pose & light all meld together into something beautiful. That is something I never imagined I could do.

Perspective

I love playing with perspective

Way Of Life

It's wonderful to have a scene before you that you can view in multiple ways, it gives you the chance to ponder everything in your minds eye before you press the shutter. I don't know if it's just me but when I'm looking at photos I do tend to put myself in the photographers place and I really like when they get creative with perspective.

Living With The Memory

Cut Glass Window

There's just something about shooting straight and level from a height of about 5-6', sometimes it is what works but more often it's boring, looking at the same thing in a different way is a great way to help you think outside the box. A photographer I admire who does this quite effectively, and I joke about him crawling around on the ground just as I do many times, but the results are fantastic, Scott James Prebble from Ballarat, Victoria.

You Pull Me In Deeper

I first began following Scott's work because there was something about it that drew me in, as though I became a part of the image, I think his knack for finding a creative perspective has something to do with this.

Here I Sit

To me, the right perspective can give an image it's wow factor or create a feeling of intimacy, it can be the difference between observing a scene or feeling it, it's all in how you look at it.

I Can't Sleep Without You

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. ~Anais Nin

 

Without Vision... A People Perish

Direction is not always so easy to navigate.

Without Vision.. A People Perish

The middle of last week came and I still had not made plans to shoot on the weekend, I used to plan and schedule photo shoots weeks in advance, but recently I've been taking them as they come. I did want to shoot though, and put out a call on Facebook hoping someone I'd worked with in the past would notice.

Timeless

NevaehLleh saw my post and responded and although she was working in the early afternoon she very graciously offered her morning to me. I really wanted to work on portraiture and get some editorial style shots into my current portfolio, and luckily for me Conundra was also available so I picked them up and the three of us meandered around old town for several hours Saturday morning.

Take My Very Breath

These guys are great, I had no plan just a sketchy outline, as it turned out I didn't need a plan, as long as I had two amazing people and a camera!

After shooting until the light turned harsh around 11am or so, I headed up to the high desert for a shoot with Pearl, again, no plan not even a destination in mind. Saturday I shot photos beginning near sunrise, a short drive and lunch break then more photos all the way to sunset, and I love everything we captured. So it seems that as I search for direction, I am in very good hands.

"I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse." ~ Diane Arbus

Here today

...gone tomorrow, even empires crumble to the sea.

Yesterday I did what is most likely my last photo shoot on the west side of Harper Lake, a dry lake bed in the Mojave desert and community once known as Lockhart, which was also a test site and secret airstrip for Howard Hughes in the early 40's. 

Pearl and I have shot out here quite often recently because we know that in a year or so all this will be gone, replaced by large solar concentrator fields. The current fields are expanding and the company has either bought or will employ eminent domain to acquire all the land needed for the expansion.

I've seen places come and go especially in the desert, a few communities turn into ghost towns mostly for the complete lack of interest in the land. Lockhart will not be given this dignity, in March 2010 Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure to help "solar project developers meet environmental obligations." Read into this what you will. The project is moving forward and yesterday we were met with miles of fence. This expansion has displaced some of Pearl's family and taken one of my favorite locations, so it is personal. Awhile back I brought my daughter out here so she could see it as it is, another casualty in the ever increasing human domination.