An Intimate Evening with Karma of Enchantress Designs....or something.


To my delight, twice last month I was invited to help a friend with a charitable calendar that they were producing. The first being the "Tattoo Shoot" that you see below, the second, to collaborate with a friend, and chain mail artist, Karma of Enchantress Designs. While much less daunting than the higher profile tattoo calendar, this shoot had it's own challenges that shifted as the date came closer and closer. We had initially set up a shoot in a nice park near to both of our houses, I had gone to the park, scouted a couple locations that I thought would simply rock for the purposes of our shoot and was ready to go. Karma though, a mother of 3, had the kids that particular day and we decided it would be far too much stress to get them out to the park and entertain themselves while I fiddled with lights for an hour. She suggested her patio, I relunctantly agreed. I say relunctantly because, while she has a very fine patio, as far as patios go, a patio's.....a patio. Not exactly the kind of scene you imagine to see a woman dressed up as a "bad fairy", feathery wings, sharp fangs and all, flutterling about in her finest chain mail and associated accoutrements. As luck would have it, however, she had just had a "bellydance birthday party" and so this average patio was still laden with colorful pillows, Eastern throws, and sarongs.

While she put the finishing touches on her make-up, I jumbled together a pile of pillows, hung a few extra colored sarongs, shoved a nearby umbrella thingy in the corner and set up my lights. As all of my shoots seem to go, the intial few shots were mediocre at best. This may be every photographer's experience, I can't say for certain. On a side note......I've decided that much more often than not, photography, and art at large, is more a systematic process of problem solving and beautification, as opposed to the result of some extra-human inspiration that we something attribute it to be......Lately, I've had just as many experiences where I've had to work through a scene or subject to find the photo I'm looking for, as I have set out to build the photo I've predetermined in my mind.

Anyway, she jumped into the pile of pillows I had created for her. Too low, too puffy......I grabbed automan, shoved into the pile and had her lean against it for support. I hid her support with all the pillows and you couldn't tell the difference! We worked for about an hour, I tried a few different setups. I had a particular feeling that I wanted to go for, that I had wanted to go for when we were set to shoot in the park. I had given up on that setup when we switched to the patio, but ultimately, when everything else was coming ourt a little drab, I asked if I could try something, just for the hell of it. She, of course, agreed and I set up the lights in a classic "beauty light" setup with two rim lights. I didn't think I would be able to pull this light off with this scene, but as soon as I got the lights in place, she just began to glow with soft, even, flattering light. Exactly what I wanted. She looks great, I look great. After taking a few shots, she began to improvise her poses, and the last 5 or so poses were the ones that made my cut. The very last shot being the one I chose as my submission. You never know, sometimes it's the first, sometimes it's the last, you just gotta keep shooting.

The Tattoo Shoot!

So the other month, Gigi forwards me an email. It's from one of our friends, Khani, of Zulu Tattoo calling on 12 photographers and 12 models to do a shoot for a promo calendar that they're working on for the new year. Gigi says that Khani wants to know if I want to join the project and be one of the photographers, I said, "But she already has twelve, read the email". Gigi answers, "Oh....well I told Khani last night that you'd probably do it. Thanks love. As usual though, she was right. I did the shoot, something I'd never fathomed accepting the challenge to, let alone having a successful experience with! I met my model, John Romeo (no, kidding) one week after accepting the invitation and proceeded to photograph him over a 3 hours period.

I had spent the week prior sketching, planning, test shooting myself!, and building lighting tools, I was slightly terrified, but hugely excited. He turned out to be a wonderful model, and we were at ease almost instantly. Something you don't' expect to find in a nude male. I couldn't be happier with the results, and will be submitting my photo in a couple days for the calendar, for
which I'll be attending a reception in December. Exciting!

Joshua Tree Rocktoberfest!

In accordance with an annual climbing ritual, Gigi and I went climbing with some friends at Joshua Tree National Park in October.  This time of year, it's usually cold and windy as hell!  Last year, we couldn't sleep because the wind was slapping the tents are so much, fire added very little warmth to the chill air and the hill behind our house caught on fire, leading some houses to evacuate and hose down the properties, and my fence blew over!   This year, things were MUCH better.  We had one of the best campsites in the place, completely protected from the wind, had a great couple 

days climbing with no mis-haps to come home to.  J-Tree is one of the climbing meccas in the area, and one of my favorite parks to visit.  It's like another world, just slapped down in the middle of the desert.  With its uniqueness, it reminds me that there are some very special places close to home that need protecting, but even that our neighborhood landscape is unique from it's surroundings and is deserving or reverence.  Check out the gallery of some of images I captured of our annual climb outing.

http://www.weathervaneimages.com/archive/jtree

I just wrote the longest post, and on going to post it, the site crashed.  I don't have the patience to write it all over again!  So I'm skipping the text and going straight for the photos.  These are just some of the things I've been working on over the past two months(Sept-Oct).

Enjoy.

I've never taken self-portraits. I've never been drawn to taking self-portraits. I never really saw any reason, until I needed to learn to fine-tune my portraiture and had no one to shoot for the preliminary testing. Gigi used to be glad, but has since wained in her coerce-ability, and my dog won't sit still, alas, I'm left with the three-fold role of photographer, assistant and subject. Things get interesting and the majority of the resulting photos would never come to public light.

So, I've never taken self-portraits until now. People always seem to have them though, you've seen them, they usually take place in mirrors, being light by nice soft window or door lighting. They are invariably in black and white, and are often times unflattering. I always wondered about them, why would someone strive to take a bad photo of themselves, unshaven, half dressed, and seemingly at the worst. (A self-portrait series by Annie Liebovitz comes to mind).

I assumed that this must be some manifestation of true vision and art of the greats. That they set out to capture something real and didn't have anything else to shoot, or they were struck by the light in their apartment window and were drawn to create. It's since occurred to me that, perhaps, there was never any forethought in creating that photo, or what would come of it. Maybe they were testing a new camera, or just seeing what that light would look like on film, maybe they were drunk and just screwing around! Perhaps when they got the film back and were face to face with themselves as they are when they are alone, they saw no reason to lie.

Maybe they saw the beauty in the honesty of it all. It's a cliche that art is about experimentation, but it seems just as often that art is about accidents. Sometimes you had no intention of creating something that people, or you, would enjoy, but it was created anyway. There would be times, I would imagine, that creator may not even feel a sense of ownership, but with no one else to claim it, ownership is placed by default. Perhaps that why some artists are so modest, maybe they're just good experimenters, or causers of happy-accidents and feel that people see a vision in them that they don't see themselves. Art needs a sense of fearlessness to be progressive, it needs to try new things and it needs to fail, if it will at any time, succeed. With that, welcome to self-portrait#1 and self-portrait #2, and two fitting quotes:

"Anything that is certain in your life is inherently uncreative, simply because it is known. Creativity is born of uncertainty."
-Martin Prihoda
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-Albert Einstein

Have you ever wished you could wake up each morning with would-be pirates, and their ships, gypsies, walking relics from the civil war, a daily report of cannon fire, all presided over by the Queen of England and her subjects?

Honestly, me neither. Although the thought of it is all very Neverland-crossed-with-Wonderland-esque........pretty cool in theory. In reality, it all seemed to be a fair amount of work!

This was Pirate Faire at Lake Casitas in all its glory. A band of a few hundred or so Renaissance Faire hard-cores come together once a year to create the Ren-Faire tangent featuring Pirates and Gypsies, instead of Lords and Ladies. Two weekends and four days long, the faire features a variety of shows and entertainments from knife throwers, fire eaters and jugglers, to pirate bands and the ever necessary reenactment of fought historical battles past.

The best part of the whole experience was by far hanging out with the crew of She'enedra and Nataraja, local bellydancing gypsy artists in the Thousand Oaks area. What a place to find such a sub-culture, indeed.

I once again placed myself in the driver's seat as resident photographer of the proceedings from our encampment, and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the results. You can see a full gallery at http://www.weathervaneimages.com/archive/piratefaire

Wow. Over a month since my last post.

When I opened this blog I had ever intention of posting on at least a weekly basis, at very least. The month of September has been utterly silly in terms of the things I've had to stay on top of! To summarize, School started again, along with the after school projects, howmework(that i don't do) and group meetings that have come along with it. I've found myself being part of 3, count'em, 3 gallery shows, as well as submissions to photo books. This being an entirely new experience, as I've never been a part of any show, or organized collection of photo showings EVER! It's been a wonderful experience, if not a little stressful and insanely expensive in terms of preparation and printing. Next up, PIRATE FAIRE, and sibling of renaissance faire, in which my fellow gypsies and belly dancers were enlisted in several daily shows. My being the resident, recurring photographer brought me continued work in the never ending attempt to capture the madness that ensues. Over the next week, I need to catch up on the work I've let slide and the framing and hanging of the final prints to be shown.

Next up, FIRE HAFLA, the final Weathervane Arts Hafla of the year. To be held in our backyard in a, hopefully, fire retardent setting. Should be a good time. I'll have plenty to post over the next few weeks, I've been busy and there are things to share.

Lee