This year’s Long Beach Grand Prix has been one of the most exciting I’ve witnessed: there were new cars, the Dallara DW12, a controversial 10-position penalty for every team powered by Chevy, lot’s of passing, nail-biting fuel consumption strategies, and a pile-up on the hair pin turn 11, on the last lap, after Will Power had taken the checkered flag, which prevented him from taking his victory lap. Above is the video I took from my vantage point.
An obviously exhausted, yet elated Power just gets out of his car in the middle of the turn, climbs on top of it and claims his victory. One he fought his way up from the 12th starting position to achieve.
A technique I have been wanting to try for a long time now has been balancing a beautiful sunset with a good exposure on a person in the foreground. It’s not entirely simple as the subject should not be lit flat like from an on-camera flash, and the proper balance has to be found. This is my first attempt and I did not have the flash set up properly and didn’t have all the equipment I would have wanted because we just happened to be driving by the beach when we saw this sunset and ran out to grab some photos, but I made do and these are the images I came up with. Thanks to my buddy Bret for being such an accommodating victim. I learned a few things just from that brief foray and will refine the technique from here.
Nicky dives from atop a stack of speakers onto the head of Cassandro. This, of course, riles Cassandro and his teammate, who consequently takes it out on Nicky and her teammate, which covers up the fact that Cassandro has climbed up to the balcony. If it sounds crazy, it gets even crazier…
What’s he going to do from the balcony? Well let’s just say it’s Mexican wrestling and payback es una perra! Click on the video at the right to see the whole thing.
This is the scene as I saw it Thursday night at the Mayan Theater. It’s Lucha Va Voom and that means Sex and Violence all in the name of fun! The wrestling is staged, the dancing girls real, the booze is cheap and the comics are pure cheese, and I couldn’t stop smiling all night.
I’ve been to Lucha Va Voom several times and have had the opportunity to photograph a couple of the shows, including the legendary girl fight. If you’ve seen it you know it’s high energy fun, and if you haven’t you ought to one day. I have some galleries dedicated to Lucha: wrestlers, burlesque and the girl fight. Check them out and get a print or coffee mug with your favorite Luchadore or luchadorette.
And if Lucha Va Voom seems interesting to you, check out my photos from the LA Derby Dolls roller derby matches.
I recently had the opportunity to work on a project with one of the top Rock guitarists in the music industry, and it was both very exciting to be working with Slash from Guns ‘N Roses and Velvet Revolver fame, as well as to be working on a project that was paving a new road through digital photography, capturing 360° images to be processed into user-interactive camera angles.
Slash has just finished recording an album of new songs with singer/guitarist Myles Kennedy, drummer Brent Fitz and bassist Todd Kerns and part of the release will be an interactive video of the band playing the album complete, and recorded on 6 – 360° cameras. The user will be able to choose which camera to watch and have the ability to control pan and tilt. The camera technology that makes this possible comes from a couple of really smart guys at MATIvision. The album is great, and it is just an added bonus to have a front row seat to the recording of it.
UPDATE June 17, 2012
The album Apocalyptic Love has officially been released, as has an iPhone and iPad app from Mativision containing the 360 degree video.
The Black and White Spider Awards is the leading international award honoring black and white photography. This year I submitted two of my car images, both classic Pontiacs. Click on the thumbnails to get the full view.
51 Pontiac
57 Pontiac
Photographing cars has always been one of my favorite things to do outside of actually driving them, and classics are the best kinds of cars in my mind. I just love their curves and all the chrome, I mean if Bling is your thing, the makers of these cars did it over the top and yet, with some elegant style.
I think these two images in black and white are a testament to the timeless beauty of these machines. I hope you agree.
The car show that takes over the main street in Culver City every year is one of my favorites. There are usually a selection of George Barris creations, some cool music and of course, some great cars. Here are a couple of images I made this weekend.
[dc]I[/dc]n the on-going battle between Nikon and Canon owners as to which camera is better, one feature that I, a devoted Canon owner, have lamented is Nikon’s ability to bracket to 5 images as opposed to Canon’s 3, which becomes a real drawback when making High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. But now there is a new iPhone/iPad app that allows me to extend the number of images captured for HDR to as many as 20, and I have only begun to experiment with it. Continue reading “DSLR.Bot and Venice HDR Images”
I recently came across these images from Chicago that I hadn’t previously published. I made these when I was screening one of my films at the Chicago Reelz Short Film Fest in September ’09
11th and Wabash
River City
As always you can click on the image to see the full size.
I almost got arrested taking this photo of an apartment complex in Hong Kong. Apparently the security police there don’t quite understand long exposure photography.
This is part of series of images I have been making designed to be hung on ceilings.
