There were lots of clouds in the sky all day today, which is pretty unusual for Southern California, and I just knew a great sunset was going to come out of it. So I went down to the beach by my house and waited. And I noticed this girl doing the same thing. Contemplative, serene, peaceful.
[dc]W[/dc]ith clear blue skies and perfect temperatures we lit out of Los Angeles like a couple of rogues after a bender which left a heap of twisted metal and broken hearts in our wake. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite so dramatic, but every once in awhile it’s really nice to just get out of LA in a testosterone fueled way, you know–rattle the bones and shake the cobwebs off, and this weekend my brutha from anutha country, Jakob, was in town from Copenhagen and we got on a couple of Road Kings and headed north on the coast highway, breathing in the salt air, wind on our faces, feeling every bit the Kings of the Road. Continue reading “The Road Kings”
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.
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.
Here is a new image I just finished, though I took the photo almost 2 years ago. Click on the image to blow it up.
[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 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.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
from In Memorium
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
It seems to be becoming a ritual for me to go out just before the New Year and make a few images and this year, just like last, I found myself in Chicago doing just that.
What I was trying to capture with this image was the sense of duality on Wacker Drive. Lower Wacker Drive has always fascinated me and has shown up in several of my other images in various forms, but as I was crossing this bridge I noticed the opening that allowed me to see both lower and upper Wacker Drive, so I composed this image which shows a night scene above ground with colorful incandescent lighting and the city lights reflecting off the fast moving clouds above, and the even warmer sodium vapor light spilling out the opening below.
There is an obvious juxtaposition at that opening also, where the trees and grass are fenced off from the concrete cavern.
From Wacker Drive I drove up north to have drinks and toast the new year with some friends, and on my way home I decided to make my first image of 2011 at the Water Tower on Michigan Ave. for no other reason than I thought it somehow a fitting beginning to a year that holds a lot of hope for so many.
Monterey Auto Week has got to be one of the finest collections of rolling art on the planet and the pinnacle of the entire week is the Concours d’Elegance where 175 of the finest collector cars in the world roll onto the legendary 18th fairway at Pebble Beach.
I was there this past week to shoot some 3D car footage with the guys from 21st Century 3D, but managed to get a few stills of my own during a frantic week of chasing cars all over the peninsula.
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I’m told it’s a four-hour drive from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, but my recent run-in with Louisiana Highway Patrol has me setting the cruise control to keep me traveling at a safely under-the-radar ramble through the forests and over the bayou’s of this lovely state, and it actually takes me slightly closer to five hours to get to my destination, which is a lighting rental house where we will load a 40′ trailer with the the tools of our trade.
Baton Rouge is the state capitol of Louisiana, sits along the banks of the Mississippi River, and it is quite apparent that most of the activity here centers around the campus of the Louisiana State University, and, at least this week, that means football. It’s a big game weekend where the LSU Tigers are hosting their mortal enemy, the Florida Gators and the town seems just on the verge of going crazy. Frat houses are being completely wrapped with thick black plastic sheeting either to hold out, or hold in the enthusiastic revelers (I haven’t figured that one out yet), little tent villages are springing up on every available lawn, and there is a total ban on parking anywhere near the campus, so in my spare few minutes of time for exploring, I head toward the city center.
This beautiful building which resembles a castle, is the former state Capitol building and now functions as a History museum. Directly across the street from it is an old railroad terminal that also serves as a museum, and the Mississippi River.
I had to stop and get one photo of University Lake, which sits on the eastern edge of the campus of LSU before heading back toward Shreveport.
For the three days we were in Baton Rouge it was very hot and humid with big billowy cumulus clouds hanging lazily in the sky, but as we crossed over the Mississippi River on our way back to Shreveport, the skies clouded over and we found ourselves in a driving rain with hellbent wind that kept tossing our car around the freeway. This went on for about 45 minutes until we stopped outside Lafayette for gas and the rain stopped and this gorgeous double rainbow appeared.
Pre-production for the latest feature film I am working on has begun in and around Shreveport, LA, a city built on oil money which seems to be fairly wet, with lush green landscapes and some of the prettiest sunsets I have seen in awhile. Hopefully I will find an interesting point of view of this place over the next 2 months and, through my lens, bring it to you.
A lot of the buildings seem to be crumbling well before their time in this part of the country, as if they get saturated with all the humidity and rain, and then the real storms come through and just tear open the already weakened structures.
And then there are the mosquitos. This Pump Jack is deep in some woods near Oil City, LA and apparently the center of all things Mosquito. In this photo Ken Ballantine, our Best Boy, models the latest in personal Mosquito attire. They are so thick in this wood that they practically create a haze in the air, in fact they are so dense that you cannot eliminate their bites, you can only minimize them.
More Shreveport to come…
