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Exhibits News

2019 Pop-up Art show

I’m so thrilled and excited to be part of the 2019 Themed Entertainment Pop-Up Art Show at ArtShare LA! The show is a charity event for Arts For LA, sponsored by ArtShare LA, and Mycotoo. Alexis Cruz and Fri Forjindam Bailey are hosting the event, which features 14 artists, including moi!

The exhibit opened September 12 at ArtShare L.A., 801 East 4th Place, Los Angeles, CA 90013. The gallery is open from 1pm-6pm Wednesday through Sunday, but the big event is Saturday, September 21st from 5-10PM. The “gala” is a charity event with an admission fee ($10). Street parking is limited, but there is a lot across the street with $10 parking.

The images I have submitted for this exhibit are collected as “Shifting Sands of Time,” and were taken at Oceano Dunes on the Central California Coast. These dunes were made famous by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, whose stirring black-and-white images of the dunes are a part of photographic history. For this exhibit, I wanted to instead emphasize the intense, shifting colors of the dunes. After nearly 100 years of black-and-white dunes photos, I figured it was time to show the dunes the way we see them: Full of hallucinatory colors, and deep, complex shadows, all reflecting a magical palette provided by the sun, the sky, and the nearby ocean.

Below are some links about the event:

YouTube Video Invitation
Eventbrite Tickets for Event
Facebook Event Info

Other artists in the exhibit include:

  • Jimmy Pickering
  • Dylan Pommer
  • Zofia Kostyrko
  • Josh Streadman
  • Gwen Ballantyne
  • Daniel Hirsch
  • Morgan Kaesling
  • Charles Edwards
  • Pat Quinn
  • Andy Sklar
  • Bryan Jowers
  • Tim Kirk
  • Alexis Cruz
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Exhibits News

Hard Six: Through the Lens

I was happy and fortunate to be selected as part of the exhibit Hard Six: Thru the Lens, at Megasound Studios in Ventura, CA. The exhibit, which includes photos about the local band, Hard Six, opened Saturday, January 28, and continues through March 28, 2017. There was a great opening night party, featuring Hard Six and many friends from other bands. I was very pleased with how great the Xpozer image mounting system from Bay Photo Lab’s  worked. The images really popped, and stood out (literally!) from the others.

 

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Exhibits Projects

The Other Side of the Lens, continued

A few years ago, I saw esteemed photographer Joe McNally give a talk at the Annenberg Space for Photography. Despite all of Joe’s amazing work over the years, doing shoots for various news organizations and the National Geographic, what stuck with me most were some simple shots he took of photographers with their cameras. It inspired me to begin my own project, taking portraits of all the photographers I know with their cameras.

Over a year or so, this project grew into, “The Other Side of the Lens,” which has so far been exhibited once.

Due to work, I had to put this project on hold for a while, but as I’m gearing to start it up again, I thought I would share some of the images from the extended shoot here.

Here are some shots of the gallery exhibit, which took the form of an old-school, analog darkroom, with “prints” in developer, hanging from drying lines, and “negatives” in the enlarger. It was a lot of fun to put together, and the reactions of experienced photographers taking in the digital recreations of the analog photography tools was fun to watch.

It was fun to create negatives of the exhibit, which I printed on a clear mylar film, to replicate the real thing.

Sample Negative
Sample Negative

 

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Exhibits

Dune Exhibit at Santa Clarita City Hall

The City of Santa Clarita is showing a Dunes exhibit at City Hall from September 16 until October 27, and I’m honored and privileged to have three images on display!

Stop by and check out the full exhibit at

Santa Clarita City Hall
23920 Valencia Blvd., Suite 300
Santa Clarita, CA 91355

The three images displayed are:

 

Categories
Exhibits Projects

The Other Side of the Lens

While attending a lecture by internationally reknowned photograper Joe McNally, I was struck by some images he shared, that he had taken of some friends and fellow photographers. So often, we photographers are behind the lens, and not in front of it! In fact, many of my photographer friends have tons of vacation photos in which their families appear, yet they are absent… always on the wrong side of the lens.

I decided to embark upon this project of taking portraits of photographers.

As the project was ramping up, I thought about the relationship that photographers have with their cameras. Phototographers talk about their “gear” all the time. With some, the talk is about learning, with others it is a point of pride, and with some, it is an obsession.

Photography may be the one art form in which a lifetime journey begins with the gift of the tools to create. You never hear, “I decided I wanted to become a writer when my dad gave me a typewriter (or computer, for you kids).” Music, painting, sculpture: all arts in which the appreciation typically precedes the desire. Yet, you often hear photographers speak about getting a camera, then becoming hooked.

For some photographers, the camera is just a tool, no different from a paintbrush. For others, the relationship is more like a guitarist with a prized Les Paul: Something to lust after, acquire, and bond with over years of creativity.

I asked the photographers in this exhibit to bring their favorite cameras. Other than that, they were free to suggest any other “adjustments” or props.

It was interesting to note how many of the photographers expressed discomfort with being on the other side of the lens. Some even admitted to disliking it a lot!

The concept for this exhibit presentation came to me in a flash. My own journey with photography began taking pictures on film as a child. As a teenager, I worked in a traditional film darkroom (in my bedroom closet). The idea of presenting these digital images as if they had been shot on film and printed with “old school” darkroom techniques appealed to me.

The first exhibit for this project was presented as part of the City of Santa Clarita’s ArtSLAM on May 1, 2014.

All of the images were taken with a Canon 5D MkIII, and an 80mm f1.8 lens. Each image was processed in Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop, and printed at MPIX.com. 4×5 “negatives” were printed on an HP Laserjet using transparency film.

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Exhibits News Uncategorized

Exhibit: The Other Side of the Lens

The main image above shows a mockup of the exhibit in my studio space.

Here is a shot of the exhibit in place:IMG_1721-small

 

A young boy and his mother show that the appeal of photography is across generations.IMG_1723