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” Art teaches us what it is to be human”

To which I say amen. That is why I photograph. That is why I pursue images with people. I’ve never enjoyed shooting landscapes or abstracts. But if you put a person in the frame in front of my eye my heart thumps in my chest.

I work hardest not at the technically “good” image, but rather at getting to know the people I photograph. I love the consults I have with brides and grooms. I get to know them and their story.

I studied (among other things) Anthropology in college but fell short of ever exploring another culture. So maybe I’m a frustrated anthropologist, my camera being my way of studying people.

Henri Cartier Bresson said the hardest thing was to get his camera between the shirt and the skin of the person he was photographing.

Maybe so.

I also think it is the point. To get not only between their shirt and skin, but under the skin and into their world and then reveal the captivating uniqueness of the person I’m photographing.

That’s why I shoot weddings and portraits. Because of this need to know and understand. When I’ve captured it in an image I think somewhere in my head I feel I’m contributing to the world body of knowledge of humanity.

Doing my part to learn and share what it is to be human.

(thanks to Kirk for the quote)

But as good as 2009 was 2010 holds even more promise. I’ve got several inquiries and a couple of consultations to set up for weddings this year, and a birthday party needing a photobooth on the schedule.

Speaking of photobooths, we brought in 2010 with an impromptu photobooth at Peter and Jana’s Roller Skating Capes and Bling NYE party.

All the images are up on Facebook, but Facebook wrecks images so I wanted to post a few here.

This is the opener, the guest of honor Ryan

What I love about the photobooth is it lets everyone get into the act. All night whole families came over and got what amounts to mini family portrait shoot. I would do 3 -4 shots of each group. One “normal” and then coach them to be a little more – uh not-so-stick-up-your-butt like. Which isn’t all that hard in this case considering the context (hello, capes AND bling) and who the party goers where.

Case in point, check out these sets:

Another thing I love about the photobooth is I have absolute control over the light. Place the subject, pose and compose. Super rad.

The more willing people are to get a little wacky the better the images – which is why this would be great at a wedding or a party with an open bar. Or in this case a party with my friends who are all just a little off anyway.

For you technique geeks I set up two SB 600s 8ft up on stands, with diffusers on the heads fired through shoot through umbrellas. They are at about a 45 degree angle to the backdrop. Triggered by an SB 800 on camera (hint:set it to — so it won’t ad to the exposure). They are at full power (didn’t complain a bit and I didn’t have a single misfire, you will want to give em a brake every 2 – 3 shots but you will need to talk and compose people anyway so it works out). I shot at 1/40 at 5.6 with a 17mm lens, hand held. The backdrop is a 10x seamless gaffer taped to the wall on one side and clamped to a light stand on the other.

However, that project is effectively over. The Oh So Wise Santa Cruz city leaders who consider themselves good little liberals have enacted laws that have all but driven away the performers away. The intent, as stated, of the laws is to make the down town safer and more hospitable. They claim that the “street people” intimidate folks and harass them thereby driving away business. Really the law is aimed at the homeless who also scrape by a living begging for money/food/pot.

The laws make it illegal for anyone to camp in the city limits. The good folks of Santa Cruz don’t want to build any shelters because no one wants one in their neighborhood, so it is just easier to criminalize poverty. Another law forbids anyone from staying for more than one hour with in a few feet of any tree, bench, building, statue etc. This is the one that catches the performers. There are little ladies in yellow and blue jackets with “Hospitality” across the back of the jacket whose job it is to enforce the law. They drive off these malicious and evil doers who have the audacity to bring their art to the people. The fact that their tags label them as “Hospitality” is a Orwellian accident hasn’t escaped me. I witnessed one of these little ladies ask a man to leave because he was sitting on a window seat in front of a store. Of course the man was clearly a trouble maker. He claimed he was only waiting for his wife to finish her shopping inside but we all know he was really just a wolf in sheep’s clothing waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting shopper.

Any way, my rant, like my project is over.

Hope you enjoy the images as much as I enjoyed capturing them. There are plenty more where these came from.

This woman was among a group of Krishna’s going about doing what they do – you know, annoying people. I was about to pass them on when she began to dance. Mesmerizing isn’t the right word. There was a transcendence to how she moved that for most of her dance I forgot I had my camera. Lucky for me I snapped out of it and got some amazing images of which this is one.

This is Jose Garza. One day he’ll be headlining a punk show, just wait and see.

Curtis is on a crusade to remind the rest of America of our failure to rebuild New Orleans and to raise money for his home town.

Of course no collection of Santa Cruz photography is complete with out The Great Morgani.

Lyrical I is a street/beat/jam poet. A lot of people think they are poets, but this guy has a gift.

When he isn’t in Cuba he has been working at one of only two schools in the 9th Ward in New Orleans. Here is a video The School at Blair Grocery…

The video does a far better job of describing what Nat Turner and Rob are trying to do than I could. Recently The Blair School have applied for a a grant from the Kellog Foundation to continue their work.

Listening to Rob talk about the school and the difficulties of life in the lower 9th Ward I knew there was a story I wanted to tell. He mentioned that he would like to have a handful of DSLRs and Digicams to use in an art class for the students (currently they have 10 students). So hopefully, if I can find a backer I will travel to the Lower 9th to document The Blair School and teach the kids a bit about photography. Of course funding for that kind of thing is hard to come by these days so I may end up footing the bill myself.

Before Rob left for NOLA in his brick red VW Bus I called him up and asked if he had time for a quick portrait. I wanted a good portrait of Rob before he left to help with promoting our little scheme.

The light was a little hazy due to the Lockheed Fire just over the ridge behind my apartment so we went in to the “court yard” or my imitation palatial apartment and made a handful of images.

In my mind the unkempt disarray of our “court yard” seemed to fit in perfect with the images Rob had painted in my head with his descriptions of a 9th Ward largely forgotten by the Federal Government and the news media. And no, he is always that skinny. I have no idea what those stomach worms survived on.

I honestly have no idea how I make these connections in my head any more than I know how all this detritus from all the tenants who’ve ever lived here in our little South Felton Ghetto apartment has collected in such a perfect way but it all seemed to congeal for our little photo shoot.

So Rob is telling me about how the levies everywhere are being built up high and the city is being restored – except in the Lower 9th (where all the poor people live). The difficulty of bringing a civilizing agent like education to a part of town that as he describes it sounds more akin to the para-apocalyptic descriptions of a Palahniuk or McCarthy novel . And I think, “huh, ok then, climb up on that stair master with your beer.”

So here is the deal. I need 5-10 Digital SLRs. They don’t have to be fancy. Just a body with a 35mm lens (on the crop sensor 35 is closer to a 50mm lens), and 5-10 little digicams to take to the school. Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind kicking down some cash for travel and expenses that would be rad as well. And you would be a huge help if you would share this post with your friends. Working under the 6 degrees of separation theory I’m hoping that someone knows someone who knows someone who will help me get my little documentary published – any where.

For you photographers, the shots were done with 2 SB 600s on stands to each side of Rob with gobos to block flair from the strobes reaching the lens. One SB 800 on camera with one of those over priced Garry Fong Lightspheres as a diffuser on camera acting as the master controller through CLS. And yes I know I got some shadow on the fence. If you are so upset about it then send me a couple more strobes and next time I will also light the fence.

I went with my usual approach of getting the boring, err I mean standard head shot out of the way before moving on to more creative portraiture.

Any one of those will fit the bill of course. But here is my favorite….

A few months ago Allan sent me a message via Facebook to let me know that he was getting married and to ask me to shoot the ceremony. As we chatted a bit about what he and Brenna his bride wanted their wedding day to be like and what they wanted from the images I got more and more excited. They were planning on having the wedding on the beach for one, and I just happen to love shooting on the beach. I know some photographers shy away from shooting on the beach at mid-day – the hard sunlight and bright sand make for tricky exposures, squinting eyes, and on occasion a burned up strobe. But I get excited. I don’t know what I love more, the images I get or the freedom to shoot a wedding bare foot!

Davenport Landing Beach is a popular surf spot with some killer waves and killer views

Dad walked her down the beach and gave her a little kiss as he gave her away

Our friend, Mark made it all official

After they were pronounced the handful of guests bum rushed them for a gi-normous group hug

The reception was at Brenna’s family cabin at Mount Hermon. It’s a nice little cabin in the woods where both families got together to celebrate with a few drinks and some home style music.

At this point you have to be asking yourself “What about the rings?”

Check out the next post… Or just click HERE

Mike,

I’ve been doing my do diligence and came across your work. It’s quirky and unique – a bit like myself. I’m a local composer (Aptos) and need a headshot for Monday, June 1st for the Berkeley Symphony website. Any chance you could put something together by then. I know it’s a tall order. Please let me know.

The email was from Donald Myers. Donald is the rad-est classical music composer I’ve ever met. Ok, so he is the only classical music composer I’ve ever met. But is is still a rad guy. Funny thing is for some reason I thought he wrote that he was a conductor as opposed to a composer. So immediately I had visions of sticking him knee deep in the San Lorenzo River in full dress conducting away. Oh well. Any conductors out there need some portraits done?

We talked on the phone a bit about what he was looking for, which when we discussed it further turned out to be two separate shoots. One was a basic head shot for the Berkeley Symphony web site and a second lifestyle shoot for a website he is building to promote his work. Don has the honor of being chosen as one of Berkely Symphony’s Emerging Composers.

The catch was that the head shot needed to be ready by the 1st. Because I still haven’t managed to shake of that pesky day job of mine that left a very small window to shoot, edit and deliver the images. That window turned out to be as follows: shoot on Sunday, have images ready by Sunday night. There would be no option of re-shooting should it be the case he or I were not happy with the images.

Of course I pulled it off Not that I wasn’t sure I’d be as stoked on the images as I am now. That’s just one of those things where I am rarely sure how a shoot turns out until I get home and get a good look at the images.

I still haven’t seen which of the 50 plus images I offered up to Don he chose. (in case you were wondering, yes that is a lot of images – typically you are lucky if a photographer gives you a dozen images to choose from) When Berkely has the image up I will post a link. Below are two of my favorites. The one on the right was shot with my favorite lens – an oh-so-creamy-with bokeh-when-shot-wide-open 50mm.

My game plan for head shots and portraits is first thing get the basic, standard (boring) usable image in the can and then the real fun starts when we play around with light and composition. Or in this case, break out from the constraints of what is required for a head shot and simply add a bit of expression and personality.

Say for example…

I’m stoked on how the shoot turned out and only wish I could post them all here. I’m even more stoked to do our lifestyle shoot.