 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
1/80
f/2.8
Last night I went out with some friends and took my camera. We had a long layover at Lucky’s house, so I started shooting with a wide angle lens on my canon 5d. Having learned to pay attention to when there’ll be an explosion of laughter, I was ready for this moment and made a wonderful image of our friend Guy.
[taken with canon powershot]
Dreaming of days like this… Big thanks to our guide John and the crew from Whistler Heli-Ski. Word is they recently sold the operation, allowing John to retire if he wanted to. But why would he??
1/160
f/9.0
Self portrait, mountain top in the Chugach Moutain Range of Alaska.
Images from my coverage of the Miss Trannyshack Pageant 2007 appeared on the STYLE page in the Chronicle Sunday!
1/2500
f/3.5
I just found this in the archive. It’s the Icer Air event in Pacific Heights that Johnny Moseley put on for his birthday a couple of years ago. It was a gorgeous, hot, sunny day in the city and the place was packed.
[taken w/ iPhone]
It’s all about the lighting… Daft Punk figured this one out and applied it to their recent performances in a way that left seasoned concert goers in awe. Here, the robotic twins open up at the Greek Theater in Berkeley and proceed to tear the roof off. Next time you drive by, you can see they still haven’t replaced it. The light shows are so unreal that there are loads of video clips online. Look them up on youtube.
[taken w/ iPhone]
I love silhouettes. This was taken from the parking lot of the famous Claremont Hotel, in the Berkeley hills. They have a great terrace at Paragon that looks out over the bay. Great for sunset drinks. The service pretty much sucks. But hey, the view is insane.
[taken w/ iPhone]
Sometimes while I’m driving, I see something that I have time to reach for my iPhone and capture. The camera performs rather well under low light conditions. Here’s a nice night time abstract.
[taken w/ iPhone]
Because a photograph is a two dimensional represention of a three dimensional space, distance and perspective become critical when attempting to communicate scale. Here, Robbie shows us what happens when a small object is just inches from the lens.
[taken w/ iPhone]
What’s interesting about this image is that it wasn’t staged. Well, it was, after my eye jerked. But I was just getting into my car around 8 in the morning, when the sun comes through the trees and shines into the front window of my car. As I sat down and went to put my water in the passenger seat, a bright ray of light blasted the bottle, making the water sing and the label bling. Aquafina has a pretty catchy color combo on their clear, thin plastic label that is back lit here. And you can see the words on the other side, written in white, through the water. Before camera phones, I might have just noticed this and thought how cool it was. But now, I make a picture for two reasons. One is, I have a camera phone and two is, I want to remember what was happening with the light that caught my eye. Here, I tried to fill the frame with the bottle coming towards you. The foot area of the front passenger seat was in dark shadow and made for a perfectly black background. It’s amazing what is happening around you all the time. When you learn to see light the way the camera does, things look different.
tip - always have your camera with you. always. always. always. it’s when you don’t that you will see the most perfect shot…
[taken w/ iPhone]
David and Ed and I were picking up supplies for work on the gallery when my eye jerked as I was getting in the car. I saw a wall of strong vertical lines created by the angle of the sun. I knew it was the perfect backdrop to make a portrait of the two of them together. They were already in their seats when I said, “It’s photo time! Let’s go!” Glad they’re good sports.
I get bossy when I see good light and have willing participants. Sometimes you need to act quickly as light may be fleeting. Fortunately, the light wasn’t going anywhere… I was just hungry. I set-up around this cool tear in the siding, took 3 shots and headed off for lunch.
[taken w/ iPhone]
Here is an image I made of David, who is helping to build the gallery. I’m posting this shot because there are 3 different types of lighting, which can be difficult when using AWB (Auto White Balance) because the camera isn’t sure where your white point should be. And you might not be either. The eye and the brain work all this out for us, but the camera is left clueless.
Behind his head, shining against the wall, is a daylight balanced bulb used for illuminating art work. Off to the right of the frame in the background is a room lite by an incandescent flood bulb. Then you have the light on David’s face; a battery powered fluorescent work light his partner is holding for me. It’s a bit low, as you can see the shadow from his nose comes across and clips the bottom of his eye socket. Turning the image grayscale is a great solution to the color balance issue. David saw the original image on the phone and didn’t like the tone of his skin. I could have just raised the temperature, but I really like to pull out the color in these situations. Sometime colors helps, sometime it does just the opposite. I generally prefer to have some sort of non-distracting background that adds strength, visually. Here, notice the way the window frame behind him defines the sense of space.
1/640
f / 5.0
Here is a shot I recently took while hiking on Mt. Tamalpais with my friends Adam, Victoria and their dog, named Squiggy Bojangles (a hopelessly cute small golden retriever who wiggles her rump side to side when she walks). It’s not the most earth-shattering image by any stretch of the imagination, but it is good for discussion purposes.
Let’s talk about the composition. There are so many triangles and lines that it’s like a geometric diagram. This scene wasn’t staged as I was just hiking and shooting. I’ve included the film strip for you to see the shots leading up to, and following the selected image. I get a shot I’m happy with about half the time I try to pull this off. It’s cool sometimes when everything is in motion, including myself and I’m just free-styling; that’s when I experiment and really learn 
When you look at the selected shot, in comparison to the others, you’ll begin to see ways in which everything works. On the hike, my eye jerked as we came through some trees to see the knoll before us disappearing into nature’s infinity pool and tapering off both left and right on the horizon. The tree on the left helps balance the fact that the knoll is a bit off center and it works well juxtaposed to the bend in the path. I knew the first few shots where going to include that shadow (see bottom right), but I wanted to see how my exposure was, given the brightness of the sky and the path combined. It was fine and by the third shot, I knew I was warm, but Squiggy was lingering too close to Victoria, who I really wanted further to the right side of my frame in order to balance out the tree. Once they all lined up, I started firing. Composition-wise, shots 4, 5, 6 and 7 all fit my vision, but in shot 4, Victoria’s body position is smooth and fluid, unlike the others.
See more about this topic in Composition at Rest.
(Click on image to see larger file)
I recently got a call from my friend Josh who was in LA for the weekend and unable to shoot the TrannyShack Pageant 2007 event in San Francisco, something he’s covered since the beginning.
He told me I would have backstage access and a front row seat in the press box, so could I do the shoot? I thought for a second and then said, “uhhh, sure!” with access like that? why wouldn’t I??
The show was hosted by Heklina, who started Trannyshack at the Stud several years ago. Sandra Bernhard showed up to judge the pageant and delivered a brilliant stand-up. James St. James, one of the original club kids from New York, was also judging, along with last years winner, Ana Conda.
