Last night i was revisiting older shoots that I let lay around on the hard drives. This always seems to yield new images. Which also leaves me wondering why I didn’t process these and release earlier? These images are from January 2017 with an old friend of mine. I processed the digital images with a hint of a blue tint to give them a bit of cinematic feel. The black and whites are home processed Kodak Tri-X scans. Enjoy.
Almost a year ago, I was contacted by a follower of mine through Instagram. They lived out in California but were going to be in Austin to visit family soon. Unfortunately we were unable to connect to shoot together over the next 3 or 4 of her visits to Austin. On her most recent trip about 6 months ago, our schedules (or the moon and planets) aligned finally. As she is a dancer, we both wanted to try to do something different and utilize her dancing training in a non-traditional photographic manner.
Yesterday while watching movies with Lars, the thunder started rolling outside. She walked over to the sliding glass door and pulled the curtains back. Next thing I know, we are outside while the rain slowly started coming down. Just sprinkles at first then it really started to rain. And Lars started to play and dance and sing in the rain…
My sweet, stubborn, head strong little Lars. She constantly keeps me on my toes. Pushes all my buttons. Makes me laugh and smile. I couldn’t imagine a day without her presence.
I met Shaun earlier on in my photography career here in Austin. We met the first time at an event one of our mutual friends was having about 6 years ago, where I was also showing some of my work. I very clearly remember her amazingly outgoing spirit and personality. We chatted that night about planning a shoot. We lost contact, got back in contact and on and on for the next 6 years. Finally things worked out with our schedules and we set a date. Of course on that evening, the plans started unraveling by things out of our control. We put our heads together and made the shoot still happen that evening.
I always wanted to shoot Shaun a little bit differently than her outstanding portfolio. Instead of her more traditional glamour work, I really wanted to push her in the direction of being photographed and posed like an art model. Here are some of the images from this shoot.
On April 14th, I grabbed my Rip-N-Dip cat backpack and loaded my film body with a 35mm lens and 4 rolls of black and white film and hopped in the car. After easily 6 months of not skateboarding, I needed to feel reconnected to something again. I drove down to No-Comply and bought a new deck and pair of shoes and skated down the hill to House Park. My poor body felt so awkward at first, like a new born fawn. But your body never forgets…
After I managed to wear myself out some, I walked back up the hill to the shop. Of course since I was at the shop, I ran in to some old friends. Next thing I knew, I joined them on a filming session. I shot a couple rolls of film while Brian popped off some amazing skating. The last spot we went to we ended up skating for about 3 more hours. And I felt alive again…
Yesterday, I loaded up my almost 13 year old daughter and headed down to Graffiti Park at Castle Hill. Keep in mind, it was the last day of music for SXSW…
Parking was atrocious but we got lucky and only parked about a block away. There were so many groups of people walking towards and away from the “park”. Amazing how the graffiti culture appeals to some many different people. Or maybe it just the simple fact that previously thought of “counter culture” is accepted by all aspects of society now.
As we walked to the walls, I loaded a roll of Kodak Tri-X in my camera and handed it to my daughter. Told her she had 36 frames to do whatever she wanted to shoot. The results of her vision is after the jump.
One of my favorite things to do is go back and revisit older shoots. Sometimes my newer projects give me a “new” set of eyes for some of my older work. this image of Lexa Grace is a prime example of an older shot that was previously overlooked. After taking a break from working on an all film shoot, I went back to her folder of images and immediately paused on this one. This image was shot at 1600 ISO and was full of digital noise. I played around with some color film presets in Lightroom. Not fully satisfied with using a canned preset, I made some adjustments and the above image is the final outcome.
Thanks to my Instagram account and followers, Misti came across my work and asked if I wanted to work with her when she visited Austin. There was no way I was going to say no. Beautiful tattoo work… and that face. She was in town for a friend’s art show and had rented this amazing space…
A few weeks ago, an old friend of mine showed me an abandoned location they had found and wanted to explore. We walked around the building looking to see if there was an open entrance to maybe get inside. In a short amount of time, we found that open entrance and briefly explored the lit, but completely empty, building before one of us tripped the motion sensors. I haven’t ran that fast in a LONG time.
