More from Erotic Signature
March 19th, 2008
I’ve announced before on here that I have a photo included in the “Erotic Signature” book to be released in May. There is also a traveling exhibit of photos associated with that book project. I was asked to submit two additional photos along with the one that will be published in the book for inclusion in the exhibit.
The photo that will be in the book is in the last post, the same one that Kinsey selected for their show. These are the additional photos that Erotic Signature picked for their international touring exhibit:
Here’s the schedule for the touring exhibit:
Miami – May 2 – 25
Los Angeles – June 6 – 8
New York – July 3 – 27 (tentative)
Amsterdam – Aug 14 – Sept 7
Berlin – Sept 12 – Oct 5
London – Oct 16 – Nov 24
I’ll probably try to make the opening of the show in NYC, depending on when the final date turns out to be. Here’s a link to more info on the Erotic Signature book and exhibit: http://www.eroticsignature.com/
Kinsey Institute Show
March 17th, 2008
I just received word today that I’ll have a photograph in the annual Kinsey Institute juried show this year. Yes, it’s that photo again. Still one of my favorites, and it seems, everyone else’s as well.
The show will open on April 11 and run through July 25 at the institute’s gallery in Morrison Hall on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University. Here’s a link to more info: http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/services/gallery.html#upcoming
Dance at Ohio University
March 14th, 2008
I’m finally all caught up with dance photos. I have all the photos, around 4,000 of them, that I shot at Ohio University last week uploaded to my dance site: http://public.fotki.com/DaveL51/ou-win-08/
You can go there to see them if you are interested. I’ll be posting a few of my favorites here over the next few posts.
This shot is one I actually did during the lighting rehearsals when I was just watching the dances and taking test exposures to establish the best exposure settings for each dance. But a few of the test exposures turned out pretty well, like this one.
The dance is “Out of Line” Choreographed by Mickie Geller. Costumes by Melanie Parks. Lighting by John Bohuslawsky. Dancers: Jennifer Morgan Chambers, Liz Dunlap, Kelsey Gorman, R. Eric Hill, Kathryn Jankord, Whitney Jenkins, Megan Payne, Madeline Schrock, Valerie Serrani, and Kelly Skala.
Why I Hate Music on Blogs
March 9th, 2008
A couple of my friends who have blogs that I read regularly have them set up to play music. I won’t name anybody…you know who you are. I hate encountering music when I’m reading blogs for a couple reasons.
1. I am almost always listening to music while I’m on line. When your music starts to play it, of course, clashes with what I’m already listening to. I enjoy learning what my friends are listening to…but I don’t want it washing over what I’m listening to at the moment.
Yes, I can click to turn the music off…and that’s the first thing I do when I go to those sites. But there’s a worse problem that won’t be solved that way.
2. For some reason those blogs with music regularly cause my computer to lock up and sometimes crash. Just now, as I’m in the middle of uploading some large groups of files to a web site, I went to one of those musical blogs and everything stopped working. I had to close all the windows and restart the upload to get things going again. Now, I have a fairly fast DSL connection, so I hate to think what is happening to others with slower internet connections.
So, please, if you want to share your music with me through your blog, leave it turned off. Give me the option to turn the music on and listen if I want…but stop crashing my computer with your sound files.
Thank you.
I’ve been working for the past week on a dance concert at Ohio University, first watching, then photographing, then editing, and now uploading. All the photos have now been uploaded to a web site where they can be viewed and prints can be ordered. Here’s the url if you want to look: http://public.fotki.com/DaveL51/ou-win-08/
But be forewarned…there are thousands of photos there.
Finally French PHOTO
March 5th, 2008
Dance Poster
March 1st, 2008
I’m at Ohio University watching rehearsals for next week’s dance concert. I’m extremely pleased to see that the students chose one of the photos I did at their concert last fall to use on the poster, post cards, flyers and program for this concert. It was especially nice to see the 8-foot-tall version of this poster hanging above a street in downtown Athens. I guess they liked the photos.
Back to Work
February 28th, 2008
Well, I shouldn’t really call it work, since I love shooting dance so much. Over the next few days I’ll go to Athens, Ohio, to photograph a concert at the Ohio University School of Dance. This is their winter concert, the major production of the year. There will be guest artists and choreography by the faculty. I’ll spend a couple days watching the dances and talking with the dancers and choreographers, then a couple days photographing at dress rehearsals.
I can’t say I’m all that happy to be back in Ohio after all that warmth in Florida and South Carolina. I want to live somewhere that doesn’t have weather that I have to shovel.
The photo is OU senior dance major Kristen Gerding performing just for me and my camera back in November.
Shooting Sea Shells by the Sea Shore
February 20th, 2008
It’s been a day at the beach. Walk down a beach with a camera and eventually you end up taking photos of sea shells. At least I do at Edisto Beach. 
And, I guess it says something about me that what I do when I go on vacation is take photos. Photography isn’t work for me…it’s play. I have to be careful or I’ll forget to eat. Just ask some of the models who have gone on all day shoots in the wilderness with me. “What, you are hungry? Why? We aren’t done shooting yet…”
Why shoot sea shell photos? Why not? Has it been done before? Sure. Are my photos better than what others have done…well, maybe better than some, but certainly not the best.
But, I’m not really worried about why. These are my photos. It’s what I saw and chose to include in photos. So it’s my vision. Certainly influenced by other photos. Also influenced by my ideas about beauty and the place of humans as an integral part of the natural world. 
And, yes, when I was shooting the photos of water and foam I was thinking about the photos of water that I saw the last time I was at MOMA. Mostly I was thinking how much better those water photos in MOMA are than the ones I was shooting. So it goes.
There was one bird out looking for dinner on the beach…I thought it was a cute one.
Anyway, I’m having fun on vacation. It’s warm here…well, around here they think mid-60s is cold, but people from Ohio know better.
Back to Dance
February 15th, 2008
OK…the Dirty Show is over and it’s time to get back on track with the main direction of my photography these days…and that’s dance. In a couple weeks I’ll be back at Ohio University photographing their winter dance concert, which is their major annual production. Between now and then I’ll be visiting some warmer areas of the country and mostly just relaxing.
In the meantime, here is an OU dance major, Eric Hill, in flight. This was shot before I went to Lois Greenfield’s workshop as an exercise to see where I was at with lighting dance before the workshop. Turned out my lighting setup was practically identical to what Lois uses. I have a different background set up in my studio now and I’m waiting for a good dancer to come by so I can give it a try.
I don’t know how much access to the web I’ll have over the next week or so…I’ll post if I can.
Dirty Review and Close Encounter with Eric Kroll
February 12th, 2008
Here’s the crew at the motel, ready to head out to Dirty 9: 
It didn’t hurt that the show was much better this year. There were fewer pieces of art on display and the quality level was much higher than last year. One of the jurors told me they cut the size of the show by about 20 percent from last year. I think that was a good decision and produced a much better, though still quite dirty, show.
The stage shows were, for the most part, still embarrassingly bad. Most of the burlesque performances were of the nature that might lead the crowd to shout, “Put it on! Put it on!” and, “Less! Less!” And to make comments on the order of, “Do you think they ever rehearsed that, even one time, before they got on stage?”
There were a couple major exceptions to that level of quality, though. One was a group that did a suspension act with hooks through the skin of the performers. Honestly, I couldn’t watch that performance. It’s just not my sort of thing. But I can say that it was a very high quality production, very well done. I saw a bit of it, but turned and walked away quickly. But if you are in to that sort of thing, this was probably about as good a show as there is in the genre.
Another high quality exception that I did enjoy watching was the aerial performance by Roxi Dlite. http://www.myspace.com/roxidlite She is a beautiful and skilled performer who did a breathtaking burlesque on a large metal ring suspended above the stage. Here’s a photo of her in action at the Dirty Show taken by Karl Blessing http://karlblessing.com/
I hope to see more performers of this quality at future Dirty Shows. We could all do without the fat chicks who can’t dance trying unsuccessfully to do burlesque at future shows.
Eric Kroll was at the Dirty Show as a special guest artist. He did a workshop Saturday afternoon and was sitting in a little alcove back by the bar most of the evening. I’m not much of a fan of his fetish photography, but he is certainly famous for it and has had great success with the books of his work. He seems to be the main man for classic fetish and glamour photography. While we were walking around at the show he spotted Phoenix Kelley, one of the models who went to the show with me.
Phoenix is a striking classic beauty and Eric immediately wanted to photograph her. Here he is getting his assistant to take a photo with her in his little alcove at the show:
Phoenix agreed to do a shoot with Eric, so he came to our motel Sunday morning with his two assistants and a bunch of suitcases filled with all sorts of vintage clothing. I had been warned by some friends that Eric was…well, let’s be delicate and say they warned me that he was a bit difficult.
as he could dish it out. He seemed to enjoy that. And, what was very obvious was that Eric knew what he was doing. He had a definite vision for what he was trying to create and he knew just what to do to get what he wanted. Whether you are a fan of his work or not, he is certainly an artist who knows how to express his vision.
And, for those who are all involved in equipment, note that Eric did the entire shoot with a pocket digital camera…a Leica, yes, but still a pocket point and shoot camera. And he used only the light available in the room…turning the lamps on and off and opening and closing the curtain to get just the lighting effect he wanted. 
It looked like a good shoot to me, standing around observing and taking a few snaps. He was very rough on his assistants. I’d never consider working for him…I’m much too old and stubborn to put up with that kind of shit from anyone. But I’d have no problem helping him set things up if he wanted to work in my area. And I’d recommend that models I know work with him, understanding that they need to hold their own with him and say no when they need to.
After several hours of shooting, which required a late check-out from the motel and made us all quite a bit later getting back home than we had planned, we all went to breakfast together. And Eric even picked up the check for the whole group. I hope that anno
uncement doesn’t ruin his carefully cultivated bad reputation.
