Don’t Forget
September 5th, 2013
Don’t forget the closing reception Saturday night, 8-11, of my show at Gallery Provocateur. Hope to see you there.
By Dawn’s Early Light
September 2nd, 2013
It’s the beginning of September which means the end of summer is at hand and fall will soon be with us. I love the fall. It’s my favorite time of the year. And I love the early morning both for the quality of the light and for the privacy that is available out in the woods, even near a city or in a popular park. Not many people are actually willing to get up early enough to be out in the woods when the sun comes up. Fortunately for me, one of my favorite models, the lovely and talented Kelsey Dylan, is willing to sacrifice her morning slumbers for the sake of my art. So early one October morning last year we headed out into the woods as the sun slowly moved into view on the eastern horizon.
The light is funny at this hour and I like that. The color of the light tends toward the blue end of the spectrum. I always debate a bit just how much to change that color back to what some consider “correct color.” I don’t really believe in correct color. I’m much more interested in the changes of color and how they affect the nature of the scene. I’ve done some correction on these photos…different degrees of correction depending on what I thought worked best for each photo. I’m sure you can see the differences. Of course, what you see depends on the variations of your particular monitor too. My monitor is calibrated, so I have a pretty good idea of what these should look like. But in the wild world of the internet, there’s no telling what each viewer is going to see, at least in respect to color. So it goes.
After traipsing around in the woods for a while the sun came on strong above the horizon and people began to appear in the woods. So we went a little way down the road to a favorite bridge of mine. All my life as a photographer I’ve enjoyed the light and the backgrounds that are available under bridges. On this day the direct sun was doing some fun things. I keep seeing Mr. Magoo with hair in the shadow Kelsey is casting here. Who do you see?
Don’t forget the closing reception for my Chicago show at Gallery Provocateur this coming weekend. Saturday, Sept. 7 from 8-11 p.m. 1621 Kedzie Blvd. I’ll be there. So will Kelsey and some other favorite models. You really don’t want to miss this.
The End of the Gorge Project
August 30th, 2013
For a couple years I’ve been working on a set of photos from a favorite place that I’ve known since I was a little kid. For some reason I had never shot nudes at this lovely location. I decided it was time to correct that oversight and started taking my favorite models there for shoots. This is the last shoot in this series, featuring long-time favorite model Angie.
One of the interesting features of this place is the old abandoned railroad tunnel through the rock. Each time I shot there with a model I tried, with little success, to get a photo that featured the tunnel. This is the best one of those attempts.
One reason that I’ve decided to stop shooting in this place is that it has become increasingly popular over the time I’ve been working there. I always did the shoots in the early morning hours. When I started we never saw another person. But that has changed. Just after I took the photo above we heard people coming down the trail. Angie covered up just in time as a group of about 10 or 15 runners came past us. I’ve pretty much decided that, at least for now, there is no safe time to work here.
Yes, I took the fisheye lens along for this shoot. One of the problems of owning a fisheye lens is that you are often tempted to use it. But I do think this photo is kind of fun.
So, that’s the end of this project, at least on the blog. I’m considering what else to do with the photos. I’m very happy with some of the photos and I’m sure they will make it into my main portfolio as permanent additions. But I’m also thinking I might produce a small portfolio of my favorites from here. If I do I’ll announce it here in case some of you would like to purchase the portfolio.
Studio Testing
August 24th, 2013
Ebay is a dangerous place. A while back I saw a spotlight for my strobe system on there and decided to bid on it. I’d always wondered what I might be able to do with a spotlight, but they were always way too expensive for me to spend the money to find out. Well, I went ahead and placed a low-ball bid on this one and much to my surprise I won the auction. Soon this new piece of lighting gear arrived at the studio. Now I needed to find out just what it was good for.
To my great good fortune, an old friend and model volunteered to stop in, shed her clothes, and let me aim the spotlight at her for some photos. As you can probably see, I decided to try shooting the light through an old cookie that I have at the studio to see what it would do. I did some other things with it too…but these were the photos that looked half way decent to my eye.
My friend looks great, of course. She’s a very impressive woman. On the other hand, I really wasn’t all that impressed with the spotlight. I think I’m actually happier with the light I get just using a grid on a strobe head. The spot is stronger and harder light, but I don’t really think it works that well for the kind of work I do in the studio. So now I’m thinking about selling it. I don’t think I’ll be using it much.
I even tried it as a background light, but, again, I’m not seeing how it is much better than just using a grid. I may do some more playing around with it before I part with it…but I’m really not feeling like it’s a great investment for me.
But it gives us all an excuse to enjoy the sight of a beautiful woman, so that’s something.
The Moon Over Moonville
August 17th, 2013
After Artistic Physique had spent the morning working at Hocking Hills we rounded up some lunch and went looking for some other places to shoot.
I had heard for years about Moonville…an abandoned town in the Zaleski State Forest, but had never been there. I got some directions and we set out, finding it with no difficulty. Nothing left of a town, but there is an abandoned railroad tunnel there. The tunnel itself was not that interesting, but at one end of it the deteriorating stonework combined with the sunlight through trees and the inevitable graffiti made for an interesting background. And AP, being of a somewhat compact size, was a good fit for the openings left by some of the missing stones. We saw no signs of the famous ghost, by the way.
One reason I decided to visit Moonville on this particular day was because it was the day before the full moon. That’s the day when the moon and the sun are both above the horizon at the same time for as little as a half hour to as much as an hour and a half, depending on the month. I thought it would be fun to do a moon photo at Moonville. Well, as soon as we got to the tunnel I saw that it obviously was not going to work as a location for a moon photo. There was no place there where I could get a clear view of the horizon in the direction where the moon would rise. So we did our Moonville photos and went looking for a spot to shoot a moonrise photo.
As you can see, we found a place…though not a good one. This is just an ok moonrise photo. So I’ll still be out there looking for a better location until I get the photo I’m after. One of these months. Everything has to fall into place perfectly to make this work. All it takes is a few clouds on the eastern horizon to make the photo impossible, regardless of the quality of the location. And, please, no comments about how easy it is to just photoshop the moon into a sky. That’s not the point and if you don’t understand the issues with that approach, we don’t really have anything to discuss.
More From The Hocking Hills
August 12th, 2013
Here are some more from the very successful shoot I had with Artistic Physique at the Hocking Hills in southeast Ohio. It’s always a pleasure to work with AP. She’s beautiful and a very talented model. And she’s a friend who I enjoy spending time with. What more could you ask for in a model.
AP is also one of the models featured in my current show at Gallery Provocateur in Chicago. Don’t forget the closing reception for that show on Saturday, September 7. I hope to see you there.
A Little News
August 8th, 2013
There are a couple things going on that I want to let everyone know about. First, the closing reception for my show at Gallery Provocateur in Chicago will be Saturday, September 7. I plan to be there along with several models. I hope you will join us. It’s sure to be a fun evening.
And, in other news, French PHOTO magazine has opened an on-line store where they are offering prints for sale featuring the work of invited photographers. I’m one of the photographers who they invited to be in this store. I’m pleased about this because it will make my work more readily available to collectors in Europe. You can see my page in the store by clicking here.
Moving On To Another Favorite Place
July 27th, 2013
Well, I’m up to the end of last August with my editing now. That brings me to a great shoot with another of my favorite models, Artistic Physique.
We traveled down to southeast Ohio to the Hocking Hills region and some of my favorite beautiful places. As always, AP did a wonderful job and we had good fortune with the light, so it was a good day of shooting. More to come in the next few posts.
Gorgeous Kelsey
July 22nd, 2013
Well, enough of all that legal stuff. Let’s get back to why we think it’s important to protect our right to make constitutionally protected nude photos…otherwise known as free speech.
This will wrap up my photos from this great day of shooting with Kelsey Dylan at a wonderful location near where I grew up in rural Ohio.
By the way, these photos were shot in August 2012. That’s how far behind I am with my editing and posting. That may be a good thing because I’ve not been shooting much lately, what with all the other things going on in my life this year. It looks like I have enough in my backlog to keep the blog supplied for at least a year, so I’m not in danger of running out of photos for a while.
Kelsey is such a wonderful model. I really need to shoot some more work with her.
2257 Lawsuit Update
July 19th, 2013
If you’ve been following my blog for any period of time you already know that I am one of the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to have the laws commonly known as 2257 and 2257A declared unconstitutional.
We filed our lawsuit, Free Speech Coalition, et al. v. Holder, in 2009. After much legal maneuvering, we finally had our trial last month.
Yesterday the judge issued his ruling on the lawsuit. As we expected, he was unwilling to declare the laws to be in violation of the constitution. That was really not a surprise. We were a bit surprised that the judge did agree with us on one point, that the unannounced, warrentless inspections of records in homes does violate the protections of the 4th Amendment. That’s some progress.
Of course, this is far from the end of the legal process. Our lawyers are still working on what our next step will be, but it’s fairly certain that yesterday’s ruling will be appealed. It’s quite possible that eventually the Supreme Court will end up making the final decision about this law. That’s no doubt some years away.
My active part is pretty much done now. I went to federal court in Philadelphia last month and said my piece on the witness stand. That’s now part of the record that the lawyers will argue over for years to come.
If you’d like to read the judge’s opinion it is available on the court’s website at this link: http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/13D0604P.pdf
Here’s a news story that gives a fairly comprehensible (if somewhat biased) account of the judge’s ruling:
