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.
New Gallery
February 8th, 2008
Dirty Show
February 4th, 2008
I made the drive up to Detroit this weekend to drop off photos for the Dirty Show. This is the photo the jurors selected to include this year. I also dropped off quite a few prints for the “store” that operates during the show.
I’ll be attending the show this coming Saturday, so if any of you readers are there, be sure to find me and say hello. Mindy, the model in this photo, will be there as will several other friends and models who are going up with me for the show.
There’s a story that goes with this photo. I have an old friend from high school days who went off to New York City when we graduated and lived there for more than 30 years. She married a Brazilian artist and they raised two sons in Greenwich Village. But she tired of city life and decided she wanted to return to Ohio and run the family farm. So she did.
This presented something of a problem for her husband who needed to figure out a way to live and have something to do in small-town Ohio. He’s a very talented and skillful carpenter, so they decided to buy old houses, fix them up and sell them. I was visiting my friend and she drove me around to show me the houses they were working on.
When she pulled up in front of this house I said, “I tried to buy this house, many years ago when I was looking for my first house. I made an offer, but it was rejected and we never came to an agreement. I bought another house, but I loved this one and always wished I could have photographed a model there.”
“Well, bring a model and have fun,” was her reply. So I did. Mindy and I spent a very hot day there in the summer with no utilities working…but the house was beautiful inside and we got a lot of good photos. This one was just one of those “throwaways” that we did because it was fun. Mindy was really sticking her head into the “oven” up there in the attic. But it did make an interesting composition. I have no idea what the Dirty jurors saw in it that made them want to include it in the show, but I’m happy they liked it. For me what makes it interesting is all the angles and the light playing against and over the curves of Mindy’s lovely body.
California Gallery Show
January 31st, 2008
I’m included in a gallery show that opens this weekend at the Hobart Galleries in Ferndale, California. The invitational show is called “Out of the Box” and features seven photographers from around the world. It runs concurrently with “Small Works in a Small Town,” Hobart Galleries first open call show since the death of its founder, local celebrity and founder of the Kinetic Sculpture Race, Hobart Brown.
Here’s the news release for the show: http://hobartgalleries.com/HG-press/index.html
All the art work in both these shows is displayed in a small size…no larger than a 5×7 inch frame.
The gallery is located at 393 Main Street – Ferndale, CA 95536 – 707-786-9259 http://hobartgalleries.com
The show will run through March 20.
I hope some of you who are out on the left coast and not too far from Ferndale will be able to attend.
…Dwells Inside
January 30th, 2008
Another dance from the Ohio University Senior Concert in November. This piece was choreographed by Senior Dance Major Amanda Kurtz. Music by John Cage and C.R. Herschfeld. The dancers are Tiffany Alastanos, Jesse Keller, Sierra Woods and Julie Van Zant. 
Just some thoughts
January 25th, 2008
“Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.”
–Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Good advice. I don’t know about the sensible words…that’s not so easy…but I try to do this whenever possible. My easy way is to read Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” every morning. This morning I found some things there that I think apply to photography and that may be worth sharing. You’ll have to decide if I’m right or not.
It’s the birthday of William Somerset Maugham. He wrote, “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”
I try to capture something of that “smell” in my photographs.
And, it’s the birthday of the novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. In her long essay about women and literature, “A Room of One’s Own” (1929), she wrote: “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
She was, of course, talking about writing. But I think what she said applies equally to any artist in any medium. Even photography.
Plagiarism
January 24th, 2008
I stole this from BT’s blog: http://btcharles.blogspot.com/ …or did he steal it from me? Actually, I added a comma and an apostrophe and changed an adverb to an adjective, so it’s mine now…
Any coincidental appearance of above photographs to any previously photographed or future photographed works is just that, coincidental. The management assumes no responsibility for the accidental recreating of any photographs of anyone or anything living, dead or that may be born in the future. Any accidental mind reading of others’ future ideas is purely coincidental. We have consulted with Uri Geller beforehand to help predict any accidental plagiarism, and we have his thumbs up. Just to be sure, we also brought out the Ouija Board…and played Bloody Mary in front of the mirror to be absolutely sure. If anyone else has taken these extreme measures as well to ensure originality, we apologize for our accidental rip off of your methods of paranormal investigation of any future works that may be thought of years down the road by any photographer living or dead.
