Lip Service Fetish Aristocracy

Bea, left, and Meagan.

Bea lounging on the lawn.

This set is from a photo shoot for a Lip Service webzine article. I first met Bea at the Auxiliary Magazine release party, where there was a Lip Service fashion show. We took some closeups for a makeup tutorial, and then went for a drive to find a good location for the fashion shots. The first stop was at the waterfront, which would have looked much better around sunset. Plus, it was too windy, and the models were too squinty in the bright sunlight. We ended up heading to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens, which offered quite a nice compliment to the mood of the clothing. Thanks to the direct sun (ick), I used a good bit of fill-flash, and it was a challenge to balance the light levels and contrast. There are a few images that I’m very happy with, shown above, and a bunch of other good ones which you can see after the jump, below.

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Cleric and Fable: Teeth of Beasts on Fangoria

Seregon O’Dassey intereviewed with Fangoria, and there’s a nice little writeup with some photos and video on the fangoria.com website. I worked on Fable: Teeth of Beasts last year, as the electrician and one of the still photographers, among other things. My buddy Rusty is doing the visual effects for Fable, and it should be fantastic from what I’ve seen so far!

Cleric Movie Poster #1

I have put together a promotional poster for the upcoming film Cleric. We wanted a soviet constructivist design aesthetic for the text, so instead of using a canned font I drew the CLERIC logotype custom for this project. Call it retro-futuristic avant garde soviet constructivism with a dose of unsettling lines to echo the film’s string-theory timeline warpage. Yeah, that doesn’t make any damn sense to me, either. The rest of the film will have even more references to the soviet-esque aesthetic subtly scattered throughout. I have plans for a few other posters in other styles, some leaning towards graphic novel, others towards illustrated propaganda poster. We’ll see how much time I can take to make them, being completely swamped in post-production hell right now. Visual effects take a loooong time to do right!

See my photos on the Lip Service webzine!

A nice young lady who goes by the monkier Vanity Kills has authored a splendid review of the Lip Service fashion show that was held at the Auxiliary Magaizine release party. I was there with camera in hand, and along with Clark Dever, the official event photographer (hey Clark, awesome photos, let’s chat sometime!), Ms. Kills featured a few of my photos as well! Many thanks, Vanity Kills! If you’d like to check out the review, and you know you want to, you will find it here: http://www.lip-service.com/webzine/?p=1166

Skate Ramp Photography – Wagner

After construction made it to a point where they could skate, Wagner asked if I could come back and get some shots of him rippin it up.

I’m not entirely happy with the lighting and background in this one, but the moment was cool so it was a keeper.

I got there just at sunset, so we had little ambient light to work with. We turned on a few lights by the ramp, I gelled my flash with a full CTO, left it undiffused for hard shadows and an edgy look, and had a helper run around with it following the action. He didn’t think to keep the flash out of my fov, so a few pics have some really cool flare in them.

I love shooting just after sunset, or just before sunrise; when the light is low, there are so many colors in the sky that our eye can’t see but the camera picks up. I love this blue, and this image is directly off the camera, with practically zero adjustment, only a very tiny bit of unsharp mask to punch it up.

At one point my helper accidentally hit a button on the flash, and switched the mode. I had it set for manual, at 1/4 output, to get consistent and powerful lighting, and a dramatic effect. When he hit the button it switched to TTL mode, and the output dropped significantly. A few shots, like this one, worked out despite the change, and look even more dramatic. Serendipity!

Wagner’s Ramp Day

Sparks flew as steel was cut, smiles broke through the pain of ink needling its way into skin, and the flames from the pit warmed everyone’s soul. A great evening. Here are a few shots for your enjoyment.

Those sparks are awesome. That’s Wagner there, with the angle grinder.

Kate thinks she looks silly in that pic, but I think it’s quite flattering.

Kyle was chillin with kate around the fire pit. He’s got a nice angular profile, and the lighting was right.