ANNIE IS ALL DONE!

Unless you all have any critiques, I think Annie is FINISHED! I posted it giant sized so you guys could get a better peek at it.

Annie Oakley, hopefully finished?

I think I've finally got a handle on what I want this series to look like. I shot pictures through the viewfinders of some of my old cameras and then used those pictures as a texture screen for Annie. I'll probably be trying some from my 104 Landcamera and a few others later this evening but for now
Let me know what you think:

Clean, without any texture files

 Ansco

 Brownie

Kiev

Ansco, but mellowed out about 50% from original

Annie Oakley

Here's the tentative Annie Oakley shot. I may still change up the toning and card placement, but it's a pretty solid draft I think. Ideas to improve it? Let me know in the comments.

Dead Deadlines. Double Farts

I may have built my deadlines to be way too tight. I didn't account for the time spent co-running the shop, looking for new work and other personal commitments. I'd love to say that the end of November is a likely finish date but once again, I'm caught in a maelstrom of appointments, birthdays and holidays. I suppose that won't likely ease up until January and the new year is too far off for Tall Tales to wait.


This weekend I will finish Annie Oakley and she's gonna look great. Just you wait.

So here's my update:
*Robert Johnson needs a devil. This is an easy shoot.
*Annie Oakley just needs to be put together. I've got all the pieces, she just needs to be edited.
*Paul Bunyan's background has been photographed but I need to edit it and shoot the big man.
*Johnny Appleseed, John Henry and the others  have not even been started yet. Doublefarts.

Finally making a bit of progress again! Here are the two versions I've got for the Annie Oakley background. Critiques? They were shot across the street from one another in Oroville, California. The mountains in the top frame were taken from 90° to the right.

In my mind, Annie Oakley will be somewhere on the right third of the frame with playing cards either cut in half by her bullets or Aces with a bullet hole in the center will be suspended/falling in the foreground of the frame. Ideas?

Where I'm At

Above is my progression on this photo. #1 is where it all comes from. I had to remove a bunch of stuff from the frame: field workers, light poles, a car far in the distance etc.  #2 is the background after processing. I wanted the background to look similar to a full moon night with some storm clouds. #3 and #4 are the files I built Mr. Johnson from and #5-10 are the pieces of the ring of fire. I dug a trench in the sand, filled it with kindling and then doused with gasoline. I then walked around the ring with the can of gas and shot individual bursts of flame that I could composite together.  #11-13 are the final ring of fire and two different versions I'm stuck on.  

I think this is the version of Robert Johnson I like the best, but I do want to add the haze of smoke around him, maybe bring up the brightness just a bit. He's also going to get moved to the left a bit and then I'll add the devil figure once I've photographed it.

Here is my mock up of what I think this will look like. I don't want a fully embodied devil, but Just a hint. Like how Predator looks when he is invisible. Shimmery with a hint of body details.










I have finished the background plate for Annie Oakley. I need to take a few decks of cards out to the shooting range and blow some holes through them(seems easier than building a fake gunshot hole through cards). Then hopefully next week I can shoot Annie Oakley, as played by Lisa Kislingbury-Anderson.

Tall Tales Brainstorming

I've got my basic themes, posing, some costuming and most of my 'model casting' done and now I'm getting into the meat of this project. Initially I wanted to do all of this on location, but now I'm thinking I might wanna try some of the HDR-Composite type portraits I've been seeing a bit lately.  This would require shooting the background image, then shooting my model on a background(either ChromaKey Green or White) and compositing the two images. There are a few obvious benefits to this approach: greatly increased control over lighting and technical elements and I could theoretically get my models all together, rent a studio for an hour or two and bang out the portraits then fill in the backgrounds as I go.  My concern with this type of portrait is I simply don't have any experience with that kind of work and I've got high hopes for this project so I don't wanna  mess it up!

If my models are willing, I'd like to try both pure location and the composite route. Pecos Bill is my first choice for a composited background, since I'd like to get out to the desert for his shot but I'm not sure if that's an option for him to drive out with me for the day. 

Thoughts guys?

More Tall Tales

Tall Tales Update: I've found the person that is going to play Annie Oakley. I'd decided I wanted a picture of her shooting cards(one of her famous tricks) and wanted her framed by cards with bullet holes through them and I found a drawing where the artist had the same idea! So I'm gonna try to recreate this picture(and some others of Oakley). What do you think?

Tall Tales

The Tall Tales project is finally getting some legs. I've found people to play Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, Pecos Bill(who may also know a John Henry) and I have a line on John Dillinger and Calamity Jane as well. I'm still looking for a Casey Jones(and a rail car to shoot that one on!) so if you know of someone who fits that bill, please let me know. The portraits are gonna be stylized, environmental portraits and probably full body length. These stories, both real and fictional, are illustrative of a time before the magic died in America: When great stories could be made and told. When minnows are made into marine behemoths not only is there a momentary uptick in the pulse of any who are lucky enough to hear the story,  there is an extra expectation tacked on. An expectation that there is greatness all around us if we're plucky enough to find it.

Christina Cano

I took some headshots for my friend Christina Cano recently. Any critique?

Timbers game

I had the chance to shoot for my former Oregon Daily Emerald colleague, Kevin Hudson and Portland's fanciest soccer publication PortlandMLSpress.com here are a few of my pictures from the game.

Olives with Burl Mostul

I had the opportunity to photograph a story for Willamette Week recently(here: The Olive Gardener). The story was focused on Burl Mostul's Oregon City nursery, Rare Plant Research. There you can find multiple species of olive trees and the castle like home he and his wife built a few years ago. Here is one of my favorites from the shoot, a blooming olive tree.

Mission Statement from a 19-Year Old Me

I just found this again. Cheesy but I like the way I was thinking then!

"So here i am. Here are some of my photos, and then i guess some of my failures. I'm nineteen years old, and i've been pretty seriously into photo for the last 6 years of my life. I built my darkroom when i was in the 8th grade, and have freelanced for newspapers. I want to be able to put one of my prints up and have no regrets, no thoughts of well that could be changed. I want to make a perfect photograph. I can't do it yet, but it'll come. I promise."

What does 1% look like?

Due to my apparently chronic unemployment, I'm jonesing for a new project. That new project is going to be a portrait project that hopefully will be a statistically accurate(according to the 2000 census) slice of Oregon City shown in portraits. I'm going to have portrait events where people can stop by and have some photos made as well as scheduling some portraits of specific people I want to photograph.

I'm hoping to have my first 1% portrait done this week.

Here are my overall numbers I want to hit

• 1% = 257 people 
• Under 5: 21
• 5-18 years old: 48
• 18-65 years old: 162
• 65 and over: 26
• Female:131
• Male:126
• White: 236
• Black:15
• American Indian: 3
• Asian: 3
• Hispanic: 13

I found out Santa isn't real this year

Here is my first edit of my 2010 Santacon shoot. I was only there for about an hour. Maybe. I haven't done hardly any processing to these. I still want to pick my favorites first. Do you have any you like in particular?

Tech: one sb-600 in a 4x8" 'softbox' attachment. 

I haven't been shooting anything lately. That needs to change. I am in a rut though and I don't know how to break it. I've never had one this bad. Maybe it's the short, dark days that are getting to me? Who knows. This week, I'm going to make a concerted effort to shoot every day. Even if it's crap. I've got to get back into the habit.

Gogol Bordello, Portland

Here are a few photos from the Gogol Bordello show in Portland. Writeup will come soon.

Cypress

Just under the cliffs and north of the elevator you'll find Cypress, sometimes Aegean, sometimes Indian and sometimes just “white bread”.

Oregon City is not known for its messianic draw for foodies, but bear with me, there is good food here. Even guys in Gett'r Done shirts want to eat well occasionally. To do that in Oregon City it seems you're left with pitifully slim pickings. Cypress, on 820 Main St., in the downtown area of Oregon City is one of the rare places you'll find worth eating at.

Owner Kay Houdroge describes the two and a half year old Cypress as a “niche restaurant with great food” and I suppose under the lens of Oregon City 'niche' is correct, as any semi-ethnic food here certainly will draw some extra attention after seeing only mediocre Mexican and awful Chinese on the 'not fast food menu'. I hesitate to call Cypress an 'ethnic restaurant' simply because the (delicious) options on the menu vary so widely it certainly does not hail from a specific gastro-tradition.

The feta and olives appetizer($5.50) came with sliced cucumber and tomato as well and, well...it wasn't anything exciting. The produce certainly wasn't as fresh as it could have been, but it was a nice snack before the entrees came out.

For an entree I ordered Chicken Coco($8.75) The Coco is code for coconut chicken curry and it is served in a small bowl with fluffy sumac spiced rice and a basket of warm pita. Presentation is not the focus here. However Houdroge(who is also the cook) does focus on making everything absolutely delicious. The curry, while a little salty, played nicely with the sumac spiced rice. The curry could be improved by having something other than just meat in the sauce, maybe some vegetables here and there would pick it up just a bit.

The service was absolutely impeccable at Cypress. I was there at the end of the lunch rush so it wasn't terribly busy but it was steady enough that Houdroge would have been absolutely within his rights to be behind given that he was the only cook and waiter on staff.

My only regret from the trip out to Cypress was that I did not order anything from their full bar. $4 cocktails and great food? Sign me up.

If you're headed south, definitely stop in at Cypress.

 

820 Main St
Oregon City, OR 97045

(503) 387-5914

Hours:

Mon-Thu 11 am - 9 pm

Fri 11 am - 10 pm
Sat 5 pm - 10 pm

Other similar restaurants you should try soon.

Swagat

(503) 766-3015

2074 NW Lovejoy St
Portland, OR 97209

Bombay Cricket Club

(503) 231-0740

1925 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214

Mum's Kitchen

(503) 287-0696‎

3441 N Vancouver Ave, Portland, OR‎

Bucket List, because I am a copy cat.

After reading Lisa Kislingbury-Anderson's Bucket List, I thought I would write up my own. But I'm gonna do mine a bit different.

By October 2011 I would like to:

• Have a job that makes me happy, hopefully at a newspaper or another publication.
• Live in my own house.
• Have traveled to another country.
• Be able to wake up knowing that I will think creatively today

By October 2020:

• Traveled to at least nine countries I have not been to before.
• Had children
• Own a home
• Met a really smart robot
• See polar bears in the Arctic which I hope will still exist

After that:

• Run for public office and win
• Own a magazine that I am proud of.
• Teach

Portland Alterego Society: CEASEFIRE!

I took some portraits at the Portland Alterego Society's annual Ceasefire party which benefits p:ear. Here are some of the portraits. I'd love to hear what you think!