While digging through some old stuff I found this shot of a guy I caught staring at me on the Tram ride up to the Getty Center. Something tells me he wasn't a fan of me or my camera. ;-)

I can't figure out why I like this picture? It's actually pretty crappy, but there's something that draws me to it. Maybe it's the plaid, too much plaid can definitely cloud one's judgement.

Ominous signs from Poseidon. I recommend we stay ashore tonight matey's!

Excuse me, I need to take this call... til next time. ;-)

"Sharpness is a concept of the bourgeois..."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Una Bicicleta, chillin' outside Duke's down by the beach at Seaward Ave. in Ventura, California.

Once again, purchaser of the aforementioned light capturing tool.

Phil showing me his "smug" face after acquiring a sweet, square frame, medium format rangefinder.

An old navy photographer friend of mine picked this little beauty up just the other day. This is a folding Mamiya 6 rangefinder. It shoots 6x6 frames on 120 format film, sports an Olympus Zuiko lens attached via bellows and features a focusing mechanism that moves the film plane instead of the lens... wow! Ain't technology grand?. All I can say is that 6cm X 6cm squares of actual film=mmm, mmm, good!

These remains are from an ancient people known as the Mocha. This particular artifact originated from the Iced tribe of Mochamen who inhabited the Seaward Avenue area of Pierpont around 10, 000 seconds ago. It's truly a fascinating find!

Mmm... Beer, if you chill it, they will come...

This poor fellow was forgotten during a Cinco de Mayo celebration. He was filled with booze and layed in wait to surprise the unsuspecting party goers with his generous, thirst quenching beverages. But, since he did not bring his watch into the closet, he lay in wait for the right moment to spring forth with tidings of Tequila and Triple sec for too long and emerged late the next afternoon. His dreams shattered, he now sits, an unbroken pinata, under a window in a sad lonely place known as the dining room. Sorrowfully, he wonders if he'll ever have the opportunity to be broken so that he may reach his destiny of spreading joy to those in need of a brew. Perhaps, someday he will find peace in the form of a blindfolded lush, brandishing a wiffle ball bat... Perhaps, someday...

I've finally given in and sacrificed my sweet studio apartment to move closer to school. With gas prices pushing towards $4.00 a gallon, I just couldn't justify driving back and forth between Ventura and Santa Barbara 2 or 3 times a week. So, now that I'm somewhat settled into my new place, I'll start posting again. I'll begin with one of my finals from last session. I created this digital composite from 5 seperate images for one of two final projects. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like the "creative juices" were flowing very much last session. So, I'm not incredibly impressed with my work from the last two months. I'm not necessarily disappointed with the quality of my work, just with my lack of inspired ideas. All is not lost though; I did manage to scan quite a few slides and touch up on my printing skills while I was in creative hibernation. Hopefully, now that spring is in full force and summer is right around the corner, I can tackle the next two months with a newly rejuvenated sense of creativity.

I call this one "Enlightenment". I used an image of a sunset I took while at sea back in 2002 for the background. I duplicated it, flipped it upside down, and then used various blending and masking techniques to bring out the Buddha and add elements to the sunset. The "Buddha" is from a shoot I did back in February. It's the same shot I posted on here awhile back, but this time I actually scanned the image instead of just shooting it on the light table with my digital camera. I've been in a kind of "creative funk" lately, but I think this piece actually worked out pretty well. Hope ya'll like it!

Shot as one of the Red Line trains pulled away from the lower platform at the 7th Street Metro station in Downtown Los Angeles back in July. I can't think of anything else to say about this photo right now... enjoy the moment.

Giant Bonsai tree... okay maybe it's not really a bonsai tree, but it kind of looks like one doesn't it? This is another shot from my trip to Sedona, Arizona while visiting my friend Will Fletcher in Flagstaff back in June of 2002.

Here's a little quote from one photography's all time greats, W. Eugene Smith. I shot the sunset while at sea 3 days before Christmas in 2001. I created this little piece as part of an exercise in adding drop shadows to text. Does it work or is it to hard to read?

I shot these photos while visiting a friend of mine in Flagstaff, Ariz. during a trip across the country back in 2002. I had just been honorably discharged from the Navy and was on my way back to Asheville, N. C. to spend a few years with the family and go to school. My buddy Will Fletcher was attending NAU in Flagstaff and, since Flagstaff and Asheville both lie on Interstate 40, I stayed with "The Fletch" for a week during the first leg of my journey. The shot of the guy sitting on the rocks overlooking a valley is from a little sub-trip we took to see the Red Rocks in Sedona, Ariz. The toned B&W is an ancient Native American building that dates back to a time long before the Europeans discovered this continent. Unfortunately, I can't remember which tribe it's from or exactly where it is in Arizona, but I might be able to figure it out with a little research. The train rail is from a set of tracks that me and Fletch found just behind a, still under-construction, trailer park in Flagstaff.

I shot this during the previously mentioned portrait session with Yeni. This one is on Fuji Provia 100F transparency shot with a Horseman LX 4x5 view camera. I adjusted the contrast and color in Photoshop and then desaturated it slightly to create the final image. I really like the feeling and mood in this shot.

Another digital creation for my Photoshop class. This is an aircraft director on the flight deck of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74). I shot the photo on a Nikon D1 back in 2001, but I created the digitally colored file this week. I turned this into a grayscale image and then used a posterize affect in Photoshop to create my black detail. Then I inverted it to create a "negative" which I used to create clipping paths for coloring. If your not familiar with Adobe Photoshop this may all sound like jibberish, but I thought I'd include it for the techies. I kind of like it, but I don't know if it works...

A couple of graphics I created in Photoshop last week. The top one is an expression of my inner "Hippie" and the bottom one is a painting of a "Honu" (Hawaiian for Sea Turtle) that I recreated and adjusted in Photoshop.

The first of several portraits that I took of Yeni back in November for another class. The bottom image was shot with a Nikon N80 and the head shot was taken with a Horseman LX 4x5 and a 210mm lens. Both images are on Fuji Provia 100 color transparency film, with minor retouching and color adjustments in Photoshop, other than that they're pretty much straight scans. I'll upload more images from these shoots in the next few days.

A few old shots I was working on last night. The first two were for an extra credit assignment that involved going out and shooting something "blue." The last picture is an outtake from the shoot I did with my friend Phil and some of his guns back in September.

These two images were from another assignment involving the use of "blackglass" to control background lighting and to highlight a product on a specular surface for catalog style photography. The images I've posted here are the cover pages I digitally created for each shot and placed into my composition book for the class.

Here's a shot of one of two theme assemblies I had to create for my studio lighting class. All of the shots I've posted from that class were created at the Brooks Institute of Photography studios in Santa Barbara, Calif. I used Mole-Richardson hot lights on every shot (we weren't allowed to use strobes for "learning" purposes).

For those of you who might be curious about the technical details, here are a few shots of the studio setups I used to create a few of the images I've posted here. Sorry for the low quality of these, but I shot them in low light without a tripod. Hence they're not the best photos in the world, but at least you can get a general idea of what the set looked like.

Well, here are three shots of a travel mug from one of the local coffee shops that I frequent. I did a little cropping on these for the final presentation, but they're posted in full frame here for your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind that some of them have issues like a crooked horizon (top photo) or extra stuff around the edge of the frame (all three), that I knew I would fix when cropping the final images.