I Love Art School

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People in my class have to Google Diane Arbus and Robert Frank to become familiar with their work?

Really?

What am i doing here?

-Anonymous Art Student, found via Facebook

Otto Bock SF

Just sharing some snapshots from our SF leg of the Otto Bock Relationships campaign we've been working on this fall. Great crew of film maker Matt Ehling, screen writer Jim Taylor, our wonderful subject Kent Brown, creative director Susanna Dulkinys, writer Sean Toren, artist Suzy Poling ( taking the photo ) and myself.

Another World / Discover

Rebecca Horne is the Director of Photography at Discover Magazine, an artist, a mom. We met once out here in SF for a shoot we worked on together for Discover. We didn't really hit it off right away...lots to do and lots of people to meet on our shoot and now we have a slab of ice melting on our subject...yikes, we have a wind machine blowing over an elderly subject...oh....maybe this wasn't such a good idea? But in the wake of that shoot we got connected.

Rebecca had the inspired idea to excerpt ECHOLILIA in the current special issue of Discover titled The Brain...and for it she wrote this inspired essay on the project. Part research, part things she picked up by talking with me, and part just very perceptive intuition, the essay just solidly moved me when I read it. Here is a paragraph I just keep revisiting, it seems to hold so much:

Animal scientist Temple Grandin, who has spoken extensively about her autism, says that she thinks visually rather than in words. “Personal relationships made absolutely no sense to me until I developed visual symbols of doors and windows,” she writes in her book Thinking in Pictures; after an insight, she began to conceive of establishing relationships with people in terms of opening a door, and visualized her own social isolation as being behind glass. Similarly, Archibald and his son return again and again to doors and windows as they compose their photographs. Through these portals, we too can cross the threshold and imagine what life is like for those who are tuned differently.

Pick up Discover Magazine's The Brain issue for the elegant ECHOLILIA photo essay. See the work with Rebecca's essay on the Discover Magazine blog Visual Science HERE.

Laptop Stolen / Blog Goes Dark

As we stumbled off the shuttle bus at the airport on Tuesday morning to fly to Chicago for the week, someone preyed on the chaos and confusion and walked away with my laptop....and other necessary necessities. Really hard to blog on an iphone, so...the blog went dead. So sorry about that...but we we sorry for our loss as well. We got on the plane kinda shocked with what transpired, waiting for the next shoe to fall. We landed in stormy Chicago, I took these photos from the car as we drove into the city.

Now back home...and lots of stuff to share....stay tuned.

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Photography Book Now 2010

Happy to see Photography Book Now 2010 acknowledge ECHOLILIA along with creations by some of my favorite photographers. Legendary God of Creativity Arthur Tress grabbed first place in the Fine Art category, along with great offerings from Emily Shur, Ben Huff, Benjamin Lowy, Matt Eich and from Berlin, the grand prize winner of 25,000 bucks... Judith Stenneken for her killer book Last Call. Read the interview with Stenneken HERE.

Specular Highlights

Specular Highlights, September 2010

As the blood flowed quickly from my kid's arm and started pooling on the cement, he called me over. Slowly and methodically he tells me that it didn't hurt and could I please go get his camera?
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Mom's gone. Wilson's asleep. We just can be present, take care of the cut on our own, and really both enjoy this natural wonder: photographing the perfect circles of blood as the drop and flow from his arm and make patterns on the ground. The red is so red...we just take it in.
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Hey...I'm gonna try to get you a band aid. Did you get your shot yet?

This is what I've always wanted. A community of photo and art literate friends and family who understand each other's values and concerns...and right now in this moment I have that with my kid. That story last week on the blog about the guy coming over and handing me a taxidermized goose...and us hustling up to shoot it? There was some sarcasm there, but the idea that my world is filled with this overflowing creativity is really never lost on me. I appreciate it everytime it shows it's teeth, everytime it bares it's claws. And I felt it today as the flash made specular highlights on the blood, their existence lost on no one.

Family Business by Conor Risch

Right next to that story about Gregory Crewdson's new project that I'm sure you are digging into, is Family Business, an eloquent story on ECHOLILIA written by Conor Risch in September's Photo District News.

Thank you for the support PDN and thank you Conor for using your skills to tell our story so well.

Monday Double Rainbow

Double rainbow caused by late summer sunlight reflecting off a compact disc, 9/2010

The Lonely Doctor's Office

Monday found us at Left Space studios creating another conceptual photograph as well as playing with some motion exercises seeing that we had this nice set and a professional actor with us. Before starting it off stylist Shannon Amos made this mini film, as we have so many times on various projects we have worked on together. Looking at this film the day after the shoot, it really made me smile. The sense of Art School experimentation that comes into play whenever we have our core group together is really never lost on me.

Here we are on the set created by Shannon, and Suzy is dancing thru the set like a character in Mummenchanz. And me? I am the Master of Ceremonies.

Smart Money / Self Medicating

Smart Money Magazine / September 2010

Nice to see the photo-illustration we did for photo editor Jane Clark used so elegantly the other day on the pages of Smart Money magazine. Little details go a long way in shots like this. It especially felt great to show the end result to stylist Shannon Amos in the studio the other day and have her respond " We are so effing good...". Ha...sometimes these things work out, other times they don't...
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Below is an out take we shot and also liked but it didn't make the cut.