My Hidden Room

March Art Walk Participants

For Art Walk these last two months, I’ve been doing a portrait special, and I’ve found it to be a very worthwhile and good way to use the flow of traffic through my space to create more art, and to support creating more art.   It’s also been an excellent experience for networking with more people, and for practicing with all sorts of individuals.

So that end, I’m going to continue to do this, and to experiment with the lighting, background, and all sorts of the details that pertain to doing this.   Next month, for April’s art walk, I hope to get a nice red backdrop to use.

In any case, click on the image to visit my flickr profile for larger images in this set.  Lots of fun was had with this, and I’m very happy with the results.

Photography

Click for the whole set.

So this past First Thursday Art Walk, I had my studio space in 619 Western open.  Per usual, I put some work up on the walls for people to look at, and had the artist statement up.  All the usual things.  But this time, I did something different.  Since my studio space is a working studio space, not a gallery, I decided to hold a portrait special for walk-ins during Art Walk.  What I did was I had set up the lights and had a pre-designed lighting plan for the evening.  I asked people who seemed like they might be interested (which basically meant most people) if they were interested in having their picture taken.  Sign here, give me your email and five dollars.  Thanks.  Okay, stand on the X.  Click.  click.  Click click click.  Lots of images taken.  Some people paid more to get more photos because they had a great time and wanted more than just one image.

It worked really well.   All told, I had plenty of participants, and shot many frames.  A few times, I even had a line.  That was awesome.

So what gets me about this is that this project is in line with how I like to do the photography thing: showing people themselves in the moment.  I had some of those occur.  Much fun.  I’m thinking that I’ll likely do this again next month.   Also, more work will be up on the walls.  Good times.

So if you participated in this, what do you think?  Did you have fun?

-Gabriel

Photography public work, studio, successful projects

I had a great night at SeaCompression 8 – Metropolis Now.  SeaComp is the local burner decompression party put on by Ignition Northwest that follows the yearly Burn.   This year’s theme is a bit of a play on what’s intended for BurningMan’s theme next year — Metropolis. 

At any rate, there were many wonderfully dressed people at SeaCompression, and I had a great time photographing them.  I also had a great time running into friends that I haven’t seen in too long.   My set of images from the event is up on flickr, here’s the link.

I volunteered to work a shift of Door for the event; this process consisted of taking people’s money/tickets, and giving them a wrist band.  That was fun, and it provided a great opportunity to say hello (which I did about a hundred and fifty times.)  The greeter shift passed quickly, and was greatly enjoyable. 

My wife attended the event for the first time, and she had a great time.  She dressed up as a punkish version of herself, complete with a crazy-wonderful purple and black wig, and silver goggles.  She met many people, and said she was glad to attend.  I was also glad she attended, because I love my burner community, and want her to enjoy it, too.   So that’s cool.  We’re going to be going to the playa this summer together, and that should be a blast.

The job done by Suspended Animation, a theme camp that ties people up and suspends them, was very nice.  They lit their subjects beautifully, and clearly showed great skill and concern during their performances.  I enjoyed their performances, and look forward to future events.

There were many other wonderful things to see:  The Black Rock City Cinemas, showing videos from participants of previous years of Burning Man; The dance stages were full and replete of Untz and the cacophony of chest-thumpingly loud dance techno music blaring across the room; and the fire spinners, doing what they love.

SeaCompression was a hell of a party, and I look forward to next time.   I heard it was better next year.

Burning Man, Photography

My work will be up for viewing and purchase at Full Throttle Bottle in Georgetown for Art Attack tonight.  In addition, it will be up through the end of October.

Photography

I attended MySQL Conf, and it’s been an neat conference.  The most surprising thing was the news was the purchase of Sun by Oracle.  This sounds to me like a play for a solid vertically integrated market for Oracle.  I can appreciate that — they get Sun’s hardware and OS skills, they bring their own DB services to the table, and they get a lot of community with MySQL.

Lots of people have spoken about their fears that Oracle will suffocate MySQL, but I don’t think they’ll do that.  I think that Oracle realizes how centrally important to the web community that MySQL is.  I do think they’ll try to sell Oracle to high-volume MySQL sites, and that makes sense.  And I think they’ll continue MySQL to bring DB share under the Oracle roof.

MySQL is hugely popular, it wouldn’t make any sense to throw away that good will.

Other things from the conference have been that I’ve run into people I haven’t seen in a while, and I’m learning things.

One of the most interesting talks I went to was Rockyou’s talk about how they built their federated platform for supporting their Facebook applications.    Very neat to see their approach, especially since we’re buidling our own sort of Facebook applications, specifically Bejeweled Blitz.   Good times.

I met the photographer called Julian Cash, a very nice guy located in San Francisco.  He did a light painting portrait of me, which was fun.   We talked about various things for a while, and he talked to me about his project that he’s working on.  More to come later.

Today is the last day.  Things are winding down, and I’m preparing to go home.

MySQL, Photography, Ramblings, adventure MySQL

This past weekend was Norwescon, a sci-fi/fantasy convention.  It was awesome.   I put on a shoot for free out of my room, and I got a good turnout, and I had a lot of fun.  It was a good experience, and good practice.  Next year, I know some things I’ll do better.

I got a lot of good feedback, and pleased participants.  Woohoo.

I think it’s important to do things like this to give back to the community — to let people come if they want to have a photo made, and share in a creative process.  The best photos were those when the subject played along, and had ideas about what to do.  I like it when it’s a collaborative project.

Anyway, enjoy.  Click the image for the flickr.

-Gabriel

Photography, Ramblings

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this thing. Lots of changes, some photos. Good times.

Christmas has come and gone, thank goodness. The holidays aren’t for me. Winter is over, and I’m glad. But it’s been too long without updating. Without creating. Without feeling good about things. It’s time for that to stop, and for things to get back on track.

So, I’ve got some things cooking that’ll be good. I have a strong lead on a show in the summer (more to follow later), some leads on good ideas/concepts to push myself, and I’m biking to work now. 11 miles in the morning is good fun.

But where to go from here, that’s the thing. I have ideas, but to make them real…

Photography, Ramblings

I discovered today that a work of mine has been infringed upon.   Let me back up, and tell a story.  Long ago, months, maybe sometime last year, nowpublic.com (one of their interns, anyway) approached me about using a photograph in my flickr stream in one of their projects.   I told them no, and that they should never look to my photostream as a source of images.  I’m not interested in licensing them my photographs for merely attribution.  That’s why my flickr stream is set at “All rights reserved.“  Not some rights, all of them.

I understand that it can be a hard thing as a new media company to figure out what images online can be used, and the ones that can’t.  But I expect, and I demand that everyone who is going to do this operate as professionals. And being a professional means doing the work to figure out the source and the license terms of the images you want.

It’s very easy in the new web 2.0 world to hire an intern, and tell them, “Hey, go browse flickr for images that look like X, Y, and Z.”  Super easy, and you’d think, super effective at getting great content.  Given how many images that flickr has in their databases, you’d be right.

The image at right of the garlic is the one that NowPublic copied to their servers. I am an artist; my time and particular point of view are what make the things that I create have value.   I even have it available for licensing, but unless you speak to me *FIRST*, you’re stealing my work, and my effort, and my intellectual property.

Here’s what they did:  The copied my image, and put it on their server, in the hopes that I’ll either be overjoyed to have someone accept me, or at least that I’ll accept their use.   But that’s not the case.  My art is meaningful to me, and it’s not free for anyone to take and use.

Being new media means doing new things, creative things. But it also means respecting content creators and their rights.  NowPublic doesn’t appear to do this.  I’m really disappointed in them, and I know that I’m not going to think of them positively when asked about them.  How hard is it to ask first?

-Gabriel

Photography, Rants and Raves

So today I decided to do another pendant.  And it went well.  I’m happy with my progress, like I’m gaining skill (like I want.)

Metal flows through the mold
Flowing swiftly ’til it turns cold
Shapes cast from a fleeting master
I see you freed in your sprue tree
Polished to a shine
Cast metal, frozen solid.

I’m thinking that I’m going to try sandcasting as an approach for doing lots of these.  I takes a lot of time to prepare these as one-offs of wax, to sprue them, invest them, burn them out, and pour them.  2-3 hours each.  I think by sand-casting, I can get that down to 30 minutes for batches of ten.  That’d be awesome.

Hopefully in a couple weeks, I’ll have the materials on hand to do that.  See you soon…

Burning Man, Photography, Ramblings, Things I made, casting

I heard the other day that Ivey Photo is going out of business today, June 30th. What a shame! They’ve always treated me well as a customer; answering my questions, and being helpful. I’ve been a smallish user of film development through them, and a non-user of their other services (quality printing).

But then I heard last week that they were going out of business, as seen in the Seattle-PI.

So today I stopped in and I thanked them for all the great work they’d done for me; for the help that they’d provided me in being an artist, and doing my art. Jesse, whose last day is today, thanked me for what I’d said. He gave me some resources for other local film development.

I got into photography a long while ago, and I only got good at it when I stopped, slowed down, and used film. I think it was because the process had a lot more labor behind it for me — that for everything I did I had to be sure about my choices because I couldn’t simply correct them on the fly and recover there. I had to know that I was composing things well, and had to commit to the choice of firing the shutter.

I’m writing this post to both promote the local analog photography community, and to bring attention to the existance of the community. Here are some local resources for doing film photography around Seattle:

Film Processing

• Moonphoto
  7704 Greenwood Ave. N.
  Seattle, WA 98103
  206-783-3377
  moonphotolab.com
  35mm and 120 B&W, C-41, and E-6 film processing, and scanning, darkroom printing, exhibition grade fiber prints, copying of negatives. Pricing is roughly $8.50/roll for development, less if other services are combined with it.

• Panda Photographic Lab
  533 Warren Ave N.
  Seattle, WA 98109
  206-285-7091
  www.pandalab.com
  C-41, E-6, B&W film development, exhibition grade prints, B&W darkroom prints, digital prints, optical color prints, other services.

• Film Stop
  508 3rd Ave W
  Seattle, WA 98119

Scanning / Digital

• Cosgrove Editions
  Dick Busher
  206-524-6726
  Tango Drum Scans, Inkjet prints on archival rag stock, giclee)

Printing / Mounting

• Wallingford photo center
  1815 n 45th st
  suite 104
  seattle, wa 98103
  206-545-4521

• Dos Rhinos (Giclee printing)
  31004 28th ave S
  Federal Way, WA 98003
  253-941-3094

• Color One (Mounting / Finishing)
  Carl Bebe
  411 2nd ave south
  seattle, wa 98104
  206-622-7107

I’m going to miss Ivey being around. Their services were awesome, and it’s a blow to the community for them to be gone. I hope this list proves useful.

Photography, Ramblings, Rants and Raves