Sunday, June 19, 2011

Steampunks by the sea

                                                                                   
                                                      American Steampunk

       A couple of my photographs were featured in a San Diego Citybeat article last month titled "Steampunks by the sea" written by Kinsee Morlan. On the feature of Ingred and Eric Chamberlin (aka Professor J.S. Greyshade) the photo was my rendition of the famous painting American Gothic by Grant Wood. In this case I call it American Steampunk. You can view more pics from the photoshoot on my Agezinder Arts photography site.

       Another photo features Lady Mari who organizes the walkabouts at the Del Mar Antiques Show twice yearly at the Del Mar (or San Diego) fairgrounds. The past 2 walkabouts have been Steampunk themed but there have been other themes such as Venice Masquerade, Summer Darkness and Vintage eras to name a few.


                                                           Lady Mari

      To view more of the photos from the last walkabout please check them out at my April 2011 Walkabout gallery.
       Other friends featured in the article are Kim Hutsell of House of Hutsell, Winona Cookie who is an extraordinary collage artist (Check out her Etsy shop Winona Cookie Creations), Nancy and James Hay, and local pantomime troupe Steam Powered Giraffe. SPG will be performing all summer long at the San Diego Zoo starting June 25th. They are a must see! You won't be disappointed.
    

Friday, June 10, 2011

Digital Collage - Steampunk Lepidopterist


                             The Duchess Lynnewood, Lepidopterist and Traveler

         Tonight I created a digital collage inspired by a photo I took of my friend Vanessa as the Duchess Lynnewood, Lepidopterist and Traveler at Wild Wild West Con in Tucson. It's a western Steampunk convention that was held in Tucson this year. Steampunk is a genre of science fiction, literature, technology taken from a Victorian perspective. Think H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and you're on the right track.
          The circumstance on the photo is quite interesting. Vanessa was posing for a photographer who was creating tintype photos from his portable darkroom. While waiting for him to get the chemicals ready I took this shot.
          I applied a color gradient to the original photo in Photoshop. For ephemera I used the back of a vintage postcard which I pasted longways atop the original photo. I played around with opacity until I achieved the desired effect. I combined both images and applied a slight vignette. Here is the original edited photo below.


You can view more of my digital art and original photography on my website at Agezinder Arts - Zenfolio.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Photo booth at Irv's 92nd birthday party - Steampunk themed!



       Last Saturday night I had a photo booth set up on the steam ferry Berkeley at the Embarcadero in San Diego Harbor. The special event was Irv's 92nd Birthday and it had a Steampunk theme to it. The birthday boy had the time of his life. Dancing on the floor and flirting with the girls. I loved it!



       Now I have set up photo booths at events before. Most recently at the Gaslight Gathering convention at the Town & Country in Fashion Valley. More on that in another post on Steampunk. This event was a little different. The organizer, Liz wanted photos printed. But on top of that there were to be 2 photos printed, one for the party goers and one for Irv's scrapbook (Splendid idea Liz!). Now all of a sudden I had to think of the logistics on how to get this done.
       When faced with this request the first question I asked was how many people? You need to know how much ink and paper to get. But another more pressing question was posed. What printer should I use? I had no such photo printer that can do the job, so this meant shopping around online to see what was out there. I went to my tried and true Amazon.com to compare photo printers and whittled it down to 2 printers. One from Epson and one from Canon. Both had excellent reviews, but in the end I went with the Canon Selphy CP800 which was quite compact and for $80 you can't go wrong. The catch was you had to use their proprietary combo ink and paper packs. So I bought 2 of their 108 paper/ink packs along with the printer. Shipping was nice and quick as always. Thanks again Amazon!
        So now I have said printer with 216 photo papers and the ink to print them. The next question was how am I going to take pics and download them into the computer, edit them and then print them while shooting at the same time? I decided to shoot tethered. Which basically means connecting the camera to the computer and the pics download into a program. This bypasses downloading the pics from the memory card. The program I use is Adobe Lightroom 3. If you are a photographer of any level, I highly suggest you get this program. There are other programs out there, but I feel Lightroom best fulfills my needs.
        Here is my setup. The Canon 50D is connected to the laptop via USB cable which has Lightroom open (Go to FILE --->TETHERED CAPTURE --> START TETHERED CAPTURE). Then follow the prompts from there. The Canon Selphy CP800 is connected to the laptop. I am shooting the party goers at my photo booth, the picture appears in Lightroom, my assistant (my lovely girlfriend Cindy) is editing the pics and printing them while I still shoot. One caveat here, you cannot shoot and edit pics at the same time. So once the 2 pics are printed (remember one is for the scrapbook and one for the party goer) Cindy puts them in a 4 x 6 plastic sleeve along with my business card and then hands it over to the scrapbook person. (whenever possible, always have a business card and/or contact info.) We had a great system going on there. The only glitch was that at certain times I was shooting faster than Cindy was able to edit and print the photos from the previous people. So I gave the computer a breaks and took pics of the Can Can dancers and the Charleston Girls.



       Overall it was a great learning experience. I made some contacts and networked with some people. Increased my business presence. And met some wonderful people and even saw several friends from the San Diego Costume Guild!
       To see all the pics from the birthday party please visit the gallery page here http://jerryabuan.zenfolio.com/p612160233

Monday, May 30, 2011

Memorial Day



Today was a day filled with a visit to the beach and Fort Rosecrans national cemetery. I of course brought my camera because you never know when "the shot" comes along and you want to be ready when it does. Which brings me to this point. I consider myself part editorial photographer and part everything else. I love taking pics which are "in the moment" because it is where the context is real. I want to see the drama in a picture. Hence my style is more candid and not posed although I am not opposed to taking the posed pics because they are fun too!

These pictures were taken today at Fort Rosecrans national cemetery on Point Loma in San Diego, CA. The view from here is spectacular. It overlooks San Diego Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Every grave was marked by the American flag and there are thousands of graves here.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

My first post! So this is what I do.

I have created a digital collage tonight to break the ice on my first posting into the blog world. Yes, this is my first time so be gentle. And I do hope you will come back. I've already had a photography website on Zenfolio for a couple years and felt it was time to delve into blogging so that I can talk more about my art and what goes on behind it. So please enjoy and comments are welcome.

Alex #2


The original photo was taken by me at Egyptian Tea Room in May 2011 in San Diego. Alex was visiting from AZ and danced for the first time in a couple years with her partner Lauren. They formed the bellydance group Alioth Lotus back then.

The photo was taken in manual mode in available light at f1.8 ISO 1600 using a 50mm prime lens. White balance was set to Tungsten. I try not to use flash as my proximity to the dancer is pretty close and I don't want to blind them. Some say they don't mind but I have grown accustomed to shooting in low light situations.