Periapsis

Like Annie says, "If you don't have a metaphor, you ain't got shit."

This is all about orbits and arcs.
Hand drawn orbits so they're not perfect.  Hand rasped and planed so there are minute variations in the surfaces.  You can feel them more than you can see them.

Over a Negroni, walking to a movie, between songs in Cary's tiny kitchen, watching the Coca Cola sign flashing on and off outside; John's been giving me updates on his moon missions.  The current one, LADEE, is about ready to crash into the moon.  These are years of updates and conversations, questions answers and more questions because it takes years of planning, building, testing, blasting off, flight control and ending of a NASA mission.

It's John's job to write the commands to control the ship.  Instructions come in from the Flight Dynamics Team and John figures out how to do it.  The ship's orbits are constantly being fussed with, they're all hand done, not perfect.  There are minute variations in them that you can feel more than you can see.  The ship arcs across the darkened universe, gets slingshotted around celestial bodies.  There's a periapsis at play here....where my orbits comes closest to the celestial bodies on the table top and off they go to come back round again.

John says on his current mission the periapsis of the ship is most important.  The periapsis is that point on the orbit that comes closest to the body it's revolving around.  And to further that, it's also important that the periapsis of LADEE coincides with the moon's sunrise terminator.  You'll have to ask John more about that yourself...bit out of my pay range for an explanation.

The client for this table had one instruction. "Don't make it square."  I didn't.

More pics here and even bigger pics here

Etched Bottles done

Really got into this project.  I think because the bottles were so beautiful.  There's a two step beautiful thing going on here.  One, the label was designed for the original purpose of usually paper on the bottle.  The labels are small pieces of art by themselves.  Secondly though is taking that original design and reconfiguring it for the etching purpose.

You have the original and then you another person reinterpreting them for a different medium.

The other reason that got me going on this was these needed to be lit like you were lighting for film.  So often today the care and craft of photography can be sublimated down a bit because you've got all the post production processes that can be brought into it now.
It's not that I didn't use a lot of Photoshop on these...I did.  But it was used in a manner true to the photography, to the original exposure(s).

I thought for sure these bottles must have been laser etched; they are just so exact.  I had completed the whole job, delivered it and only then did I go to company's website and watched a video on the process.  Not laser at all but sandblasted by hand.  One bottle at a time...crazy cool.

Thirteen bottles... both as a full bottle shot and a more expressive close-up.  Loved the whole job.

The company.....Etched Images

A few bottles

Exposure

Signed on with the these beta folks down the street from me.  Exposure.  It's a new site for photographers where you can see your photos big...just like chip manufacturers told us we could.  Just starting to put up photos on it....less words, more wow!

Here's my site.

It's all about the shadows

A real sweet job walked into the studio the other day.

It's a wine bottle job but these bottles are mit out wine.  These bottles come from a company in Napa that etches the wine label into the glass.  Beautiful gorgeous intaglio engraving renderings of the label.

They're not cheap, I would assume, so these are done on large bottles that will be filled with the wineries top o the line stuff or be empty and presented as marketing.  You've seen them as you walk into a nice restaurant with 6 and 9 liter presentation bottles displayed somewhere.

I'll post up some examples after the Photoshop work is done.

Lots of C-Stands, flags, reflectors.

My friend Carol

Assisting.

There are two ways, at least back in the day there was, two ways of getting into what I do.  One is pretend you know what you're doing and say you're a photographer.  The other way is to assist for one who is.

I went to school for photography and then assisted for five years Alan Krosnick.  Alan, I owe more than I can write.  He was my finishing school, my real life photography teacher, my mentor.  Best of the best. Finest of the finest.

This, though is not about Alan, but obliquely about Carol.  Carol was assisting a food stylist when I was assisting Alan.  We've known each other since then...probably 1983-ish.

Alan was cool in that he gave me unlimited amount of film and paid for processing for me to work on my own stuff.  At $10-12 bucks a pop for 8x10 Polaroid and probably the same for film and processing that was quite the gift.  Carol and I still laugh about our first "test" shot together as assistants.  It was some cake with a slice out it.  8x10 of course because that's what real photographers shot and presented in their portfolios.  Embarrassing really on both of our accounts.  Won't bad mouth her cake here but my lighting was atrocious as well as the whole "idea" of the shot.  At least when we saw the film we both knew it.  That's a plus.

But we persevered.  I flew the nest at some point and Carol did as well.  We've been working together ever since.

OK,  gotten off track here.  Gesture.  Gesture is wine club only label for J Lohr.  Something they bottle only for guests of the winery or for the wine clubbers.  Good wine, really good wine.  New releases they send me and tell me shoot something pretty.  I love jobs like this.  Almost play really in that everything is left to me....props, styling, feel, light, composition. But it's funny because even though no direction is given in the back of my mind I'm always filtering things through the "commercial" side of thought.  Can't be too wild, too out there. Gotta keep in mind what these photos are for, they're for general publications, general uses.  Simple really, the bottle is hero.

Carol.  Carol has an outdoor photo set all ready to go. She lives up in Sebastopol on a farm-ette... gardens, weathered out buildings, weathered tables and chairs, blackberries and redwoods, lavender and roses.  Bees.

And imperfect pears like these.

Spent a half day up at her place shooting a half dozen beauty shots for Gesture.

The Beer is Back!

Here's what we know so far.

Shot a variety of photos for a launch of some new beer.  Glasses of the beer, single cans, cans together dry, cans together with some pizazz.  They were session beers, a beer loosely defined as lower in alcohol content. Targeting the active lifestyle, great taste but not so much of the giddy-up so you can still go about your business without the buzz.

I waited until the beer got on the market to put anything up here.

I heard (or maybe misheard) the beer wasn't happening and chose not to show any pics of it.

I now know that wasn't correct.  An email just came it saying it's still a go.
See the original little teaser post here.

Mavericks...as the surfing community knows, is home to some of the biggest waves in the world and they hold a surfing contest once a year if the conditions are right.  Half Moon Bay, California.  If the waves aren't big enough, they bag it for the year.  Contestants are given like 24 hours to arrive from all over the world when the word is given.

And it's also a beer!

di Paolo

It's done and it's good.  Bottled the nocino I started back in June.  Read all about it here.  I made two different batches.  One with vodka, the other with Everclear.  With the vodka batch I added some charred American Oak the last 50 days.  I think it really mellowed it out.  I still prefer the Everclear batch though, it's clearer and more focused.

Already planning next year's.  Going bigger and trying some different spices/recipes.