Photography

underwater nymph mode shoot w/ vi i met vi in detroit on the dancefloor at no way back a few years ago. we connected over our interest in inhabiting spaces as dancers and what elements consciously or unconsciously influence our states in spaces. for later: we coined “dance proxemics” or “dancefloor proxemics” as maybe a future zine collab. vi visited the bay and hit me up for coffee; i was really glad vi was down to have our hangout be a collaborative shoot involving portraiture and collage/obfuscation. ...

A lesson in how laying things out very intentionally yields good results. (F. and R. were my studio assistants for this one, since I had a broken toe and couldn’t move much or wear shoes. Full set on my photography portfolio site.

For Valentine’s Day I made an omakase spread in my rope studio for F. and A. We were talking about goals and desires (in general and acutely), and F. remarked “I want to feel beautiful”. It was maybe 11p, and one of those times that I felt lucky (despite everything) to live in our often-fraught but always-inspiring artist collective. For the fit, I had a concept to use this cream bustier that I got her at a Berlin workshop and figure out the sort of dramatic wedding train fit that I see sometimes in a Vogue Italia spread. ...

as leeann’s been publishing a bit more, i mentioned i wanted to do some updated author photos (since i did her first author photos awhile ago, when i was a much more novice photographer, and wanted to update them). tried to do some projection work here; i think the flatness of the projector was not very flattering to the subject’s face (or maybe it has to be pointed at just the right way, to get shadows to fall in just the right way). ...

Impromptu shot on a rooftop of a café on a very cloudy day – getting better at recognizing

climbed some scaffolding and tried to get some shots of shame engine’s live set with some deliberately long-exposure light trails.

Worked w/ S. to get shots of their ceramics. It was helpful to have the ceramicist collaborating with me during the shoot, to point out different areas of structure or glaze that they wanted to highlight.

I employed fog and small blue/red gel contrast for a bit of a glamour shoot with F. and horns that she built from scratch. I thought the gels were a needed element because of how black and featureless the horns are without angled illumination; this way you can see their form and depth more distinctly and it also lends the shots a bit more of a stylized polychromatic look. This came together very quickly since I work with F. a lot and I feel like they’re some of the most efficient but pro shots I’ve ever done <3 ...

i was one of the photographers for avclubsf’s event hexcode algorave. i was warned the light would be low, but the ever-changing light levels with very variable intensity were among the hardest conditions i’ve ever encountered. tried to rally and got some helpful advice from jason, and just continued to attempt to get the performers emoting as best i could. got good feedback on the set even if i was frustrated by a few of them being blurry… learned that maybe i should have turned up ISO earlier on even though i’ve never really gone over 1200 ISO in studio. ...

documenting this quick harness i made in white latigo and black hardware (with chain attachment under the back). gen was visiting so i set her up under contrasting lights.