Another shot from the same series as this one.

The latest photo from my long-running collaboration with Sarah. I have a whole series of images in my head (they’ve been in my head for a long time now) that this is a part of. Now all I need to do is get out there and shoot them.

Another shot from this series.

This is one of the photos of what should probably be the last series of our very own pregnant girl-next-door. She’s due any time now.

It’s also one of the first photos (from the very second roll of film) to come out of my new Contax 645 that I’m completely in love with. It feels like this camera was designed specifically for me. All the features that I want are exactly where I want them, all the controls are intuitive, and the lens on this thing is to die for.

Here’s another shot from the same series. So far it seems to have gotten the biggest response elsewhere so here it goes.

A couple of days ago I did my second shoot with Sara (who appears on the title screen of this website). The first thing we shot, the main theme of the shoot, was my attempt to illustrate the way I perceive Death. After years of dancing around it, this is my first attempt to tackle the subject directly. Here it is. I’m also aware of the fact that I’m breaking all the rules by talking about this here – it’s too loaded of a title to assign to a picture, it will cripple your (editorial) ability to think about it on your own terms. But screw it, this is a blog, after all, and not an exhibition. Had this been an exhibition, the title would’ve been “untitled” or “***” or something else to that matter.

This is another version of the photo I posted a few days ago.

I am torn between these two.

One of the major players in this photo, a big rusty nail, can’t be seen in the frame. By the time I took this shot, I had already removed it from my heel. As soon as I finished shooting, I went straight to Urgent Care to get a tetanus shot and remove pieces of my shoe’s heel that got lodged in my foot. Good times.

In any case, it was kinda hard to concentrate when I was taking these, and developing the film was a nervous ordeal – I had no idea if I was going to get anything at all. I was balancing ambient light with flash and could have easily screwed up on any of the readings. Plus, the lensbaby  at wide aperture is kinda hard to focus even on the best of days, when you’re not in pain. In any case, here it goes. From where I sit, it was all worth it.

Another shot from the same series as this one, slightly darker this time.

Finally, after weeks of travel and chaos, I was able to do some serious shooting last night. This is our first shoot with Sarinka, who I’ve met on ModelMayhem, and who completely blew me away with her ability to show emotion through movement. We had a pretty abstract concept going into the shoot, a marionette as she’s pulled up by the strings, and she nailed it, time and time again. We shot this at an abandoned artillery bunker overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

I’ll be posting more from this shoot over the next few days. Plus, there’s a couple of rolls of wide film waiting to be developed.