Jan. 7, 2012 – Jan. 8, 2012
24th Annual Las Olas Art Fair Part I, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Jan. 21, 2012 – Jan. 22, 2012
23rd Annual Downtown Delray Beach Festival of the Arts

Feb. 4, 2012 – Feb. 5, 2012
36th Mount Dora Art Festival

The first group of items I have up for sale are all my 12×18 double matted and framed to 18×24 pieces that were used on the walls of my art show booth. These items were selling for $300 at the shows and I am now offering them for $80. Below are the items I currently have in stock:

In addition to the display pieces, I have decided to stop selling framed versions of my 8×12 matted and framed to 12×16 pieces at the shows. I am selling off the remaining few I have of pre-framed prints for $40. These were previously going for $100.

All pieces are professionally framed and sealed. The display pieces may have a few minor scuffs from being transported but there is overall nothing too noticeably wrong with them.

For the time being please contact me direct at info@fadedbeauty.com or call 407.494.3213 to inquire about these pieces. I will be trying to get them up in my shopping cart as soon as possible.

This past weekend I decided I need to get out of town so I took a trip up to St. Augustine. While there I made it a point to visit and photograph the beach at Washington Oaks.

As is typical of Florida this time of year, there was an afternoon thunderstorm that chased me away from the historical St. Augustine area. I initially tried going over to the nearby Anastasia State Park but the threat of lightning here was a little too disconcerting so I made the decision to drive the 20 miles south to Washington Oaks.

I arrived around 7:00 PM. It was still sprinkling when I got there and continued to do so for the next 45 minutes. Regardless, I went out and explored the beach despite the rain. I was quite excited by what I found. The rock formations here offer countless possible compositions. All I could hope for was that the rain would stop and the sky would be adequately dramatic.

I got my wish. The rain did finally cease and the clouds had a lovely pink hue to them. I photographed numerous compositions using neutral density filters to allow for a long exposure of the crashing waves of the Atlantic. As an added bonus, as I was getting ready to leave, there was a full moon rising.

Some highlights from the shoot are below…

I certainly will likely return here in the future. I would like to photograph the beach here again, but there is also a substantial part of the park away from the beach that I did not even see. This I believe would definitely be worth returning for.

Sept. 23, 2011 – Sept. 25, 2011
Melbourne Main Street Art Festival

Sept. 30, 2011 – Oct. 2, 2011
Maitland Rotary Art Festival

Oct. 8, 2011 – Oct. 9, 2011
Winter Park Autumn Art Festival

Nov. 5, 2011 – Nov. 6, 2011
Lake Mary – Heathrow Festival of the Arts

Nov. 12, 2011 – Nov. 13, 2011
Gainesville Downtown Festival & Art Show

Nov. 19, 2011 – Nov. 20, 2011
Deland Fall Festival of the Arts

Nov. 26, 2011 – Nov. 27, 2011
Space Coast Art Festival, Cocoa Beach, FL

For my submission I wanted to create a purpose for the red chair in the photo, so I decided on going with the theme of a lion tamer. The group I chose to work with is a local burlesque troupe, varieTEASE, who perform at Stardust Lounge on a regular basis.

There was a lot of prep work involved in this shot. My lovely girlfriend Jenny Coyle worked on a variety of the styling elements, including creating the costumes and set back drops. She also did the make-up on the shot. I built the circus podium. The amazing Matthew Bengston from Altamoda salon really made the shot with his hair styling skills, which really brought the lion character to life.

The photo will be exhibited, along with about 30 other submissions, throughout the county at various locations over the next year. My photo will also be in a book that is to be given out to attendees of one of the Red Chair’s charity benefits. Check the Red Chair website for more information.

Special thanks on this photo go out to Blue and Tayeh from varieTease, Matthew Bengston from Altamoda, Terry Olson from the Red Chair Project, and Jenny Coyle.

This past weekend I saw the trailer for the upcoming Disney film John Carter. I quickly recognized that one of the clips featured the distinctive form of Shiprock. Being that the film is supposed to take place on another planet, Shiprock was probably a good choice for an otherworldly representation.

For those that are unfamiliar, Shiprock is a large rock formation that sits on the Navajo reservation in the northwest corner of New Mexico. Rising nearly 1,583 feet from the relatively flat surrounding desert floor the jagged peak makes for an impressive sight that can be seen from over 60 miles away. Shiprock is what is known as a volcanic diatreme, which is the remnants from the throat of an ancient volcano.

Shiprock has considerable spiritual value to the Navajo. It is a protected site and it has been illegal to climb the peak since 1970.

During my 2010 trip through the Southwest I took a considerable detour from my planned route to visit Shiprock. It was well worth the effort to be able to see and photograph this amazing site. One of my favorite shots from the trip was the black and white infrared shot at the top of the page.

An interesting point from the the John Carter trailer is that they have actually added to the rock formation. The shot used is an aerial flying up the fault line that leads to Shiprock; but you will notice in the photo below that there is a natural bridge to the left side of the peak. In reality, this arch does not exist at this location. It almost looks like they composited Landscape Arch from Arches National Park onto the formation.

I am not really familiar with the John Carter story but I am interested to see what other locations they have used in the film. Interestingly there is one other monolith that they show a shot of that resembles the photo below that I took near the Giles ghost town in Utah.

I often get comments that I “must do a lot of traveling”. The truth is I only take one or two trips a year. It is just that when I take my trips I thoroughly research the areas I am visiting to know roughly where I am going and then spend all of my time from sunrise to sunset doing photography.

With my upcoming trip I plan to spend more time away from home than in any of my previous trips. This is an exciting endeavor, but at the same time somewhat frightening for me financially. I am hoping to offset some of my travel costs as well as raise money for the preparation of the images from the trip for exhibition through the website Kickstarter.

Kickstarter, for those that are unfamiliar, is a website dedicated solely to raising money to fund creative projects. In return for contributing to a project, rewards are given to the contributor based on the level of their pledge. In the case of my project I am offering prints at a price point that is lower than if you were to buy them off of the website here or from me at a show. I will also be giving all contributors access to a series of exclusive 360 degree virtual tours of the areas my photos are coming from. These will provide a unique opportunity to see the “entire picture” of the areas in which my photos are taken.

Please visit my project on Kickstarter to learn more. Thank you for any help you can provide.

I actually have a Hawkeye that I bought several years ago. I bought it mainly as an oddity and display piece. The one I have actually has the original box and manual. It is quite interesting to see the old 1950s design work.

As far as actually using this thing goes, it is really not worth the effort. Even though there has been quite the resurgence in popularity of older toy cameras such as the Diana and Holga these Kodak box cameras present a whole extra set of challenges to be able to use them. This camera takes 620 film, which was discontinued by Kodak in 1995. 120 film is essentially the same size as 620 but has a different type of spool that either has to be trimmed or the film has to be respooled onto a 620 spool.

I did try to use this camera one time but the lens on the one I have had fungus growing on the lens. This left the lens in such a state that all images taken with it were extremely hazy.

In general using old cameras like these is no longer very appealing to me. In fact, I am kind of sick of seeing images with the toy camera look because of all the photos that are coming out of phone apps like Hipstamatic. This has ruined any appeal that they ever had, since I wouldn’t want to waste the effort to achieve the exact same look that anyone with an iPhone can get with a $1.99 app.

I think I will stick with my Nikon…

On a semi-regular basis I get asked, “Did you do a lot of post-manipulation to your images?” The answer, of course, is it depends on which image you are asking about. With most of the images that I am currently displaying at art shows, the editing is usually limited to color correction or conversion, expansion of the dynamic range, and on a rare occasion the removal of a distracting element. Overall though, in almost all my images the base photo has only had a level of manipulation that could have been achieved in a traditional darkroom.

With that being said, I am in no way a photo purist that believes that a photograph should appear exactly as the original scene appeared. However, i do feel there is a certain point at which a photo has had so much digital manipulation that it can no longer be classified as purely a photograph and has now crossed a line into what should be under the “digital art” category.

I have noticed that some art shows do have a specific category for “digital art”. Though, in some cases such as The Melbourne Art Festival, there is actually no longer a photography category and only a digital arts category. This seems extremely wrong, since a photographer that is still using traditional photography is clearly not a “digital artist”.

What really bothered me about this one artist though was that he was pushing that he was a “photographer” in such a big way. He had a large metallic sign in his booth with his name underlined with the title “photographer”. In my opinion there had been so much splicing of multiple images and digital painting that this could no longer really be considered photography. It also kind of makes me want to see his source images, since when there is this amount of manipulation being performed it would be easy to cannibalize stock images into your work without anyone being able to tell.

Really, just like many other debates this is an entirely subjective debate and without some clearly defined standard there really is no clear cut answer. So, what do you think, when does a photo stop being a photo?

Thanks go out to the judges and volunteers with the Fiesta in the Park committee and to all that have supported my work in the past.