Pool

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Pool

Adventure!

This past week I went up to Northern California. I got to spend time with family, saw old friends, and went to some of my favorite places. I can remember being not much older than my nephew standing in the same spot in Quincy, staring off into the field and wondering what was out there past the fence. Looks like my nephew is pondering some adventures far away one day. I wonder if anyone who grew up in Plumas County recognizes this little landmark...

Undisclosed Location

This is random, but I promise an explanation eventually.

Earthquake Self Portrait

A few weeks ago a friend challanged me to take a non smiling self-portrait and spend no more than 10 min setting up to take it. I got one or two shots off using a self timer... when I was interrupted by a 5.9 earthquake. After the shaking stopped I realized that the self timer had gone off during the mayhem... so the top photo is the best non candid self portrait i got out of the experience, and the bottom is my face during an earthquake when the self timer went off. Enjoy

Macro Photography Experiment!

I have been playing with macro photography recently. This is my first experiment. I used a bellows with a 50mm F1.2 lens. Talk about a shallow depth of field! The makeup was done by my friend Jenny Engard and a really awesome model named Maddie we met recently. I'll be posting more from the shoot with her in a week or two.

Beware!

I really enjoyed seeing this sign the other evening. Still going through the photos. I really loved photographing the colors and textures there. I'm planning on posting some more from this mystery location over the next day or two.

June Gloom!

I've been hearing about June Gloom in Southern California for sometime now. Most people seem to speak of it despairingly, however as I realized this week June Gloom makes for some great photography! Here is a preview of what I have been up to the last few days. Can't wait to show you the rest!

TWO YEAR anniversary of my Blog!

Guess what? Two years ago today I started my blog! Might not seem too momentous of an occasion, but I'm dang proud of it. To celebrate I thought I'd do something I rarely do and post the photographs of another artist. Above is a photo of my Dad and below is a photograph that he took years ago that I always loved to look at. He is easily the most talented Artist I know. My parents are and always have been very supportive and encouraging of my siblings and I participating in the arts. Thus in a cheesy, but very sincere fashion, I thank my parents and dedicate this blog post to them! (PS. my Dad doesn't know I am posting his photos... hopefully he doesn't mind!)

Large format memories and... a CHALLENGE?

I am often reprimanded by close friends and family for having literally tens of thousands of photos that I have never shown anyone - negatives, prints, and digital files... many hard drives full. So I am declaring June to be Blog month. I am going to post 5 days a week, from the wildly random old stuff, to personal favorites or brand spanking new stuff. If you dig my posts, help encourage me with comments and let me know what you'd like to see more of!

The photos above are personal favorites of mine, taken when I was in John Telford's Large Format zone system class. I learned so much in that class (and really all of my photography classes.) The top photo was inside a seemingly ancient wooden train car on the edge of the Salt Flats in Utah. If you look closely in the ground glass, you'll see the image flipped upside down... why you ask? (sorry fellow photo geeks if you already know why) Lenses naturally flip the image, and most non-35mm film cameras don't have what is called a Pentaprism. (a part of the viewfinder that flips the image back the way it should go.) Cue the NBC more you know music.

The bottom photo was taken right before shooting one of the most difficult photos of my life. Why so difficult? Well, you can't tell in this photo that the stairs where I eventually set up the camera on, are very steep and narrow. In addition, they had piles of dirt pressed up against them and well... layers of excrement from either rodents or birds. This made this steps disgusting to walk on, and very slippery. The tripod I was using at the time was broken so that it would almost imperceptibly tilt far enough right to ruin the photo every 60 seconds or so. Also there were some crazy huge swing/tilt action on the film planes with a gnarly bellows extension if you know what I mean by that. Hope to see you back here often throughout june!

Sou Da Bahia! Multi-Media Art exhibit at BYU

In celebration of the premiere of the hour long documentary "Sou Da Bahia" on BYUtv nationally and internationally, there will be a conjoining multi-media art exhibit this september 16-30th at Brigham Young university. Paintings, photos, sculptures and film will explore six themes that are uniquely Brazilian. I should be in town for the opening social on the 18th. Come eat Brazilian food and celebrate everything that is Bahia! I have six photographs in the show.

Still Life - Messy Life

I promised some time ago to post more from my seven deadly sins still life series. Here is sloth. Ever feel like you are stuck with a mess that you didn't make, yet it becomes  your problem? The most disgusting roommate I have ever had moved out about 5 months ago...It took Christine and I about 4 hours to clean out the fridge...imagine two bags of rotten ingredients for japanese food. As of late I realize that there are different types of messes that can be left for you to clean up and sort through  - not just physical but emotional, social or something much more complicated. We should do like our mothers tell us and leave rooms better than we found them.

Color Photography Series

For my color photography final I photographed interpretations of the 7 deadly sins in still life shots. This is wrath...

Analogous Still life

For my color photography class I turned in this image for the analogous color assignment. Working with live bugs was quite the adventure.

Monochromatic Color

The first assignment for my color photography class is to do a monochromatic image. This is what I came up with!

Photo Illustration

My last photo assignment we were given the chance to do whatever we wanted to show off our photoshop skills. I decided that I wanted to creep people out.

Unhinged Invitation for Photoshop

This is a mockup for a potential form of advertising for Unhinged during the forthcoming festival season.

Photoshop assignment

This week I had to combine several images together to describe what a perfect world would look like. This is what I came up with. All the images used I have taken over the last year.

Nick's Artwork

Images from the Darkroom

Joshua James Shoot

This week I worked as the production designer of the new Joshua James music video.

Our last day of shooting lasted 22 hours, the finale of which was a bonfire in which we burned a huge upright piano.

Joshua sitting near the fire.

A dancer from the video sitting between takes.

One of the actors drops a cup in the shot and she ended up cutting herself.

Another candid moment.