Hosting My Very First Workshop
During the buildup to my recent photography exhibit at Webster University’s Kooyumjiun Gallery, the gallery manager Kristina Richards asked if I’d be willing to host one or more workshops for any local high schools that might be interested in learning about the process.
I readily agreed, briefly panicking in the process. But, soon enough, panic gave way to anticipation, and I started thinking about how a posse of young artists could best benefit from 30 minutes in a studio with me. And an idea began to take shape.
One of the most satisfying things about photographing anything in a studio setting, especially pop culture figures, is knowing how much better the final product will appear when compared with how it looks just sitting on the table. Photographing indoors or outdoors with available light is its own discipline, and I love doing that as well. But the absolute creative control that one can achieve in a studio setting is unsurpassed. You can literally paint with light as your medium.
I’ve had this figure set of The Mandalorian on Blurrg by Hot Toys on display in my home for years, and every single time I looked at it, I would think about how cool of a photo it would make. The tall, lean silhouette of the character atop this giant, awkard space lizard always reminded me of something that Frank Frazetta would have painted.
And that line of thought took me to one of Frazetta’s “Death Dealer” paintings, with the wicked-looking warrior of his own creation astride a powerful war horse, set in the smoking aftermath of a battle.
“Death Dealer I” by Frank Frazetta
And, just like that, I knew what to do.
Of the scores of local schools to which Kris reached out, only Francis Howell North in St. Charles expressed interest. Which was fine. I’m new to this sort of thing, and, as it turned out, I needed to take an entire day off of work to make it happen.
About 40 or so students would be there, along with a pair of teachers, on the day of the workshop. Prior to their arrival, I’d met up with representatives of Webster’s Media Department to build the set, light it, and ensure that everything would go off without a hitch.
The students split up into groups of about 20. After rambling on briefly about my history with toy photography and Sideshow and Webster and such, we got to work and making the photograph happen.
I asked for volunteers, and got more than I bargained for, to the extent that people were taking turns either firing the camera, holding the bounce card, and manning the trigger on the canned haze.
Many exposures were made, and I’m sending them all to their teachers so that the students can work their will with them in Photoshop. Here’s my first pass at editing it myself.
Ghosts in the Park
While walking Dobby in the park yesterday morning, I spied this lone leaf just floating beneath a tree, as if, halfway to the ground, it realized that Autumn wasn’t quite here yet, and decided to hold off a minute.
Three Hot Toys Photos In One Day!
(Click on images to scroll)
I recently had the privelege of exhibiting a sort of retrospective of my toy photography at the prestigious Kooyumjian Gallery on the main campus of Webster University in Webster Groves, Missouri.
Samples of the images on display will almost certainly exist in the gallery page of this site, if they aren’t there already. All of those images will have been created long before I knew of the show.
But the gallery manager offered me the opportunity to display some supplemental images on their newly-acquired 65-inch 4k monitor. And, at the last minute, I finally made the effort to to make that happen. These four images were the result.
The first three images (of The Mandalorian on Swoop Bike, the Sandtroopers and Dewback, and Anakin running down a trio of Battle Droids in a STAP chase) were all shot in a day. This is remarkable because I used to take at least a day to do a single image.
I think there are multiple reasons for this.
First of all, the set pieces are not nearly as elaborate as they were when I was working at Sideshow. Rather than including full dioramas, I’m only hinting at the environments using rocks from my garden, or sand from a pet store.
Additionally, I’m taking less time to light them in the studio. Photoshop’s tools provide ample opportunity to correct certain things in post, so long as you get it relatively close when you make the shot.
By way of example, I’m including the pre-Photoshop versions below.
Antisocial Media
“The way we see each other is important. And the way we see each other is being molded and affected without people understanding...”
Welcome.
Also, goodbye.
Aaaaaand, hello.
If you’re here, reading this, odds are good that you already know me. Or, at least, you think you do.
You’ve probably been friends with me on Facebook, or followed my channel on YouTube, in which I semi-regularly livestreamed away our Saturday mornings talking about pop culture and showing off my toys like that spoiled 10-year-old kid in everyone’s class whose parents bought him ALL of the G.I. Joes.
I’ve spent close to four years doing that YouTube livestream, and nearly a full decade shooting unboxing videos, and almost TWO whole decades oversharing and doomscrolling on Facebook.
And, after all that time, I’m finaly figuring some things out.
I think I’ve known all along that, when it comes to “socializing” on social media, you’re never really getting to know anybody. Everything that I put on my Facebook page has been strained through some sort of filter. You’re getting to see a highlight reel. You’re not interacting with me so much as you’re interacting with my PR rep.
But what I’m finally starting to see has less to do with what I post, less to do with what my friends post, and everything to do with what Facebook is urging me to see.
I’m catching a lot of podcasts from people like Sam Harris and Neil DeGrasse Tyson and reading articles in Wired that are leading me to one unmistakable conclusion: Every single one of us with a smart phone and one or more social media accounts is being subjected to a system designed to be addictive, to feed that dopamine need to the point that we want more and more and more.
They’re gaming the same sort of system that goes into the making of slot machines – just giving us that occasional, tiny little drop of what we want to see, bubbling up out of all the sewage comprised of the raw waste that they WANT to feed us.
It’s a mix of love and hate, measured precisely to keep us engaged on the platform. And it’s causing us to disengage from each other.
Well, I’m done with it.
Social media had a good start, based on the optimistic premise that it could unite everyone from afar, allowing for constant updates from friends who are no longer close, providing opportunities to make new friends, new connections. And for a while it might have done just that.
But it’s become something icky. And I refuse to participate. I’m taking back my time, and taking back my life.
I’m doing that by getting out of the house, and getting into people. Actual people, not their digital representation. I’ll be walking through parks and hiking up trails and eating in pubs and biking ‘round town and flying all manner of places.
I’ve walked away from making fresh YouTube content. I’ve been clear about the reasons for that in my livestreams on the channel, and you can listen to them there, if you haven’t already.
Similarly, I’ve recently deactivated (but not deleted) my Facebook page. This is only temporary, as a means to break the habit. Once I’m confident that I’ve conquered the need to doomscroll, I’ll reactivate it, but only as a means of sharing posts on this blog, or in the gallery. Nothing more.
This whole idea means that I’ll be making sacrifices. Along with shedding myself of the content that Facebook forces onto my timeline, I’ll also be losing track of everyone else’s daily happenings. And that makes me sad.
But I’m really hoping that some of you will witness what I’m trying to do here, and do it yourselves if you can. Because I really do feel that, in light of current events, what we really all need is to be more Antisocial.
So that’s the first post in my new blog, which will make up one part of my creative outlet, and most of which will be paired with photography, I hope. These will include fresh shots with a camera that will be my constant companion wherever I go (think street photography, nature photography, portraits, etc.). I’m gonna document my adventures, big and small.
I’ll also be adding images to the gallery that are both new and old. So the gallery will likely be terribly organized at first. You’ll see images from my days as a community photojournalist, new portrait work, and probably a lot of toy photography from my days doing that both professionally and as a hobbyist. (And, in direct contravention to what I’ve stated in my final livestream, there may even be some fresh toy photography in the not-to-distant future. Maybe.)
I’m hoping to be fairly consistent with this, now that I’ve reclaimed my time. I hope you’ll join me here. Thanks for popping in!