Curious Imagery just launched a social presence on Facebook. While a walk by the ocean is my preferred “social media,” I’m hoping that this will make it easier to communicate with clients, get feedback on what’s working best, and share my photography.
You can help give this a little momentum just by clicking the “Like” button below. Thanks!
For you Facebook Gurus out there, I’d love tips. How have you seen a business page used best?
Liz and I had a great time shooting Tony Campo and Susannah Terry’s wedding at the Pacific Beach Resort and Conference Center near Ocean City. The lighting and environment proved to be a technical challenge, but we loved the energetic atmosphere. The love shown to them from their friends and family was inspiring, and the desert buffet was also very impressive.
If you’d like to see more than just our favorites below, visit the full gallery here.
Last week I shot an MFA show for one of my sculpture teachers, Lisa Rickey. Her piece, “Reflection,” is currently on display at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. She made the group of giant metal pillows by inflating flat stainless sheet steel (sealed on the edges) with pressurized gas. In Lisa’s work, I particularly appreciate her interest in unique material behaviors. In “Reflection” she uses the specular properties of stainless steel to create a sort of visual conversation amongst the pillows and their environment. I find it fitting that her orignal title was going to be “Pillow Talk.”
Phil and Jamie celebrated their marriage at the Belle Chapel in Snohomish on May 16. They were referred to me by our mutual friend Brian Russell, who did a great job capturing their video. I especially enjoyed how they mixed a traditional style with their goofy personalities. Congrats again!
Last month my wife and I had the pleasure of capturing the wedding of another Bellingham couple, Niki Metzger and Erik Favro. They had a beautiful ceremony at the Squalicum Boathouse on Zuanich Point. We especially appreciated how they crafted a meaningful wedding that reflected their unique quirks and personality (plus their love for the northwest).
You guys are great together! Thanks for sharing your day with us.
Full Gallery and Prints Here | HD Highlight Slideshow Here
How does an ember move and change shape over time? What if we could perceive it’s incremental shape changes as a fluid motion? This short is my first attempt at finding out…
The Life of Embers is available to view and download in 720p HD on Vimeo.
Each frame is a 2 second exposure shot exactly two seconds apart. I chose this long shutter speed so the flames would blur out and wouldn’t distract from the embers. Every clip is shown at a constant speed, and all but the second to last is shown both normally and in reverse. In addition to looking really cool, I found that reversing the motion actually made it easier to see what was happening. By sampling relatively long units of time and compressing them as a time lapse, this project addresses many of the opposite questions as my last blog post.
Thanks to my friend Dave for letting me use his burn barrel and high powered fan for shooting.
One of the things I knew I wanted to explore in Havasupai was water… particularly how our perception of water changes depending on the length of the moments we occupy in time. Visually we inhabit around 1/15th of a second. Although this speed allows us to perceive most movement that is perceptually relevant on a pragmatic level, a great deal of motion is either too fast or too slow for us to differentiate (i.e. without any aids, I’ve never been able to watch a bullet fly or a mountain grow).
To get a sense of motion that is perceptible to us, consider the next two images. To me, the first photo looks like a long exposure, while the second looks more or less “normal.” In actuality, both capture shorter fragments of time than what our eyes perceive.
At 1/25th of a second, this image depicts a moment only slightly briefer than what my eyes saw when I was physically present. Based on the how the water appears as a smooth sheet and how the white foam is obviously blurred, it feels like a “long exposure.” Curiously however, this is only true in comparison to other photographs. Our visual process actually blurs the motion even more than this.
At a 1/320th of a second, this image is frozen far beyond what our visual system can process. It looks “normal,” but I believe this is only because photography has familiarized us with thinner slices of time than what we are physiologically capable of perceiving. Within the realm of captured images, a 1/320th of a second actually is a fairly common exposure time.
Conversely, photography has also introduced us to longer units of time than what we naturally perceive. The image above records of several seconds of motion. Long exposures like these are beautiful, but my explorations in Havasupai focused primarily on ultra-fast captures instead. When imaged at high speeds, water reveals some truly unexpected behavior (if you haven’t seen this two and a half minute video of bouncing water drops at 2000/fps, you’re in for a treat).
At 1/5000th of a second the crest of this waterfall looks like an icicle.
This is a vertical view looking directly down at a fast moving creek reminds me of clear jelly.
This image and all the following images were captured at 1/8000th of a second.
An oblique view of the same creek.
Crystal clear bubbles can be individually differentiated in a space that normally just looks like smooth white foam.
Two droplets of water escape as the rest of the water is pulled back by surface tension.
Last week I did a short shoot with my friend Jason in Ravenna Park, Seattle. We had a fun time talking about random stuff and shooting some informal portraits. As you can see, Jason is awesome :)
Prints and more images available here.
After seeing her brother’s engagement pictures Julia and her fiancé Elliot decided to book an engagement session with me at Discovery Park. The weather was the warmest day so far this year, which made jumping in the ocean relatively comfortable. It was an honor to capture their quiet playful love for each other.
Why Havasupai?
Last fall I outlined the trajectory for my thesis research. In a nutshell I’m using photography to introduce slight disruptions into how we perceive the world around us. My hope is to cultivate an experience of wonder, curiosity, visual presence, and critical observation. Some of the work I’ve been doing—The Ave Up Close for example—purposefully investigates places that I wouldn’t default to engaging in visually. This trip was set up to do the opposite.
Havasupai is probably one of the most incredible and unfamiliar places on this planet that I’m aware of. After spending an afternoon there six years ago, the beauty and disorientation I experienced are still a vivid memory. My intent in returning was to use the environment as a sort of experimental sandbox that might spark my imagination in directions it wouldn’t otherwise travel.
Conspirators and Itinerary
Along with me were my wife Liz, and our friend Øyvind. Liz and I flew from Bellingham to Vegas, where we met Øyvind who had flown in from New York. It was his Spring Break and our finals week. Our challenge was to find the canyon, drop somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 feet down to the bottom, survive temperatures ranging from freezing to 85° F for a few days, then make it out alive. The render below from Google Earth shows our trail. As you can see, most of the elevation drop happens in the first few miles.
The hike down was pretty intense. I think that’s all that needs said :-).
Us at the trailhead.
Composite panorama from about 2 miles in.
The land belongs to the Havasupai Tribe who continue to live at the bottom of the canyon in Supai village.
As far as I know, Supai Village is currently the only place in the United States where the mail is still delivered by horseback.
Øyvind climbed up the hill to take this overview of Supai Village.
Our campsite! The campground and waterfalls nearby suffered heavily from severe flash floods in 2008.
The trip down to Mooney Falls involves crawling through caves and climbing down cliffs. It’s pretty awesome.
One of the things I began to think about after making this climb five or six times, is how our location and identity are linked. For me it was incredible to let parts of who I am open up in response to the aesthetic and physical terrain where they felt at home.
For most of the climb down we could grab chains bolted into the rock.
Hi Friends, While I’m working on pulling together a few posts from my recent thesis work, I thought I’d share a few awesome things I’ve run into recently. Enjoy!
SFINA: Time Stoppers
The first part of this video is the same “bullet time” technique that was pioneered in 1999 for The Matrix. It gets especially interesting toward the end when the participants mix this technique with long-exposure light painting.
Sfina:13. Timestopers from SFINA on Vimeo.
TinEye
Upload an image, then see where it lives on the web. This tool has totally revolutionized my ability to legitimately investigate orphaned imagery that captures my interest. If you’re interested, also check out “Google Goggles.”
http://www.tineye.com
Beetle Cam
Ever wondered what a lion looks like from the perspective of a small rodent who’s about to be consumed?
http://www.petapixel.com/2010/04/20/beetlecam-shoots-african-wildlife-up-close/
New Stop Motion of Solar Flares
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8635207.stm
Galileo
A beautiful animated 2D short. Gorgeous, slightly disturbing.
Galileo from Ghislain Avrillon on Vimeo.
After posting on oxy-acetylene earlier, I thought it might be appropriate to share an example of what someone might normally do with these tools. “Untitled Tree” is my first serious attempt at using steel as a material (made Spring of 2009). It was in the process of creating this piece that I became intrigued by many of the residual artifacts left over from welding, plasma cutting, hammering, grinding, and ocy-acet torching. In many ways, the aesthetic of this tree has been purposefully built around these artifacts.
This tree is one in a series of several I have made exploring the animate qualities of trees as creatures as well as the mythical quality of trees as a habitation. The other trees are made from coiled clay, driftwood, and a lost-wax glass casting. The photos below are from the 3D4M Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, where my steel tree was selected for display (Winter 2010). If you’re interested in seeing the rest of the show, I also photographed my peers’ work and posted the images to a gallery.
The cavity toward the top of the tree was designed to hold a candle. When lit, the branches cast incredible shadows!
The holes outside this cavity can be seen as windows in a dwelling space.
The leaves were made by a mixture of hammering, oxy-acet heating/bending, and angle grinding.
The edge on the base is a deep, angled plasma cut.
