Rock of Ages - Character Portraits
'Rock of Ages' - Big bands with big egos playing big guitar solos and big hair!
For a season-opening show as big as this one, I had to try something different, something bigger. Rock of Ages is big and loud and fun and the portraits had to be big and loud, too. The movie had a great series of portraits but I didn't want to just copy them. We shot against a white wall, I edited the base images, then each image got about an hour of additional layering and painting .... with the help of a few actions that I had saved up for this shoot. I did my best to give each image a distinct look and color.
The reaction to the images from the cast was astounding, exactly what I hoped for. Those talented folks spend so much time and effort making these shows come alive, I'm more than pleased to make them look as good as I possibly can.
Halloween at The Baby Bar
Halloween at The Baby Bar - 2015
You may have noticed that it's getting quite Halloween-ish around town. My friend, Dan Anderson, asked me to help capture the ghoulish faces of the Baby Bar staff for their Halloween season festivities. He liked the work that I did for he and his mates in Glengarry Glen Ross a few months back and I was flattered that he called on me to help with this project.
He did an awesome job of gathering all the parts needed: hair, make-up, subjects .... all the legwork needed to make a shoot like this go smoothly. Smoothest shoot ever. Fun, too. I think I mentioned all the artists in each picture but to be sure, a shout out to Nirvana Marie, Amy Calkins from Wild Angel FX Make-UP, Dani Wiyrich from Thunder Kiss Makeup and Art, and Elizabeth from Strata Salon Spokane for their excellent artistry.
All these images are up on the walls of the Baby Bar through October. Go see them in all their gory glory!
Amber, Beauty.
Beauty is but a lease from nature. - EDWARD COUNSEL
As well might a flower complain of the bee which its sweetness attracts, as a pretty girl of being gazed at when she goes abroad. But the complaint is seldom made in earnest.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
I enjoy pretty things. Trees, puppies, buildings ..... people. Looking at beautiful women doesn't bother me a bit. I certainly accept that the object of my gaze is a thinking, feeling, breathing person with thoughts and viewpoints and problems and such but that seldom detracts from my appreciation of their inherent appeal.
Sometimes, beauty simply IS without any effort whatsoever.
If you dear little girls would only learn what real beauty is, and not pinch and starve and bleach yourselves out so, you'd save an immense deal of time and money and pain. A happy soul in a healthy body makes the best sort of beauty for man or woman.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Eight Cousins
Beauty acts as a cause to produce love, because the being, the attributes and the works of God possess beauty, and every one loves that which is beautiful.
MUHAMMAD AL-GHAZALI, The Alchemy of Happiness
Horns to bulls wise Nature lends; Horses she with hoofs defends; Hares with nimble feet relieves; Dreadful teeth to lions gives; Fishes learn through streams to slide; Birds through yielding air to glide; Men to courage she supplies; But to women these denies. What then give she? Beauty, this Both their arms and armor is: She, that can this weapon use, Fire and sword with ease subdues.
ANACREON, "Beauty"
Thank you, Amber, for sharing some time with me. I appreciate not just admiring beauty, but helping to capture it and share it.
The Trade Winds Motel
What was once an ultra-cool travel lodge is now, well ..... a sh#thole!
From the Spokesman-Review:
Once a fashionable motel, built when the country loved Tiki-style architecture, the Trade Winds in recent years became a rent-by-the-month apartment complex for Spokane’s hard-luck crowd.
Well, yes. It has become, how should I say this ...... a shithole ..... but it's a shithole with amazing textures and colors to it. In a different world, it should be brought back to its motor-lodge glory and made a hub of hipster coolness. I suspect that's not going to happen, though. Too many strikes against it. Shame. It's cool to look at so I'll enjoy it while I can.
Stevens Lake by iPhone
I've already told you about this trip to Stevens Lake in a previous post so I won't bore you with the details again. I suppose that I could add some cute poetry but I suspect that you'd rather see the pretty picture.
There may have been some skinny-dipping involved. The water was as chilly as you might expect so I didn't last long.
As the trail winds through several types of forests and gains elevation quickly, every bend and turn provided a new view or a new type of forest to walk through.
I so thoroughly love every aspect of the Stevens Lake Trail. It's my favorite escape valve in North Idaho.
Stevens Lake - iPhone - danscape (18 of 69)
Stevens Lake by GoPro
One of my favorite places in all the Inland Northwest!
From the All Trails/NatGeo website:
Stevens Lakes is a 5 mile out and back trail located near Mullan, Idaho that features a lake and is rated as moderate. The trail is primarily used for fly fishing & hiking and is accessible from June until October.
I love this place! When I need a one-day escape from the world, I often head east to this getaway nestled in the Bitterroot Mountains just outside of Wallace, Id. Though I wouldn't call it an easy hike, it's really only steep in a few short places. Really manageable for most hiker. What I always find amazing about the trail is how it winds through a few different geographic zones.
In one area, you'll be surrounded by cedars and walking through great dampness. A little while further you'll be on an exposed rock slide face that is more dry pine. Just a bit further and you'll be walking under deciduous trees and have very different shrubbery surrounding you.
Let's not forget the lakes. This most recent trip showed them at the lowest level that I've seen. We had an easy winter and it was near the end of a dry summer so it wasn't unexpected. Nor was it disappointing. The water was still clear and cold. The ancient deadwood logs were still scattered along the banks. As I was alone up there, I did go for a skinny dip in the icy water. As I am a wimp, it didn't last long. The chill was washed away within minutes of stretching out on a rocky bank and soaking in the sun.
The nap induced from the warmth made the short trip to the upper lake a slim prospect. I would have had to circle back around the west side of the lower lake and head up. Not a hard scramble but my time was running short. Had to get back to Wallace.
Again, I'm thankful to the good folks at Huppin's for the loan of the Go Pro. A cool tool for capturing interesting angles.
MCM1940 at The Modern-CDA
Another show closes and all we have are the memories and images!
The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 just finished its run at The Modern-CDA. Though I'm sure you've seen me post about it before, its cast was so warm and funny, their show such a pleasant surprise and the images so cool, I thought I'd show a few last images! As all of the players, save the Maid and the Detective, were in the theater business in the 40s, I decided to have all of their portraits should have a stylized look from the era. Plus, what says theater more than the red velvet curtain and a spotlight?
First, the ladies....
The show is a silly farce. With folks coming and going, bodies dropping left and right, power outages and false identities, the audience is kept on their toes about who the killer is ... or rather who the killerS are.
The gentlemen, scoundrels ... all of them.
As I've already shared plenty about this show, I won't rehash too much and I'm certainly not an impartial patron so I won't bother with a thorough review. I just enjoyed the show, enjoyed creating the images and certainly enjoyed meeting new people.
My hat goes off to the Director, Heath Bingman. MCM1940 is a tough show to lead under any circumstances but this one had more than its share of administrative hurdles. I won't get into details but I'll just say that, in some ways, she had the deck stacked against her. Regardless, she managed it all very well and came through with a winner!
Well done, ma'am.
Reason to be Pretty and The Modern Magazine
Neil Labute's Reasons to be Pretty is a great show but it's a tough one to sell in Spokane. It's harsh, tight dialogue is well-crafted but difficult for many viewers to digest. The play deals with the topics of beauty, perceptions of beauty and how we defend ourselves when our self-images come under scrutiny. It doesn't always go smoothly for the characters onstage and it often, by design, leaves the viewer questioning his or her own perceptions and flaws.
How do you highlight a piece like that? Well, you play into stereotypes and how the normal person views celebrities. Celebrities with numerous, unseen flaws. What may in reality be a heartbroken, bitter wreck of a person may, with the right spin and marketing, appear to be a font of lifestyle advice. What, to a sane person's eye, appear to be a shallow, fearful bully may appear on our newsstands as a paragon of manhood.
I've grown to be very fond of Molly, Ryan, Nich and Jennie for both their acting prowess AND their ability to incorporate these flawed characters into their own persona. It's a difficult piece to perform and they did so marvelously well.
Reasons to be Pretty finishes its run this Sunday. For tickets and more info, click HERE!
Break Dancers at Huntington Park
With the chill in the air, Summer is but a memory. But what a fine memory!
The Storm over the 'Storm over Garland' - updated
Here's the iPhone pic that started it all.
I'm doing some Event Photography and Social Media work for the good folks in the Garland Business District and their upcoming street fair. It's always a popular event and our goal was to get it a bit more attention and to have a number of great images captured so folks can remember the experience. In preparation for it and to build up a bit of buzz, I've driven and walked through the area a couple times recently to capture a few images for our Twitter feed.
On Tuesday evening, after a full day at work, I visited again hoping to get a few sunset images of the area. Just as I parked, I got a weather notification regarding a potential storm. Almost as soon as I got out of my car, I saw the skies to the south looking crazy dark. I also noticed that the town smelled of earthen dust, a very unique smell. It was the haboob being pushed by the storm. I took a few pics with both my phone and my DSLR and captured a few winners that I Tweeted out. They got a bit of buzz from a few friends and news sites but nothing too big. There were a lot of folks tweeting some really cool pics and weather updates.
I continued to walk around and captured a few more images including this winner of the Quinn Marketing building. As the storm got worse, I packed up my gear and was about to head home when I saw, to the west, the best ever cloud formation. I parked and grabbed my iPhone. It was raining too much for me to risk my good camera and there were too many cars for me to get to where I wanted (the middle of the street) so I just got the best vantage point that I could and took 3 pictures, including the one above.
Almost immediately, I knew that it was a great one, even for an iPhone pic. I quickly posted it on my Twitter feed, @danscaper, and the Facebook page of the Garland Business District. I'm familiar with how to monitor Facebook stats and I could see that the image got very popular, very quickly. It was going very well in Spokane but once KXLY Radio shared it on their page, it went crazy from there.
It almost died down when another popular local station, 92.9 ZZU, shared it, too. More sharing and liking ensued, the likes of which I haven't been involved with before. Really cool stuff and a great way to highlight both me and the Garland Street Fair.
What threw a wrench in the works is that KHQ posted the pic on their Facebook page as a submission from one of their followers. They admitted that they didn't know who took the pic but admired it enough to post it anyways. Not the way I would have liked but I'm pleased that they enjoyed it. It quickly got tons of play (571 Likes and 69 shares as of this writing). Again, I'm pleased but those are stats that I can't track because the images wasn't shared properly.
After a quick note to KHQ, they were happy to tag me and danscape photography and I'm grateful for it. Any attention is good attention and they certainly meant no harm. Plus, they threw in a plug for the street fair. Where it got screwy is how a few folks claimed credit for it in the comments section and another few folks doubted who actually took it. One guy went so far as to copy the image and then share it on his page. He said that he did it to make certain that proper credit was given so I guess he meant well. There, it went on to get more attention (268 likes and 25 shares as of this writing) that I couldn't track because it was now a copy of a copy. After a friend of mine reached out to him and let him know whose it was, he sent me a friend request and tagged the image. Again, I couldn't track it but it was still nice of him to share it and give credit.
So were are we at now? Many lessons learned about the etiquette and power of sharing, LOTS of positive attention, several new followers and friends and a fantastically popular image.
Oh ..... that image! I took it home, spent some time with it in Snapseed, Lightroom and Photoshop and came up with this ......
I'm working on a few different ways to make it available in print or poster form and I'm planning on using it to raise funds for a local charitable group, a civic organization that helps out those that have troubles helping themselves.
Spokane, thanks for the positive experience and the opportunity to take and share such a fabulous image of our town.
A screen cap from the fella that shared the image. Basically, my suspicion was correct, that he totally meant well and just liked the image and wanted the proper artist tagged.
Just further proof that if you're looking for cool folks and good stories, you'll find them. Thank you, Shauk.
The Little Captains
Another Hoopfest image that I'll treasure. Team Miami Baller, keeping the streets ..... and 'Merica, free!
