My submission to "Beauty Redefined"

(The picture of Tammy dancing has been moved to the "Breakthrough" theme.)

Apologies to those of you who read this via LJ

Blogger forced me over to the "new blogger" today, and while I can live with it, and like the addition of labels (but am still considering switching entirely to wordpress) it was *not* my idea for it to republish the entire bloody blog to the RSS feed.

Historic Photographs interpreted in Lego

I think the Moholy-Nagy is my favorite.

First LX-2 road test

Just got back from the first field test of my birthday camera, and the results are promising, but not yet certain. While the beach test went fairly well, I need to get some people shooting in before the 200 exposure and 14 day limits on returns are up.

This was kind of an impulse trip, so I packed a *very* light camera bag (for me, anyway. Only 2 cameras? Such restraint!)

Today's Adventure Pack

Panasonic LUMIX LX2

1G SimpleTech SD card
This card is slow, but was very cheap. I probably won't buy more, though, becuase the 10 MP RAW files are big enough and waiting for the camera to finish writing is annoying enough that if I keep the camera I will be investing in some high speed cards.

LX2 manual.
For someone who has been using SLRs for years, point-and-shoots are not intuitive, especally ones with as many options as this one's got.

Trusty Pentax 35mm manual SLR with 100mm macro prime
This is my favorite camera, and favorite lens, that I can practically operate in my sleep, it's such a long time companion. I know 50mm is supposed to be the closest analog to human sight, but this lens is definitely the closest analog to my personal vision.

mini gray card

Ilford Pan F
My favorite low-grain black and white film. Slow as snot, and totally worth it.

Kodak Portra VC 400
This was actually an outdated roll my boss gave me. (Playing around with outdated film is fine. Shooting paying clients with it is not.) I wanted to see what effect the "Vivid Color" would have on this gray, overcast day; I'm hoping to have this roll back by the end of the day, and will post more from it later. The Ilford will stew until I get a chance to swing by an appropriate lab.

mini sketchbook/notepad

business cards
I gave out two of these, both to dog owners I *think* I got cute pictures of.

cell phone
with all important "go home now" alarm set, in case of too much fun

martinsville emporium chocolate orange lip balm
it's windy on the beach, dangit! And the chocolate orange is so tasty.

Also, I wore a light grey sweater and black jacket that could be removed to use as reflectors/gobos when necessary, though it was cold enough that most of the time I decided it wasn't necessary. (I may regret that decision when the film gets back from the lab...)

But you're here for the pictures, aren't you? These have not been photoshopped, but have been tweaked in Camera RAW for artistic (not necessarily naturalistic) effect. They are not cropped; this really is the native ratio of the camera, which I think I could really get stuck on.



I hadn't realized that my favorite part of Marina Beach has now officially become an off-leash dog park. Other than needing to watch my feet a bit more, I really don't mind. Hey, I may not want a dog, but they're still cute!






The skies were not quite this dramatic in real life, but I'm not doing reportage here.




That's me. Why yes, I am a big dork. I appreciated the 10 second timer, and the handy large flat rock that subbed in for the tripod I didn't feel like packing.



I took quite a few variations on this, all over the beach, where one interesting shell would be almost hidden by all these big gray rocks. (Mostly on the film camera, but I doubled up in a few places to compare.)


I am definitely mostly pleased with the quality so far; shooting in RAW at 100 ISO solved most of the widely-reported noise issues, with a couple of exceptions, but I cannot yet rule out operator error on those. Definitely this is not a camera I would give to the average consumer (the 10MP HD ratio format being overkill on one side, and the necessity of shooting in RAW format to control the noise being too post-processing intensive on the other.)

Throne of Fey offered up at Mike Ford Auction

If you are heading to Boskone 44, check out the Mike Ford Auction & Extravanganza. They picked "Throne of Fey" (which is one of my most popular pieces) as the piece of mine they'd like to have for the auction, and it's the first time it's been seen on that half of the continent in years (and probably won't be again for quite some time, as I've pretty much stopped doing mail-in sf cons past the continental divide), so if you like it, buy it for a good cause.

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It's matted to 8x10 in a complementary acid-free lilac mat for easy framing.

Not going to Boskone? Buy any one of my pieces OR commission a new one (via Jeliza.net, jeliza.etsy.com, e-mail, phone) through the end of March and tell me it's for Dr. Mike, and I will donate 15% of the price to the John M. Ford Memorial Book Endowment.

I made the cover of Atlantis Vogue!

Well, I'm not on the cover, Anna is. But I created it. :) This is an almost-done work-in-progress, done entirely in or as homework for the two weekend workshop on visual stories I just took with David Julian, which *rocked*.


Model: Anna.

Clothing: also by Anna.
Accessories provided by the Seattle Aquarium

More coming! I haven't been this productive in a short period time since, oh, I had to put together my thesis show. Aren't deadlines wonderful?

City Elemental Revisited

This piece has been stuck at work in progress for close to a year now; with the inspiration from the workshop I'm taking with David Julian at Luminous Works, I decided to bring it back out and whale on it a bit, adding a lot more color and complexity.



Model is Jaime.

There is still something I'm not happy with in the relationship of the figure to the rest of the piece, and I've lost all hope that my Elements series is going to be visually cohesive. Then again, if I only finish a new one every 18 months, does that really matter? (I have *sketches* for at least 5 more, but casting, scouting locations, and everything else in my very tight schedule means, well, prolific I am not.)