Practice in Pink

Well, here is a very photoshoped Norman who posed for my practice shot. Not the best photoshop job either: white spot on face, freaky white eyeballs....  Wrinkly shirt...
I'm not so please with it. Nevertheless, I present it here. We'll probably shoot again tomorro, this very same composition and aiming for better production quality.
Yeah for the seamless background paper I got in super white. It gives me so much more freedom to do things.
Tomorrow, I do a real photo shot with two beautiful girls. Can't wait!

Book Review: From Still to Motion

Perhaps like everybody else with a DSLR camera, I have about ten-thousand how-to books. I do plan to review all these books here on my blog. The book that I'm reading a lot these days is this one, From Still to Motion.
This book covers a lot. It is a case study on how to make a music video, and it covers the entire process.
 It's very useful for me because it tells what the pros use and do.  It comes with a DVD which also has a lot of great tutorials on all sorts of aspects of film making.  For me, the color correction tutorials are especially helpful.
Unfortuately, I don't enjoy reading this book. First, it assumes you have an unlimited amount of money for your production. It recommends great gear, but most of it is so very much out of my price range such as a $5000 starter grip kit. It does include several DIY tutorials such as how to make a reflector and a soft box perhaps to appease the beginning crowd like me. Nevertheless, the general attitude is that one is much better off being pimped out. Duh.  I do truely realize that gear is vital. It is frustrating to have to rely on daylight at all times. But, from this book, I keep getting the message that you can't make great videos unless you got all this stuff. Is this reality? Maybe, but not definately.
The second reason that I don't enjoy reading this book is because I think the images are so dull. Even, the book cover doesn't do a lot for me. I mean the production quality is wonderful, but art direction seems absent. The final music video doesn't have enough visual style for me to get excited about. Given that film is a visual medium, the lack of visual intrigue of the images and videos within the book is uninspiring.
So, this book is more like a have to read than a want to read. I do read it almost every day.

The neon in the image is a sculpture by Jeremy Bert, a Seattle based neon artist. I added that just for some visual interest. It has hardly anything to do with this review.

Cherry + Cyan

I'm seeing a lot of these colors lately. Cherry red + cyan.  My logo designer recently told me that cyan was looking really cool to him, and I didn't really get it because cyan seems to me the default color for excel spreadsheet cells. Now, all of a sudden I'm seeing it all over the place but coupled with cherry red and it's looking pretty cool. I'm thinking that this combination will be used on my up and comming website.

I finally took a self-portrait of myself and I like it. This is pretty much me, camera + fashion.
The little photox are from Kate Spade. I'm wearing the very same blouse.  Enjoy!
I added the cover of this month's GQ mag also featuring this color combination.

Personal Saturday

On weekends, I want to blog about a non- art element of my week. I'm a little cautious writing this post because it's about religion. But, it was on my mind all week long.

This week, I attended what I would call a shocking lecture about rape in the Hebrew Bible. The lecturer was Susanne Scholz, a professor at SMU. Anyways, the gist of her lecture is that depictions of rape in the Hebrew Bible has been overlooked for over 2,000 years. What particularly shocked me were her examples through which she demonstrates God legitimizing rape. I don't consider myself to be very religious, but I wondered how the world is supposed to deal with the idea that God is depicted as a rapist in the Hebrew Bible. It bothered me all week long (in a good way).  The title of her book is Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible. (I copied the photo of the book cover from Amazon.com. The woman in the picture is Bathsheba.)

I'm branding myself!

These are the two logo designs that my logo designer Kyle has made for me.  Kyle works at Leo Burnett in Chicago, and as you can see knows how to do wonderful things. He sent me about 7-8 designs and these are my top two pics. We are still tweaking so the final product will be somewhat different from these designs. I am excited to see my logo come to fruition, and want to see to it that brand Amy Kim will take off. I do feel somewhat like a venture company CEO lately; starting a website, making a logo, writing a blog, learning my craft...  Still, don't think I would like to do anything else.

I signed up for Stock Photo

I signed up for istockphoto today.  It was quite a process, and if you are thinking about applying to sell you pictures, I'd say give the sign-up process at least a couple hours. Not one of those ten minute sign-up things. They even quiz you about their policies. Above are the two pictures I submitted: Vintage marbles that little Norman played with decades and decades ago and an antique milk pitcher. From what I've heard, istockphoto.com is quite picky about what they get, and I am eager to see if these will make the cut. I'm having so much fun with photography these days, making some pennies would just sweeten the deal.  If anyone knows how long it takes for them to get back with results, I'd love to know.

Not to be too commercial here, but these two items are also up for sale! We have a about ten thousand odd things.

While shooting Project Gwaihir I got very frustrated about the fact that I wasn't able to control the lighting very well. I've been using a frosted shower curtain and white board to control the lighting at a corner window. Responding to my frustration, Norman built me a studio (kinda) on the patio. He attached frosted plastic to wood strips and basically made gigantic curtains for me to hang on two sides of the patio. It really give me good soft light to work with.

The mother of pearl carving is a piece that we've decided to sell. I took pictures in the studio to put it on Ebay. I really like how it caught the right amount of light to bring out its irredecent features.

SOUPS ON TROUPES

Yesterday, I visited Soups on Troupes, a volunteer senior theatre group here in Lubbock. My friend, Dorey Schmidt is the producer of the company and she kindly invited me when I asked if I could take some pictures. I was quite amazed at how well things were organized in the rehearsals. The company performs 3 or 4 short plays during one show, and pretty much all the actors are also crew members. I really value this type of grass roots arts, and I was very happy to take pictures.

Project Gwaihir

To get more familiar with the video features of my camera, I am making a video of Gwaihir, Norman's Harley-Davidson Electraglide Classic which is up for sale. This past Saturday, Norman and I went to Thundering Eagle Motorsports here in Lubbock, TX where Gwahir is patiently residing until he meets his next owner. Photos are Gwahir and a window with the Thundering Eagle Motorsports logo.