Mystery Sewer Cap

This is an old image of mine. I did this in a photography class in college. This image was shot on 35 mm film in a SLR camera. It is not doctored at all. Although this might kind of look like a Photoshop project, this is a real image. In my opinion this is one of the best pieces I have ever made. It is at least the coolest photograph I have taken.

Try and see if you can tell what is going on here. If you look close you should be able to tell how I did it. I really love this image. It looks like I am taking off a sewer cap to a different dimension or something. Or it is an example of the separate planes of existence or reality. It really is open to interpretation. The welding goggles I am wearing totally add to the mystery of the image. I made this around the time I was really starting to become interested in sculpture and working with metal.

I have some really nice large prints that I made of this one. I plan on getting one framed to hang up in my house. I also printed many color versions of this by laying a black and white print directly on top of the color photo paper. I then expose the paper to light, using the black and white print as the negative. I was able to end up with lots of different colors by changing the settings on the color enlarger normally used to achieve the proper color balance.

The Rock

What's your name?... IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS! The Rock smells something cooking.

Shot on 35 mm 2006, Jabroni.

Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Many ships and aircraft are said to have mysteriously vanished there. Lots of people believe that there is some strange paranormal force involved with the many disappearances in the triangle. I am still on the fence about that one.

Anyways, here is a little doodle I have made and am naming after the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. It is pen and colored pencil, 4 x 6 inches. I am starting to get back into some two dimensional art again for my own enjoyment. It is a good way for me to wind down at the end of the day.

Get out my face!

Here is an example of what happens sometimes when you take photos. You are trying to shoot one thing but you capture something you might not have even seen at the time. It can be awesome. Here I was at a music festival a few years back shooting film of some of the concerts and other goings on. The rolls of film I shot sat a month or two before I could develop them myself in a photography class that fall.

At first glance at the negative the photo would have been a scrapper. Then I noticed this dude in the foreground right up in the other guys face. So i cropped way in on the two when I printed it. I don't know what this guy's problem was or if that was his buddy he was taunting, but to me he looks upset about something. I can imagine this guy saying "You gotta problem bro?". It is frat boys like this that make these festivals or DMB concerts suck. At least the most the dirty hippies don't have bad attitudes.

This guy's face is just priceless though. I love the candidness of this photo. This just proves that art can happen even by accident.

Bag Face

We can't tell who this is, but we know they like Mickey Mouse. I think that is what makes this photo so great. The photo has an anonymous theme to it, but then on the guys shirt is one of the most recognizable images in the world. I didn't even plan for it to be like that. We were just goofing around.

I was out in Dekalb visiting my friends when they were in college out there, and I was shooting black and white film for photography class. We were just hanging out when Andy bit two holes in his beer bag and put it on his head. I think I have another shot of him watching TV with the bag on. I got look for that one.

This photo came out awesome. I laugh every time I see this.

Cosmo

Here is an interesting character. This is Cosmo, not the one from Seinfeld. He "has been picking up trash in these lots since the 70s". I first met this guy in Indiana at a three day Phish run a few years back. A friend and I were getting breakfast at a makeshift restaurant set up in the lot when we spotted him. He was sitting on the gravel road trying to get his lighter to work to light a good sized string of firecrackers in front of him. This was like 7 in the morning! Luckily some police officers stopped him before he could set the thing off.

Throughout the weekend my friends and I had several other interactions with Cosmo. I knew I had to get a picture of this dude. I got this one when he was lingering around the camp across from us. I didn't even notice that he was looking until I developed the film later. His stare is frightening. I would venture to guess that other people who have attended any Phish shows in the past may have run into Cosmo. If they have they would remember.

Ninja!

I found this the other day in my stuff and it made me laugh out loud. This is an etching I made of a photograph that I took of my friend Ryan mid-ninja kick. I made several prints and still have the plate, but this one turned out the best. 

I remember this being a fun project. I would like to get into more print making, because it is really interesting to work in. I think I am going to try some screen printing soon and make some t-shirts and stuff.

It came from outer space

This is a doodle I made recently. It is black ink on paper. It's not perfect but I like it. I made it as a doodle, but just payed extra attention to keeping it clean. 

We come in peace.?

Captain Planet

Take photos of the TV screen can be fun and sometimes you get cool images. It is fun to do because it can be really unpredictable. When I took this a few years ago, I was shooting 100 iso speed color film in my SLR. So i really had no idea what I had until I developed it. I haven't tried this with my digital camera, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. You may have to play with some settings first.

Anyways, when you do this you usually wind up with these cool and easy to shoot double or triple exposures. This one captures a tender moment between Captain Planet and one of his Planeteers. They help save the planet from pollution together, but they need our help too. 

Reduce Reuse Recycle. Peace.

Cold Chillin'

Here's a funny one. First of all, yes I am crazy. I made this for a project years ago in photography class. I don't know what gave me this idea, but I really love the images that I came out with. 

I set up the camera and everything first, then changed into some board shorts and flip flop. I had to get my brother Corey to push the trigger on the camera for me. He also thought that I was nuts, but he agreed to help anyways.

where's my backpack?

Here's a goofy one. It kind of looks like a flag to me, but I probably just like it because it's weird. I made this for part of a photo assignment. 

The image is photo-copied pictures of young me,  that I then cut out of the background. I placed the paper images on top of photo paper, in the dark room, along with star stickers and exposed it to light. This may of working is sometimes called a Ray-o-graph, after Man Ray. He was an artist and photographer and he often worked in this way. 

If you notice the one picture of me I am wearing a large backpack, and in the many small images of me I have no backpack. The photo project told a story about my first day of school, when I left all my stuff on the bus, no one was there to meet me, and I basically was freaking out. Funny story. This image is supposed to represent when I realized I didn't have any of my stuff and I freaked out!

Without the story though, it just looks like something a kid would fly over their tree-house.  So that is why I like this one.

I'm Floating!

Here is an image from a wacky photo project of mine. In the others I am levitating a fork and spoons are stuck to me like a magnet. Here I show off my levitation skills. This photo is  silly, but so am I.

Scrap Photo Collage

Here is another piece that I made years ago. This collage was all done with scraps of photo paper that I had saved. I would use just small pieces of photo paper to check exposure times and stuff in the darkroom. It would save me lots of full sheets of paper, to use small scraps first before I made prints. 

So i saved all of my scraps from the darkroom. Then one day I sat down and put together this little composition. I like it because it is made of all my own images. Collage can be fun and anyone can do them. It is a good use for that pile of old magazines sitting around the house. Make your own next time you are bored on a rainy day.

Sandy Boxers

I've got boxers in my sand. This is a black and white photo that i took years ago right near Virginia Beach. The whole beach was pretty much bare. There weren't very many shells to be collected. It was January, so there was no swimmers out. The only thing to be found was a pair of stripped boxers half buried in the sand. I had to shoot a photo of it.

I printed the photo with high contrast using filters. This gave it a very surreal look. 

Negative Girl

When developing your own film, you end up with three or four inches of unexposed film. This extra film is trimmed off and discarded when cutting the negatives into useable strips of four or five. However for some reason I decided to save these scraps to use for messing around.

Here is one way that I used a scrap piece of film. I drew the image on the shiny side of the film with black ball point pen. I used an exacto knife to scratch in the design on the not shiny side of the film. This image was loaded into a color enlarger and printed onto color photo paper.

I made this years ago now, but I still really like the image. I think I did other drawings on film and did the same thing, but this one had the best result.

Orb!

Well, this is my new art blog. I made this one as a sister site to my metal art page. I will use it to show other artwork that I am working on, as well as to show some of my old stuff. I hope that you enjoy the images.

This is something I did years ago, when I was studying photography. I shot this with black and white film in my Cannon SLR. This is a reverse/negative image, made from a black and white print being used as the negative. I put the black and white print face down on color photo paper and exposed it that way. I have many different versions of this one in different colors.