I had the opportunity last week, through an assignment for the Chronicle of Higher Education, to spend a little time with Paul Debevec at Light Stage 5 at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) Graphics Lab in Marina Del Rey. Debevec is being honored with an Academy Award for his work in creating the animated faces in Avatar. His research has lead to some pretty significant advances in the realism of digital animation and has been utilized in such films as the Spiderman movies, Hancock, and Benjamin Button. The light stage he’s standing in is comprised of 156 LED lights that enable them to study the way light hits a face from every possible angle and then create a digital representation of it that looks as close as any animation has ever looked to real. It’s also a really fun place to make a portrait. The face in the third photo is “Digital Emily,” an early animation made using the same stage. And the puzzle is made from a photo of Light Stage 6, which is held at another location and is now being used to create full body animations. His research makes me feel like I know absolutely nothing about light, but is really interesting. You can view some samples of his work at www.debevec.org
We just got back from probably one of our favorite places in the world, the Boiling Crab in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Garden Grove, Calif. It’s about a 45 minute trek south of here, but totally worth it if you’re into Cajun-style crawdads. And if you’re not, one visit here and you will be. Assuming you’re not a vegetarian of course. I first discovered this place right after moving here when the L.A. Times did a write up on this little phenomenon occurring in Little Saigon, where a good 10 restaurants had recently opened featuring a dish you wouldn’t normally find west of the Gulf Coast. The first and best of them (not that we’ve tried any of the imitators) is the Boiling Crab, which was started by a Vietnamese family that lived somewhere along the gulf coast for a time and thought it would be a great idea to bring crawdads back to their community. The place has been hopping ever since, with waits of 45 min. – 1 1/2 hours common on a weekday evening. Hence the market for the imitators. The restaurant is usually packed with locals who feast on the shellfish that are sold for only $8/lb, making it an attractive option for even teenagers. A party of two can feast, including beer, for around $40, which is way cheaper than blue crabs on the east coast if I recall. If you’re ever anywhere in the L.A. area I recommend taking the drive down to experience it for yourself. We keep going back any chance we get and have also taken members of each of our families when they were visiting. This photo was actually taken on our last visit, which was right after we went down to photograph Sumo Dan and the sumo tournament I posted about a few months back.
Just some more stormy weather photos taken on Venice Beach over the past week. I was hoping to find someone out there surfing, but the surf was too rough. I don’t know what it’s called, but the shot of the crashing wave after the jump is something that happens when a wave coming in from the ocean collides with a wave that’s coming back out to sea from the coast. I think it’s caused by a steep incline near the shore that forces the water back out. On a smaller scale I found myself in that spot in El Porto, a beach a couple miles south, while surfing a couple weeks back and was pretty close to getting hit in the head by my own board by the force of it. On the scale seen in this photo I’m not surprised no one was out in the water! The fire spinner is Ricky Otterstrom, who was out practicing atop one of the winter dunes on the beach. A few days ago I complained on Facebook about getting sand in everything. This was when that occurred. Despite the wet sand from days of rain the wind was strong enough to dry off the top layer and send it whipping across the dunes. I shot him for a couple minutes until I couldn’t take the beating anymore and called it quits.
After a meeting with an agency in Irvine today I decided to drive up the coast from Newport Beach to Long Beach just to explore. When I got to Huntington Beach there was a gorgeous light coming from behind an approaching storm cloud that forced me out of my car just south of the Huntington Beach Pier. Just north of the pier I spotted some kites and figured they were just power-kiters out on the beach, but then I saw one pop up in the air and realized there were actually people out kite surfing, despite, or more likely because of the large choppy waves being produced by the stormy weather. I hustled over their way and despite their moving quickly away from me I was able to catch up enough to get off a couple shots just before they packed it in as the black storm cloud got too close for comfort. I’d hoped to get one of them popping out of the water or a close-up of them battling the waves, but was still happy with what I got. I then spent a few minutes with John Moynihan, 24, as he packed up his gear and walked his kite back to the car. A self-described ‘gypsy sailor,’ Moynihan lives on a sailboat that currently resides in nearby Newport Beach. After this I parted ways with him. And just in time, as the rain started to come down and I was a quarter mile away from my car. I packed up my gear and headed back. We’ve had an unusual week here with daily storms and even a few tornados touching down. There was even one in Seal Beach today, which I drove through after shooting this, but I didn’t see anything. I’ve got a couple more stormy weather photos I’ll put up tomorrow or the next day.
Last Saturday night I found myself shooting an group art opening called Alexy Schwartz Projects, Project 1 in Culver City, a job I got after heading over to the gallery the day before to help out my friend Curtis Weaver, who was exhibiting in the show. There were a lot of cool pieces at this one and a very good turnout, which made and a lot of curious people interacting with the pieces, which ultimately makes my job more fun as I have something interesting to shoot beyond people chatting over cocktails. The piece above is one of Curtis’ sculptures. He does a lot of really creative and unique work that sort of reimagines the biological systems of living things, combining plants with animal organs for example. He does a better job of explaining it on his website. There was a lotMore work from the show can be seen after the jump.
I’ve been a bad blogger, but with one holiday after another things have been slow around here. However I do have a backlog of photos to post and will hopefully be better about putting them out there in the coming days. To get things going, here’s a shot from my neighbor Chatty’s kick-ass 40th birthday party, which was held a friend’s backyard in Venice. They decided to go all out by hiring a Mexican mariachi band for entertainment a taco truck to cater. As stark as the photo looks, it really was a good time.
P.S. I’m still working on the Haiti fundraiser and will post details as soon as I have things figured out. I still haven’t landed a venue, but even if that doesn’t work out I’ll hold the fundraiser online. Hopefully both!
My jaw dropped when I saw the destruction to the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on the news. Here’s a photo from when I was standing in front of the pristine landmark only 1 1/2 years ago. I can’t believe the destruction wrought by this catastrophe and can’t imagine a more vulnerable place for this to occur. This island just can’t seem to catch a break. My heart goes out to everyone there during the recovery. On that note I’m going to try to arrange a print sale of the work I did while I was down there in order to raise funds for the recovery. I have a number of prints ready that I already happened to be working on and will continue to print until I have enough for an exhibit. I haven’t yet figured out the venue or the charity yet, but will get it worked out soon. I’ll be sure to post an update on that when I know more.
This week was full of Clippers action that started with shooting a game against the Trail Blazers on Monday and was followed by attending the Lakers v. Clippers game last night with Erinn. It was the most bball I’ve seen in a year. The first game I shot for the AP and the second I had purchased for Erinn as a Christmas gift. Unfortunately, the tickets I was able to purchase were a serious downgrade from my court side position while shooting the game, but we still had a good p.o.v. Plus, the game had a surprise ending in which the Clippers actually won. This was great for us because, mostly due to Baron Davis – who was pretty badass last night – the Clippers are Erinn’s favorite team. Still, it was quite unexpected that they’d beat Kobe’s Lakers. I think it’s fair to say it was a Christmas miracle.
A few weeks ago I borrowed my friend Matt’s 5D Mark II to try out its video capabilities. I hadn’t shot video using a DSLR, so I thought we’d go out to the Santa Monica Pier to give it a try. Of course it turned out to be cloudy, but there was enough going on that I could test it out at least. Fortunately we found this kid dancing around to a rendition of Mustang Sally, which is both entertaining and gave me some natural sound to cut the video to. Enjoy.
