local art // wonderspaces

A few weeks ago, a sponsored facebook post popped up in my feed about Wonderspaces, a pop-up art exhibit here in San Diego, so after taking a quick peek at their website, I thought, "Yep. I wanna check that out." Bonus: my sister-in-law was going to be visiting soon, so I wanted to take her and make a fun afternoon out of it. There she is above! And that cool archway is called the Pulse Portal by Davis McCarty.

This was one of my favorites, called Come Together by Michael Murphy. At first, it doesn't look like any distinguishable shape or object, although still very cool in an abstract way. But if you keep walking around it, and stand in a certain spot, it begins to take a new form, and looks like this:

So cool, right?

The Last Word by Illegal Art was pretty neat. We each wrote a note of our own, and added it to the wall.

ADA by Karina Smigla-Bobinski was really fun to interact with. By pushing it around the room, it "draws" on the walls with its charcoal tips. The attendant in the room told us this was inspired by Ada Lovelace, who was a pioneer in computer science.

The Neon Tunnel by Kitsch Nitsch reminded me of being in a funhouse.

The photos really don't do this piece justice. Thousands of multicolor nylon cords hanging from floor to ceiling make up Sweet Spot by Shawn Causey and Mark Daniell.

We had fun playing with our shadows, courtesy of Danielle Strle's You + Your Shadow installation.

Not Myself Today by Partners For Mental Health. We weren't exactly sure if we were supposed to remove a pin, but I can relate to that "Hangry" pin SO MUCH. If I'm frustrated/stressed/upset, there's a 90% chance I just need some fries.

A Religious Experience by Adam Belt was hands down our favorite installation at Wonderspaces, but because we were inside a near-completely dark space, my iPhone camera couldn't even come close to capturing what it really looked like in there. We had to wait about five minutes to let our eyes adjust, and that's when we could truly see the hundreds of light rays coming in through the tiny holes in the ceiling and walls. It was beautiful. Before my eyes adjusted, I got the sense of being out in the wilderness, where the lack of ambient and city lights allows you to see a gorgeous, star-filled night sky. But then after my eyes adjusted, the individual rays of light looked almost tangible. I kind of got some Interstellar vibes from being in it too (that scene in Murph's bedroom where the dust is falling down in perfect lines). You should really click here to see better (and more) photos of this incredible installation.

There were a few other exhibits that I saw, but didn't take photos of (Bonus video on my instagram though!). I'm really glad I went though. You can read more about Wonderspaces and its different installations here!

finding new art // Andrea Tavarez Boeta

Living in San Diego means there's usually several art walks that happen every year. They're outdoor events that cover several streets, and hundreds of artists display and sell their art to the public over the course of two days. I've gone to my fair share while living here, and while they're generally fun, most of the art I see there just isn't my cup of tea. I always see tons of HDR-ed-to-death ocean pier shots (boring), weird metal scrap art in the shape of cats (just why?) and pretty-but-meh abstract watercolors. I know art is subjective, and what may seem boring to me may be the bee's knees to someone else, but.....yeah. I'm totally coming off as an art snob, aren't I. I'm the worst.

So yesterday at the Mission Federal ArtWalk in Little Italy, I felt like I struck gold when my friends and I came across Andrea Tavarez Boeta's booth. She's an artist from Tijuana, and the first piece I saw that drew me in was a small framed piece using blue string. I loved how minimal and delicate it was, and now I'm regretting not taking some photos of her pieces that she had on display. And then I saw her nude woman piece, and thought, "She gets me."

I don't remember where I read(or heard) this quote, but the saying goes, "Only buy art that you really, really love." And I did. And I'm so happy this gets to live in my house for me to enjoy. Even my husband likes it, yay!

Bonus: Even her business card is cooler than anything I'll ever make.

You can see more of Andrea's work on her website. And now I need to brush up on my Spanish so I can fan-girl her inbox :)

personal work // blended portraits

New year, new blog post! 2016 feels so weird to type, like we're living in the future. I'm not ready for it. But on the plus side, I was inspired to give the 'ole blog a makeover, so I did. New theme layout, more minimal, and it just feels more like me. And today, I want to take a break from the momming/twin posts, and share some portrait work I did back in 2014.

I wanted to do something interesting with some of the portraits in my archives, and I was partly inspired by my ego sum series, where I merged bits of nature to my own self-portraits. I created some of these images on my iPhone using the Image Blender app, and I created others in Photoshop.

The original portrait of Mio was from a fashion shoot collaboration back in 2014 (which I just realized I never blogged about! Must. Remedy.), and the rain on glass image was something I shot at home.

I merged a photo of foggy woods from a trip to the east coast with a portrait of Kristina that I took in Yosemite. Sometimes I have to experiment with blending different background images until I find a combination that just feels right and looks right.

I love this one so much. I shot this portrait of Kaila in my studio, and months later, I snapped the background image with my phone at a car wash from inside my car. Instead of soapy bubbles, I saw something that reminded me of the cosmos, something otherworldly. In Photoshop, I added the light effects around Kaila's face.

I shot a beautiful series of nudes of my dear friend Debbie, and decided to merge one of them with a simple iPhone shot of a succulent plant. You can see the original image of Debbie here.

Another portrait of Mio merged with tree and sky from my backyard.

I decided to play around with an older self-portrait from 2012 and blend it with a coastline image from Big Sur. I did this one in the Blender Image app, so the image quality isn't great, but I still quite like it.

And now I'm inspired again to create more of these this year :)

bits of life // november

1 // My 52 weeks project is still going on, and even though I'm a few weeks behind, I can't quite believe it's nearly over. Above is my week 41 photo. Once again, I seem to be forever drawn to merging skin with nature.

2 // Speaking of skin, I was so excited to have some of my recent photos included in the latest issue of Clear Nude Magazine. It's a fantastic quarterly magazine that celebrates the nude form in art, and it looks even more beautiful in print! My cat clearly approves.

 3 // Back in September I went on a little road trip with two other photographers to Yosemite National Park, and it was seriously just what I needed. Fresh air, nature, magical golden hour light, and so much photo-taking. I'll have to do a separate blog post soon on just the portraits alone, and how geeking out with fellow photo nerds makes my heart so happy.

4 // I also went to the east coast recently for some family bonding time, and of course all the fall foliage and foggy mountain mornings were just begging to be photographed. As much as I love living in southern California, I really do miss the more moody weather sometimes (cause it's 90 degrees today in San Diego, and I have so many mixed feelings about that).

:)

personal work // ego sum

ego sum hortus

Unlike my previous projects (my 365, 52 weeks, etc) where I consciously set out to do a series of photos, this one wasn't born that way. This post is a bit difficult to write about; I usually try to keep things light and inspirational here in relation to my photography, but I also want to be open and honest with my readers. Real talk, if you will.

ego sum in flore

Earlier this year, I started taking fertility drugs to help me get pregnant. This was after quite a while of trying the old fashioned way. Months of ovulation tracking and becoming an expert on my cycle. Charting absolutely everything. I hated to admit that I needed help with something that seemed to come so naturally, so easily, for everyone else around me. That in itself was a struggle for me.

ego sum a vase

The mister and I had previously been tested/checked out for any conditions that would explain infertility, but nothing was found. We are both, by all accounts, healthy and should be able to conceive....so why weren't we? The doctors calls it "unexplained infertility" which sounds even worse somehow. All it did was make me feel broken, faulty. 

ego sum viscus et cruor 

I have to admit, all of this was putting me into a mini depression. Outwardly, I appeared fine to my friends and family (at least I think so). I still went out and did things. But social media started to feel toxic to me. I checked facebook less and less to avoid seeing photos of babies and pregnancy announcements. I had no desire to blog either, or to read other blogs that I was following. I even temporarily deleted mine, but thankfully, blogger was able to restore it when I came to my senses. 

ego symbiosis

So I think making these photos was my way of dealing with all the emotions of simultaneously feeling like a failure and trying to stay positive and hopeful. I think I wanted to merge myself with bits of nature and living things, maybe as a way to feel connected to something bigger than myself. In making these images, I think I wanted to celebrate my body as still something worthwhile and beautiful and useful. Still alive and breathing.

ego mulier

It feels really good to write these words out, to share what's been weighing on me. I've been in a much better place now for the past few months. Project Make-A-Baby is still underway, but I'm blogging again, shooting more, and I have some photography collaborations coming up that I'm really excited about. I'm feeling like me again.

ego sum silvis

current inspirations

Heart to Mouth High from bart hess 

1// This creepy/fantastic rubbery take on love (as seen above)

2// This made me laugh.

3// The peculiar and surreal photography of Yung Cheng Lin.

4// I'm not usually a fan of Bon Iver, but their new song for Zach Braff's new film might change my mind.

5// These embroidered landscapes are beautiful.

taming my mammoth

Sometimes you read something so profound, and at exactly the right time, that you wonder if isn't fate. Such a thing happened to me today, when a friend on facebook shared this insightful post: Taming the Mammoth:Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think.

As I read it, my internal voice was shouting, "YES! THIS!" It's something I've been thinking a lot about and struggling with in relation to my photography. And talk about timing; just last night, I uploaded a new image to my flickr, something I've been experimenting with for months, but was too afraid to share publicly. It's a new side to my work that I feel is deeply personal, but my own mammoth was holding me back; telling me it was too risky, and what would my friends and family think?

You can see the full image here on flickr (above is the cropped version, as it's NSFW at the link), and I wrote quite a bit along with the image. I'm still nervous as all hell that I'm actually sharing this, and I know it's something I'll continue to struggle with.

But it's a step for me, and a big one, taking me out of my comfortable little bubble, and into new territory.

a photoshop gif just for funsies

I made this gif of my recent 52 weeks photo's editing process really quickly in Photoshop. Apologies for the weird cropping issues!

No skulls were harmed in the making of this image :)

buy some artwork!

Are your walls looking a little bare? Is it high time you upgraded from the posters you had on your wall in college? Are you sick of buying all your artwork from Ikea?

 Well I'm excited to offer prints of my work for sale! This is something I've been meaning to get around to FOREVER, but I finally found the perfect platform to sell my work through. I'm selling my work through Fine Art America, and their products are of top quality. All prints are produced using professional-grade Epson printers, on acid-free paper and canvases with archival inks to guarantee that your prints last a lifetime without fading or loss of color. There's also tons of other options, such as getting them framed/matted, metal print, acrylic print, etc.

 You can take a look at my store HERE, or alternatively, you can shop directly from my website HERE.

 I don't have a ton of images in my store right now, just some of my portraits and travel images. If there's something you would like to purchase and it's not in the store, please let me know, and I can add it for you!

bits of home // june

1// This is definitely my most covered wall in my house. Some people like a sparse, minimal office, but not this girl. My eyeballs like to look at color, and art, and funny cards, and a flea market mirror from Spain.

2// I pre-ordered Wendy MacNaughton's Meanwhile in San Francisco months ago, and it finally arrived last week. It is delightful and full of illustrations, and you should buy it immediately. The cover even turns into a poster! My short visit to San Francisco last year felt like it lasted only five minutes, so this book reminds me that I need to give the city a proper visit soon.

3// This little guy wasn't doing so hot until I moved him to a shadier spot in my backyard, and then bam! Thrive city. I'm getting better at this keeping-plants-alive game, I promise.

4// I've talked about my small camera hoard before, so nothing new here. But I quite like how they look on the built-in shelves in the office.

in which I try to understand the mindset of a photo thief

Both of these photos look pretty dang similar, right? The one on the left was created by me back in 2009, as part of my 365 project, and the one on the right is the stolen version of my image. Lé Nàbis, an Italian "freelance photographer" who calls himself a "crazy dreamer" took my image, converted it to black and white (real original, dude), and passed it off as his own original work.

This is THEFT, and it makes me feel stabby. I shall insert an obligatory rage gif.

Not only did this gem of a human being plaster my stolen image on his personal flickr and facebook pages, but he also had it FOR SALE on various sites such as 500px and deviantArt. For sale! He was profiting off of my stolen work! THIS IS ALSO THEFT.

This is certainly not the first time this has happened to me, and I'm sure it won't be the last. But I'm always stumped as to what drives a person to pretend he or she made something that wasn't theirs to begin with. Is it insecurity? Does he feel that his own photography is so unworthy of sharing? Did he used to post his own stuff, but received little to no positive feedback? I mean, for pete's sake, I've got tons of photos on my flickr that I'm not that proud of or slightly embarrassed by, like that HDR phase I went through, and when I used stock textures on nearly EVERYTHING, but still. They're mine and I own up to them. It never once crossed my mind to steal someone else's work. That's just crazy, and I'm a rational, law-abiding citizen (okay I jaywalk sometimes, but let's not count that, shall we?)

When I first saw my stolen image on his flickr page, I noticed that it was getting quite a lot of positive comments from other flickr members. "Great job!" "So creative!" This wasn't surprising; when I originally uploaded mine, I received similar comments. But how could this guy read each and every comment on a stolen photo without feeling like a complete and utter fraud?? What was going through his head? Is he mental?

Or maybe this is just some ignorant teenage kid who honestly thought that by changing my photo to black and white, it made the image completely "new" and "his property" and he could sell it on websites like it's no big deal. Maybe he really had no idea that what he did was copyright infringement. Could he be that stupid? Or lazy? Or all of the above?

The upside to all of this is that action has been taken and (some)results have been made. As soon as a flickr follower of mine alerted me to the thief's shenanigans, I promptly took screenshots of my image on his various photography sites, messaged him privately, and reported the theft to the sites where he had them for sale. I also reported his photo fuckery to both flickr and facebook (yep, he had it posted on his personal facebook page). The photo is no longer up on 500px, deviantArt, or his flickr, but it's still on his facebook page.


So this whole post was mostly to vent, but I kind of hope this guy comes across this blog post and understands why what he did was SO, SO WRONG. It is WRONG to steal someone's intellectual property. It is WRONG to pass it off as your own. It is WRONG to monetarily profit off of someone's intellectual property. If you want to call yourself a "crazy dreamer," start by dreaming up your own original work. You'll get a lot further in life that way.

And I won't have to write a rage-y blog post about a complete stranger.

photoshoot // wet hot electric summer

Oh man, this blog post is waaay overdue. I shot this over the summer, and even though I've already shared the final images on my flickr and facebook pages, I wanted to write up a little something to share how this shoot came about, some behind-the-scenes, and even some unedited raw images because there were so many great ones. So here we go!

This was my second time shooting garments made by my fashion designer friend/favorite Serbian lady Tea Ninkovic (You may remember my forest shoot with her last year). I'd been itching to try some kind of swimsuit shoot, and I knew she already had these unique swimsuits on hand, so it seemed a natural collaboration. In fact, Tea had already had some of her suits photographed before by a different photographer, but we wanted to make it a real summer-y shoot, complete with a swimming pool.

A friend of mine who lives nearby has a pool at her place, but I'd never seen it before, so I went over one day to scout it out.

(from my Instagram)

Um, yes please? Not only is it a great-looking pool, but there's tons of greenery and plants and fruit trees surrounding the backyard, so I knew we could make it work. I was inspired immediately. I kindly asked my friend if we could take over her backyard for a day, and she said yes. So far so good!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I asked my friend Debbie Chialtas if she wanted to come on board and help style the shoot. She has a background in fashion design and loves to collaborate on freelance projects, so she was totally game. We decided that Tea's suits would lend themselves really well to a sort of 80's-but-more-modern vibe. Edgy, but not too gothic, and using bright colors. And this is where the blessed Pinterest comes so in handy for mood boards. We started pinning our little hearts out. Here's a couple screenshots!

We were basically pinning ideas and inspiration for the hair/makeup looks, accessories, posing, mood, and even post-processing/editing. It's also a really good idea to have these mood boards handy on the day of shooting, and of course, to show them to your model and hair/makeup artist well in advance. It keeps everyone on the same page. But on the flipside, I also like to keep things flexible when I shoot, and not feel restricted to doing only certain looks. Sometimes happy accidents or impromptu ideas make the best shots!

So the day of our shoot arrives, and we set to work!

Kalia White did the hair and makeup, and I worked with her last year on another shoot, so it was great to have her on board. And the lovely Salina Rene was our model, who I met through Debbie. She's done pin-up type modeling before, so I knew she'd be comfortable in front of the camera. Not to mention the swimsuits fit her like a glove.

Accessories! Better to have too much than not enough, amirite ladies? Also worthy of note: those rad yellow pumps that Debbie helped me find at a thrift shop for 8 bucks!

Me, on a crate. This photo makes me laugh because it kind of looks like I'm 12 weeks pregnant or something, but I assure you, I was not. Just a food baby, I swear.

Here's one of the resulting images from me standing on a crate. I love this photo so much. It makes me wanna go to Palm Springs for a week, and do absolutely nothing by a pool.

This shot really epitomizes the whole mood I was aiming for....just this sun-drenched, scorching-hot, almost...hyperreal quality. With all that expanse of aqua blue water. I love it. And I have to note that Tea also made the rad umbrella hat that Salina's wearing. So quirky and fun.

So by this point in the day, the sun was high overhead, with practically zero clouds. I really wanted Salina in the shade for this shot on the diving board, so we had to improvise. There were a couple really tall standalone umbrellas next to the pool, so Tea helped me drag one over, which was not easy due to the extremely heavy metal base. But it worked!

Another one of my favorite shots. I really should show you the original photo sometime, because man, there was a LOT of clone-stamping/cleaning up I had to do in this image. There was a pool-cleaning hose/pump thingy inside the pool, so whenever I shot her in/next to the water, we'd have to move the hose around as best we could to get it out of the way. But inevitably, it would end up in the shot, because the hose would start moving around like a snake as soon as you let go of it. Such was the case here, but I loved Salina's pose and the composition so much that I refused to let a silly hose ruin the photo.

And now I present to you some of the raw unedited images from that day that I really like.

I briefly messed around with the idea of Salina posing with a beach ball I brought, but not all ideas work. She still looks great though. And the yellow pumps make an appearance!

Pretty close-up makeup shots. And the zipper-tie necklace is made by Tea as well.

I really like the rainbow bokeh flare going on in the left photo.

So behind the backyard is even more backyard, and it's all wonderfully overgrown, so I wanted to try some shots there. I had brought my flash kit and wanted to use it back here, but lo and behold, my flash trigger battery was dead, and I didn't have a spare. Bummer. But I shot some natural-light images anyway. Also, more umbrella hats!

So we were basically at the end of our shoot, and feeling great, so we told Salina, "This is a bathing suit shoot, and we have a pool, so like, get wet or something!" It didn't matter if her hair and makeup got messed up, this was just for fun. And I started snapping away. She floated around, and I learned that it's really hard to make a still photo of someone floating on her back with her eyes closed NOT look like....lying dead in a pool? (no offense to you Salina, you looked amazing, it was all me). I must work on that :)

So long story short, it was a successful shoot, and I'm so grateful to everyone who participated and helped make it happen. One last final gif group shot!