Raul Plasencia

Raul Plasencia is a very good artist. A painter, a classical painter as Edith, his daughter, like to say. She asked me if I could help her make a nice portfolio of his paintings and...while I was there, I took a quick portrait of them.

Here are a couple of his paintings.


The above one is a small Don Quijote,


and this one a view of Venice, Italy, that he visited a few times.

He's also very good at portraits and he would make your own for a reasonable fee. You can check a few more of his paintings on my flickr page here.


Enjoy his paintings and in case you want one for yourself just let me know and I'll put you in contact with him.

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Thank you!

I wanted to thank all of you for helping me at the ARTWalk last weekend.

Here are a few snapshots from the event.

It was a great success and your support was very much appreciated!


My apologies if you passed by after I left, but I'm sure Giangi and Nuria were able to take care of you.


Thanks again!

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My first time...

Last weekend my friend Deborah organized a photoshoot at the Diavolo Dance Space in downtown LA. It was my first time in a real theater. Really a good experience and definitely a lot of work but I think we captured some good moments.

All the shots were taken with a combination of theatrical lights and strobes in various configurations. You can see a few more here on my flickr page.


Thanks to Deborah Rosen for making this possible, to Jerry for helping me a great deal in setting up the lights and to all the dancers for their performance!


I hope you enjoy them.

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Pasadena ARTWalk is coming up!

Yesterday night I attended a reception at El Portal organized by the Pasadena Playhouse District Association. You can see what happened and get more details here. They invited all the artists that have been chosen to participate at the next Pasadena ARTWalk.


I printed lots of photos, including some from the "Elements of Dance" project and many more.
I look forward to it and I hope lots of people will show up. Don't forget, Saturday October 11th from 11am to 5pm on El Molino between Colorado and Green.
It'll be fun.

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Dancing with Paints - Moorpark Edition

Caitlyn and Gene made another wonderful piece of art in front of a good crowd at the High Studio Gallery in Moorpark last weekend. As you know, it was also the first time I was exhibiting my work in an art gallery and it felt so good!


Caitlyn first danced on the canvas with dancing shoes, then she removed them to continue bare foot and finally Gene finished the work of art with his vision.


It was a great show! There a few more photos here on Flickr as usual, including a couple I took immediately after Caitlyn ... painted the rest of the gallery!


And here is my mug, posing for Marta in front of my photos of the previous show featured in the Gallery. Oh, did I mention it was my first exhibition?
Thanks to all of you that made this possible!

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We made it!!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's with great pleasure and a bit of pride that I announce you that I was selected from the Pasadena ARTWalk Jury to exhibit my photos on October 11th 2008 from 11am to 5pm on El Molino Ave. between Colorado Blvd. and Green St.
Most likely they just didn't want to give me back the money of the pre-registration, that's what it is, but...WHO CARES, I'm in!!!


I want to thank Cesar, Caitlyn, Bradley and Deborah for willing to participate to my "Elements of Dance" idea/project and make this whole thing possible. Without you guys I would probably spend my spare time taking pictures of bugs in my backyard.
So, THANK YOU!!
I also want to thank Marta for helping me out on this and most of all for giving me the idea in the first place! What would I do without you?!

Now I have to decide which photo to print and in which format, how many, how to present them, how to hang them and a whole lot of other details so, I've gotta go back to work.
But, don't forget, next October 11th, between 11am and 5pm, come see me at the Pasadena ARTWalk, you never know, you might even feel like buying one of my prints!!
For more info on the Pasadena ARTWalk, check their site here.

I look forward to see you there!

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Sculpting Giangi's body

Giangi and I had this idea in mind for some time. I was picturing him bare chested against the sunset sky somewhere in the forest. For the lighting, among others, I was inspired by Martin Prihoda, check him out here. A simple three lights set-up. Two behind Giangi on each side to make a nice rim of highlights and one in front of him high up and shot through an umbrella to light up his face and his body.
For this photoshoot, also, I was going to use for the first time many new toys that I spent endless hours working on in the past few weeks. More on that at the end of the post along with some strobist info.


I wanted him to look strong and powerful and highlight his muscles. I had in mind some old photo of Bruce Lee and stuff like that. We were also tempted to take some action shots but then with this lighting I thought we were better off with static ones.
Still, I think his intensity and his strength come through.


Recently I heard that the magazine "In Touch" voted David Beckham for the best abs of the star system for his photoshoot as a testimonial for Emporio Armani ... well, I think our Giangi would have ranked pretty high too, if they only knew about him!
You can see Beckham here just for the sake of comparison, of course.


You can see some more of Giangi's muscles here. Also, I know there is a long list of girls that were waiting for these photos to come out so... what do you think? Is he good or what? Why don't you leave your comments here?

For our strobists, there is a photo with the lighting set-up and a few more details here. Anyway, now that everything worked out, I must say that those speed straps are really cool. I made them myself and used them to gel the flashes, attach the flags on the two flashes behind Giangi and to hold the grid and the gel on the one above him.
I'll soon post some more info on how I did those and a few more light shaping tools I have been playing with recently.

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