Celebrate Dance 2009

This year's Celebrate Dance is promising to be a great show with nine dance companies performing the same night in a show produced by Jamie Nichols.

The shot above of Bradley Michaud of Method Contemporary Dance and part of the next one with Dana Vultaggio dancing for Deborah Rosen were chosen as the home page images for the event's website.


Check it out at Celebrate Dance 2009.
I know it doesn't mean much, but it certainly feels good!
Thanks to Jamie Nichols for choosing my images.

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Shooting in Milano

While in Milano for the holidays I agreed to photograph a couple of friends. Guenda and Barbara are terrific dancers and they found an amazing location. Barbara's partner shot a scene of a movie here. It's under a bridge of the "tangenziale", part of Milano's freeway system.


It was a lot of fun. Too bad I only had one strobe with me, but my luggage was already heavy enough.


You can see some more photos here along with a couple of shots of the location. Enjoy


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A quick portrait set-up

Couple of days ago I had all my lighting gear sitting in my living room waiting to be stored in the garage when Agnese asked me if I could take a portrait of her. She needed a nice picture for a paper she's publishing so while we were at it I shot a few more photos. Here is one of them.

There are a couple more on my flickr page here.
As you might imagine, the set-up here is very simple. Just a strobe high camera left shot through an umbrella to get some soft light and another one focused on the curtain in the back to enhance the separation between her and the background.

The day after it turned out that Marta needed a portrait too for a project she's working on now so I used the same set-up. I just changed the background and put the blanket that usually sits on our couch instead of the curtain.


This is the one I like the most, but at the end she decided to use another one. You can see the website here and my flickr page here.

Since I shot these in our living room at night, in both cases I gelled the key light with a full CTO + 1/4 to warm up a little bit their faces and balance the ambient light and then I played a little bit with the exposure for the background.

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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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