I love street art, all forms, and so I thought I would post this video of the making of a 3d Street Art piece by Edgar Mueller title “Crevasse”. It was made in Ireland for the “Festival of World Culture”. It took 5 days and 5 assistants to paint the 250 square meter piece.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since one of my closest friends past away, Sean Carabine. I met Sean when I was at college. We were in a basic computer class and our two groups had finished a lab early so we were killing time chatting and getting to know each other. I was surprised to hear that Sean had been retired from the USMC and he looked so young. I pressed the issue a little further and with some hesitation, Sean confided that he had been medically retired due to a brain tumor. He had been diagnosed that year and been told that he had 6 months to live.

Fast forward 9 years and Sean passes away in University of Maryland Hospital on April 13, 2007 surrounded by friends and family. Friends and family who had to be told countless times to quiet down because our shared laughter was echoing through the halls. While his passing was a somber moment, the moment was best captured by Courtney, Sean’s then 11 year old sister-in-law, when everyone had regained some sort of composure and were standing silently waiting for direction, she exclaimed “Come on, we have a life to celebrate!”.

Fast forward another year, and on a beach in East Hampton, NY, where Sean grew up, the people who loved him and were touched by him gather around a bench that bears his name and one of his favorite quotes, “Live Life or die trying.” The time was a mix of laughs and stories about the amazing life Sean lived. We all recounted our favorite “Sean story” and all shared that we always found it hard to believe the extravagant tales of life Sean told but then they would be reaffirmed by someone else and you eventually found that all the stories were true.

Another year has passed and I’m returning to East Hampton to gather with his friends and family. Even after he has passed, Sean has continued to affect my life in positive ways. I’ve tried to incorporate his examples of strong character and his appreciation of life into my life. It hasn’t always been the best of times for me over the past two years; I’ve had very trying times within myself. This year, however, I am in a much better place than ever before and no doubt his influence has helped me get where I am.

There is a quote from the Tibetan Book of the Dead that has really stood out to me ever since Sean passed away. I began reading the book when Sean entered the hospital to help me find answers to what I was feeling and what Sean was going through in his final days. I feel that Sean was one of the most virtuous people that I’ve ever met and I know that his spirit lives on in all the people that he touched:

“The glorious chariots of kings wear out, and the body wears out and grows old; but the virtue of the good never grows old…

On Friday, I took the day off work and drove up to Philadelphia to take the “Small Strobes, Big Results” workshop with David Tejada. The workshop was a full day with the morning session at the Ukranian League of Philadelphia and the afternoon session spent at the Eastern State Penitentiary.

The workshop was a little crowded for my tastes, 20 or so other photographers but I got to meet a lot of different photogs with varying levels of experience. The morning session was a discussion of the gear that David uses and a lot of it was inexpensive McGuyver-esque setups and tools that was really the whole theme of the workshop. Using small strobes and inexpensive setups that produce professional and impressive results.

One of my favorite experiences of the day was a subtle one. David was demoing a “ghetto-boom” and with a little ingenuity from one of the participants, we had given the ghetto-boom an articulated arm. It was this sort of “out-of-the-box” thinking that is at the center of David’s strategy and workshop. He doesn’t look at things and see “what is”, he looks at them and sees “what could be”. This moment really set the tone for me for the workshop and struck a cord with me about the way I do things. It seems silly but this single moment was worth the price of admission for the day. After that, every lighting setup was just a reinforcement of that core value and a visual example of “what could be”.

The afternoon we spent in the FREEZING prison setting up lighting scenarios with models and David walked us through his entire thought process as he prepared the setups. Nothing was pre-planned (except the locations), he didn’t meter once and instead relied on a tethered laptop to see if he was getting the expected result. There were no lighting ratios or formulas, everything was rather free form and fluid.

After David would setup the shot, we would photograph the setup and then each get a turn with the pocket wizard to take a shot of the model. Because there were so many of us, the time with the model was VERY quick. The point of the workshop was to learn how to light, not how to interact with the model or build a portfolio.

The prison itself was a very interesting piece of history. Built in 1829 and was active until 1971! The architecture was very interesting and there were lots of neat places to shoot and lots of interesting areas.

After the workshop, we all convened at the pub across the street and got to share stories and talk shop. It was a great social experience and for me, a demonstration of how far I’ve come in the last 18 months. I don’t think I ever would have considered going to a workshop by myself before but now I’m just looking forward to taking another workshop.

Here’s a video I did last week using my Canon G9 in time lapse mode. It’s the process that goes into setting up the studio. At the end, I end up with a clam shell lighting scenario that is very useful for head shots, which is what I happened to be shooting that day.

Just wanted to point out that there is a new post over at Shawn Grimes Photography about a session I did for cheerleader headshots and portfolio work.