Meet Esmeralda, the femme fatale of conservative values

Hot off the digital camera presses, I have a brand new photo and accompanying video to share! And since this piece has been in development for longer than I care to mention (though I will in a moment) I won’t waste any more time with a lot of buildup and hyperbole. So, here it is!

Sensible family planning is dreamt away to the 1950s by Esmeralda — Femme Fatale of Conservative Values

So, yes, I began this piece way back in late July (yes, July), and finally wrapped up work on the photo and video in early November. That’s over three months for those of you keeping score at home. The initial work of setting up the pieces and iterating over the composition took about a month, interrupted here and there by other ongoing projects and setting up my new shop on Zazzle. I shot the final set of photos and a couple of hundred frames of animation over Labor Day weekend. Then… my dad broke his hip, I ran into censorship problems on Zazzle, opened my Fair Use store, and finallygot back to the photo in mid October.

Early concept shot in July

To the right is an early concept shot built around a vintage record player, as if the woman in the background was placing records onto the turntable. This version also filled the space to the left and right of the album cover with pulp paperbacks. As you can see looking back at the final image, both concepts were abandoned as I moved towards the finished composition (but I’m sure the pulps will show up in future photos).

The record player proved too bulky and limiting for the composition I had in mind, so it was quickly replaced by stacks of vinyl records and alphabet blocks to form the basic stage. With the records in place I had room to build five connected scenes: one in the center, and two each to the left and right atop the surface of stacks of 45s. It then became a matter of establishing the action for each scene through the placement of various characters — a process that took a couple of weeks as I wandered my way through lots of combinations of characters and story concepts. Though, to be honest, I never truly understood what the photo was about until after it was actually complete! That’s how things sometimes work in my weirdly, disconnected, make-believe world.

Fresh out of the camera — unadjusted!

To the left is the final composition as it emerged from my camera, warts and all, prior to all the post-production image adjustments you see in the final image at the top of this post. As previously mentioned, I’d decided to eliminate the paperbacks, and instead wanted the entire background to have the same mauve-ishly textured background found on the album cover. Of course, I didn’t actually have any kind of mauve-ishly textured background material handy, so I hoped, uh, planned on cloning pieces of the album’s background behind all the other figures you see on the left and right. To make this task a little easier, I placed a couple of additional albums and sheets of pink poster board inside the light tent behind the stage construction. This actually proved to be a mistake for reasons I won’t get into, but art is forever a learning experience, and I was able to work around my blunder.

The final image was actually constructed from 6 separately shot photographs using the “focus stacking” technique I wrote about in a previous post. This time around each photo was shot at a different aperture setting so that the depth of field would vary from shot to shot. I then assembled the final image by masking the in-focus portions of each photo, and layering them all together in a big digital sandwich to create one image with everything in reasonably sharp focus.

The video is another of my simple pan’n'scan slideshow with the camera seeming to zoom around the staging as figures magically materialize into view. Oooooo! It’s a fun and simple technique that’s not nearly as tedious as true stop-motion animation. This time around I chose an instrumental piece of music from Tuatara that nicely captured the drama and tension I wished to convey in the photograph.

Enjoy!

Read Full Post »

Translating vintage finds into new work

Time moves quickly in the world of Wind-up Dreams, and where I’ve had a host of posts planned around my springtime trip to Los Angeles, it’s suddenly summer and almost July, and does it really make sense to write up a review for a couple of concerts I attended back in April? No, of course not!

Ah! But that now long ago trip north did yield a pair of fairly amazing vintage finds that have found a life together and forever in a brand new photo and video animation. Where some may direct their travels to resorts, tourist destinations, and upscale shopping districts, I’m a bit more adventurous, wandering into odd little shops, swap meets, or tiny indy record stores where (my kind of) treasure surely awaits. One such store is Permanent Records, a fantastic little record store on the main drag in Eagle Rock with an incredibly diverse selection of new and used vinyl, plus a very knowledgeable staff with great taste in all kinds of music.

“Lazy Rhapsody” Lou Busch and his Piano Orchestra, 1957

In the stacks at Permanent Records I found Lazy Rhapsody, an album released by Lou Busch and his Piano Orchestra (imagine the stage required for that!) in the late 1950s. The record had loooooong been included on my Records Want List, a comprehensive spreadsheet I’ve maintained for many years to track the album covers I see on various vintage vinyl websites that have good potential as background subject matter for my photos. The best are those covers with a glamorous gal of the 50′s gazing off into negative space where my devious mind can construct an alternate universe for her to contemplate, and—for obvious reasons (I mean, just look at it!)—Lazy Rhapsody was VERY high on my want list!

Vintage books have made several memorable appearance in my photos, and I’m always on the lookout for old texts with unusual titles or fancy gold lettering on the spine. The day before my trip to Permanent Records I discovered the Cosmopolitan Book Shop, a jam packed used bookstore on Melrose Avenue, east of La Brea. Wow! Inventory, inventory, inventory… Floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It would take days to fully appreciate their stock, and I basically found the store while filling 10 minutes before heading off to  other locales. Luckily, it took only 9 minutes to spot an absolutely incredible vintage book! Crazy title—gold on the spine. Yay!

“The Influence of Women… and its cure” John Erskine, 1936

To the left is The Influence of Women… and its cure by John Erskine, a non-fiction book published in 1936 as a call to attention to men across the land that, basically, this whole business of (gasp!) gender equality could screw up the good deal that men had enjoyed since the beginning of recorded time. Oh, the horror! Inside is a stern text bemoaning the perils of women’s rights, the outlandish notion that women could be teachers, and that men have sadly allowed their wives to control the purse strings of family wealth. I’m convinced that I could leverage the book into a career as a standup comic by merely taking to the stage and, in a serious and knowing tone, recite passages to my delighted and far more liberated audience.

Best, though, is the inscription inside the front cover:

To Roy,
with best wishes,
from Lea — 1936

 What a lovely gift! Doesn’t it make you wonder about Roy and Lea? Was Lea a strong independent woman sending Roy a message? Or was she subserviently giving Roy a gift that in present day would have been on his Amazon wish list? In any case, The Influence of Women seemed like it would be perfect as a treatment in one of my photos.

I ended up combining both of these LA finds in a new photo and video. Behold!

Malcolm was never a popular boy, until he won The Irish Sweepstakes

This was actually a very simple photo, as it involved only a single background image and very few foreground elements, whereas most of my recent work has involved much more elaborate staging. Still, building the narrative and getting the overall composition right took a fair amount of time.

Added bonus… As I’ve done with many of my recent photos, I created a video animation of the photo during deconstruction of the set! For the video I tried to imaging why Tuxedo Guy might be surrounded by all those women, and tried to find music that would sort of carry the story—though from the perspective of the women, rather than the perspective of Tuxedo Guy. Many songs were auditioned; none of them worked. And then I recalled a number one hit from 1970 that ruled the airwaves to such a heavy-rotation extent that, now, decades later, there remain people suffering from the annoying effects of an “earworm” as this invasive slice of bubbly pop drivel continually spins inside their heads. Not daring to use the original and perhaps risk the peril of worldwide audio infection, I chose a harder edge 1991 cover version from Voice Of The Beehive.

Enjoy!

Read Full Post »

Long lost Wind-up Dreams video recently unearthed!

Good news in the Land of Wind-up Dreams! Over the past couple of weeks my studio has been undergoing some renovations in an effort to add a little extra space and added efficiency to my workspace. Wallpaper has been stripped, carpeting has been pulled up, and hardwood floors have been refinished and repaired.

The original 85 year old floor beneath the dingy, water stained carpet was in especially dire need of care. Gouges, discoloration and damage galore! In places, the wood had rotted clear through, and several floorboards needed to be pried up and replaced with fresh strips of oak. Nowhere was this more true than at the far wall where the floor butts up to a cold stucco wall that doubles as a retaining wall for the small orchard at the southernmost tip of my property. There, right beneath the cabinet that holds all my most cherished figures and characters, the condition of the floor was at its worst, and it’s really a surprise that the floor hadn’t buckled under the weight of of the heavy shelves. Termites had long feasted on this wood, rendering the once majestic hardwood to resemble stale biscotti.

No sooner had the cabinet been moved, two boards suddenly crumbled to dust, leaving a frightening hole as the base of the wall.

And there, I made a thrilling discovery!

Hidden in the dark and shrouded by a grey veil of webs was a small cardboard box. I snatched the box from its tomb and swiped away eight decades of dust and grime. Peeking back from the cardboard lid was the impish smile of a kewpie doll beneath a logo identifying the box as the “Property of DREAMSCOPE FILMS.” Inside was the unexpected: a round metal canister, containing a single reel of 16mm film.

Whoa! Weird!!! How long had it been there?!?!

The reel of film discovered beneath my studio

Mystifying though the “why’s” may have been, I was far more interested to see what was on the film than to unravel the circumstances of it being misered away beneath the floorboards of the guest house.

The film had unfortunately not fared well in the decades it had been locked away in its hidey-hole. It had deteriorated badly with most of the tightly wound reel stuck together from one layer of film to the next beneath a bubbling brown ooze. The cells were almost impossibly fragile: cracked, warped, and cloaked by a hazy curtain of faded time. Still, with a pair of white gloves and the patient coaxing of a pair of medical grade tweezers, I was able to free the first few precious frames and spy ghostly images through the light passing through these prehistoric frames of celluloid.

There was definitely something there!

The canister was immediately sealed tight and placed in a climate controlled locking metal briefcase we keep on hand for these very situations. From there, the briefcase was whisked away to the Wind-up Dreams labs (didn’t know we had labs, did you? We do! We do!) where a team of preservationists—led by yours truly—were put to work restoring this precious reel of film to its original state. The effort was eye straining and shoulder burning, as the film was carefully unwound inch by inch, and snipped into individual frames which were placed one after the other in a sequence of labeled acid free envelopes. Some frames were entirely beyond repair, and the best offered no more than a hint about the image contained within. A sample of one of the better frames appears below. Note the deterioration at the edges, spots of decay, and the complete loss of color and detail.

A single frame of film after it had been removed from the decomposing reel

I really didn’t have much hope that we’d be able to repair damage of this extent. Remember… this is one of the good frames! Still, the team persevered, as each frame was washed in preservatives, dried, then—under view of a microscope—lovingly restored. Missing frames were reconstructed from their nearest neighbors. Rips and tears were sealed and blended, and colors—yes, colors!—were brought back to life by delicately hand tinting each and every frame. The results were absolutely astounding! Take a look at the above frame after the team at Wind-up Dreams Labs had completed the restoration:

The prior frame following restoration

The final step was to scan and digitize each frame so that the entire 4 minute film could be resequenced on a computer and set to an appropriate score. Oh! And did I mention that the cardboard box had contained detailed notes from the original filmmaker? It did! The notes were penned longhand on stationary bearing the same DREAMSCOPE FILM logo that had been found on the box. While not at all helpful in identifying who had made the film or how it had come to be, the notes were explicit in laying out how the film was to be scored for viewing in a live setting, with a full orchestra and vocal accompaniment. These notes were absolutely crucial in providing audio accompaniment to the restoration!

And now, without further adieu and for the first time in 85 years… Wind-up Dreams & Vinyl Nightmares is proud to bring you this lost footage!! Enjoy, and feel free to share with your friends!

Read Full Post »

Lola and Lexi ditch Biology, and never return to the Eleanor Roosevelt School for Wayward Girls

After two months of pretty much solid work, my new stop motion animation is finally complete! As I detailed in my long ago prior post, this particular project was fraught with damning sabotage from Forces of the Universe that apparently are not fond of my work. Bad, evil, unsophisticated Forces!

At some point I’m hoping to blog a “how I did it” post to pass along some tips to aspiring stop motion animators, but for now I just want to share the video, as well as the final version of the photo that provided the basis for the piece.

First, the photo:

Lola and Lexi ditch Biology, and never return to the Eleanor Roosevelt School for Wayward Girls

Yep, there it is, featuring at its center The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Sex, published in 1950 and obtained on loan from my good friend, artist Nicole Waszak. In the background are a pair of vintage record covers: Perry Como Sings Hits From Broadway Shows on the left, and Hymns by the Hour of Charm All Girl Orchestra on the right. The Hour of Charm cover was pretty rough, requiring hours of retouching to eliminate dozens of unsightly brown blotches marring the matronly complexions of all those “charming” girls. The photo is divided into two halves, vices and virtues, with three bathing beauties emerging from a pool in the center to worship at the base of the imposing tome.

Lots of other things going on in the photo, of course, and I’m sure you can imagine what might happen next in this visual tale of warring morals, but wouldn’t you rather see (yes, actually see!) what happened to all the characters before I snapped this photo? Where did they all come from, and how did they arrive at the places where you see them in the photo? Who wouldn’t want to see that?!?

Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret… I didn’t actually create this photo. True! Back in the early days of October I was suffering through a frustrating bout of Photographer’s Block. Every morning I’d walk into my studio and stare into an empty light tent. I’d flip through my albums, and glance furtively at my bookcase full of toys.

Nothing.

I was totally blocked and had no idea what I wanted to create. I pleaded with my delegation of plastic presidents. They stared back, blank and unwavering, as if I were a long ago cast ballot. I was disregarded by my zoo of miniature wildlife, mocked by a denizen of devils, and completely ignored by my family of usually dependable kewpies.

Oh, I was all ready to take a photo, that’s for damn sure! My camera stood firm atop a sturdy tripod, trained on the inside of the frustratingly empty light tent where I usually assemble my three dimensional creations. All around were floodlights waiting to illuminate whatever wondrous scene that might spill from the deep, confusing puzzle of my imagination.

Again, nothing.

Well, as luck would have it, one night…

I suppose I left the camera switched ON in misguided anticipation that I might come up with a good idea and didn’t want my creative flow to be interrupted by the inconvenience of flicking the switch from OFF to ON. Or maybe I didn’t turn the camera on at all. Given what was to come, how could such a small detail raise any surprise at all? In any case, the next morning I opened the door to my studio carrying a hot cup of coffee—caffeine to prime the pump and whip those lazy synapses into shape!

There, inside the light tent, was the completed scene you see above. It was like the cobbler and his ever helpful elves! I didn’t question this miracle at all. How could I?!?! My work was done! It was THERE! And I liked it. All I had to do was snap the shutter as if I were taking a picture of a boring sunset falling into a hungry black sea.

Of course, before I could take a picture of what I had found filling the tent, I first had to replace the camera battery. It was dead. And I had to replace the SD card. It was full. And did I mention that of my three floodlights, two were burned out and one had shattered in a frightening scatter of jagged glass?

I turned to my shelf of toys, but not a one offered an explanation, and those positioned inside the light tent played their roles in conspiratorial silence. Quite baffling!

Ah, but I did have a full SD card!

I tucked the card in a pocket and bolted from the studio, crossing the patio to my house in three bounding leaps. I flew up the stairs to my office and jammed the SD card into the reader connected to my iMac.

There were 4,588 photos impossibly stored on this single card. I loaded them into the computer, and this is what I found…

Sometimes, you just get lucky.

Read Full Post »

The all consuming tedium of stop motion animation

A quick check of the calendar tells me that I haven’t added any new posts in over two weeks. That can’t be! Wasn’t it just a couple of days ago that I blogged about my mini movie reviews in the Reader? Nope. Time has raced by with not a single blog-worthy thought entering my mind.

Why?

Three words: Stop. Motion. Animation.

Scene from "Lola and Lexi ditch biology and never return to the Eleanor Roosevelt School for Wayward Girls"

For those of you familiar with my videos, you’ll know that stop motion is one of several techniques I use to occasionally animate my fine art photographs. There’s time lapse, pan’n'scan slideshows, and stop motion. Of those varied techniques, stop motion is far and away the most tedious and time consuming, which is why I haven’t created any new stop motion animations in over a year and a half. But that’s exactly what’s been consuming virtually all of my time over the past 5 weeks, as I’ve been locked away in my studio and office capturing and process frames for my latest photo, Lola and Lexi ditch biology, and never return to the Eleanor Roosevelt School for Wayward Girls.

Dude! Come on? How hard can it really be? Just move stuff a little bit, take a picture, then move stuff again. Duh!

Oh, if only it was that simple! Let’s talk for a moment about how I create my stop motion animations…

Beginning at the Ending

In my animations I endeavor to create the illusion of a photograph creating itself from an empty stage, with all the figures, records and books magically finding their way to their final resting spot in the finished photo. This means that I start with the finished photograph and work my way backwards, moving objects little bits at a time until the scene I am shooting is completely empty, shooting a new photo between each scene change. Once all the images are shot, all I have to do (cough, cough, yeah, right) is reverse all the captured frames and… voila! I have an animation of the photograph being constructed from start to finish.

Theories are easy, but the proof if often mired in a pudding of sticky caramel reality.

So, like I said, I start at the end. This means that everything that preceded the final scene has to be anticipated. In reverse. Our brains don’t generally work that way. We’re hardwired to anticipate what’s going to happen next; like when a ball bounces into traffic from a playground. We envision motion always running forward, so to produce a stop motion animation sequence I have to get my brain to behave like a projector running in reverse and envision all the motion (and the story!) running backwards. Talk about brain teasers!

Of frame counts and running lengths

To give you an idea about the scope of my current effort for Lola and Lexi, consider some of my previous animations. The first extensive animation I tackled (not to be confused with my early “quick’n'dirty” animations which required only a couple of hundred photos each) was Pulling a Miracle Ending from the Plastic Playbook, based on one of the photos included in my 2009 solo exhibit at Distinction Gallery in Escondido. Miracle Ending was picked up by Juxtapoz.com and attracted several thousand hits on YouTube.

The video runs for all of a 1:46 and was constructed from 800-plus photographs stitched together at roughly 9 frames per second to produce (ahem) “reasonably” smooth animation. Okay, in truth, the movement of each figure from frame-to-frame is pretty jerky, as I was just kind of guessing as to how much movement was “enough movement” to create a convincing animation. In some cases, my guesswork was almost okay, but in other spots characters appear to defy gravity and the laws of physics as they leap from block to block and record to record.

My next effort was considerably more ambitious!

For Unbeknownst to her Creator, Eve longed to become a cheerleader I upped the ante to a full blown production with opening and closing credits, a synchronized sound bed, and—though still full of craziness—a narrative flow to match the theme of the final photograph.

The frame count jumped to 2,100 shots, the running time stretched to almost 4 and a half minutes, and the animation was quite a bit tighter than prior efforts. The frame rate for Eve was still set to between 9 and 10 frames per second, mostly to synch a couple of key beats in the backing soundtrack, but the frame-to-frame movements were much finer than Miracle Ending resulting in smoother animation.

And, the new video?

4,588 frames. Yes, that’s a LOT of photographs, with each one requiring adjustments to the exposure, white balance, color quality, and sundry other improvements to achieve a more-or-less consistent transitions from one frame to the next.

Crazy!!!

Boom!

And that’s what I’ve been up to for the past several weeks. Shooting the photos consumed close to 4 weeks of work, as I painstakingly made sure that the character movements would be slight based on a 17 page “script” I’d written to layout each and every backwards movement. Along the way, the project suffered two exploding flood lights, a damaged light socket, and the frying of a budget priced surge protector (subsequently replaced by a budget busting surge protector). All these lighting problems made the task of post production image corrections that much more difficult, and I’ve spent the past three weeks, 10 to 15 hours a day, refining each of those 4,588 photographs.

Luckily, the end of the tunnel is in sight!! Today I began work on the fun part of the animation: taking all those captured and adjusted frames and pasting them into a “digital flipbook” set to music with titles, credits, and REALLY cool music.

Stay tuned, this one is going to be pretty cool!

Close-up of a scene from the new video

Read Full Post »

Video of the KPBS feature! Watch me play!

Just in case you missed me on TV this past Friday (and why did you?!?!), KPBS has posted a video of the segment to their arts and culture blog, and the piece came out GREAT!! In addition to all the live footage captured in my home and out back in the studio, the producers mixed in tons of clips from my video animations as well as a few well placed stills from finished photographs. You also get to see a sneak peek of work on a brand new photo that takes on vice, virtue, sex… and brains.

But wait! That’s not all…

See me rip the head off a kewpie doll!
See me fondle hula girls!
See me squint through a view finder!

All that, and more, is in the 4 minute segment that ran during the October 14th airing of Evening Edition.

Thanks and accolades to KPBS, cinema junkie Beth Accomando, and videographer Katie Euphrat for the tremendous job they did editing all that footage into a fun and exciting whirlwind of plastic fun!

Read Full Post »

A priest, a nun, and a bunch of my photos walk into a bar…

August is turning out to be a very busy month, with my Baby Haley photo set to appear in “Break a Leg: An Homage to the Theater” at Distinction Gallery from August 13 through September 3. This is a charity show with all proceeds going to scholarships at Palomar College, and all pieces are going to be sold auction style, with bids starting at the bargain price of a hundred bucks. Come on by the opening reception on August 12th (yep, the day before the set start date, just to make things extra fancy) and be ready to bid!

Also in August, I’ve been invited to participate in “Making Mischief: Humor in Art” at the Irvine Fine Art Center featuring the work of 7 artists who interject levity into their work as a means of drawing the viewer into more serious visual dialog. I’ll have 8 to 10 pieces on display along with a small collection of video animations playing in an adjacent projection space. It should be a really fun show, and I promise to have at least a couple of never-before-exhibited pieces on display along with several choice selections from my vast archives. The opening reception is set for August 13 from 5 to 8PM at the Fine Arts Center Gallery in Heritage Park. If you’re in or around Orange County, come on by!

One cool aspect of the show is its focus on humor and how that particular device can be used to engage people into a work of art, much in the same way that a musician can draw the listener into a catchy song, oftentimes unconscious to the fact that the song’s lyrics carry a much deeper message. Years ago I recall reading Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn writing about Bruce Springteen’s Born In The USA album and how Springsteen had successfully built an album of very deep social commentary around really, really good uptempo rock songs. That’s what I try to do with my photos—create something that is visually pleasing and whimsically reminiscent of times past to pull the viewer into the frame… then hit ‘em with something they don’t expect to drive home the underlying narrative.

So count on that at both of the August shows. Hopefully, by then I’ll have come up with the punchline to the joke in the subject line.

Read Full Post »

New photo and animated video

Just a really quick post to let everyone know about a new photo I’ve completed that will be on display at Distinction Gallery in Escondido, CA, from July 9th through August 6th. “Anicomically Correct” will bring together 20 artists for a comic themed show coinciding with the running of San Diego’s annual Comic Con convention. It’s going to be a really fun event, with the opening reception taking place on July 9th from 6 to 10 PM.

Wanna see my interpretation of the theme? Sure you do!

Clinical study at the Mary Shelley School of Theologic Medicine

I basically crammed the head of a large-ish kewpie doll over the hard plastic shell of a Visible Man model (which unfortunately suffered a chip when I extricated it from the kewpie after I’d completed the photo). In the background is a Bodyscope medical teaching aid from 1935, which is normally on display in my living room, but occasionally makes trips out to my studio to serve background duty for new photos.

As an added bonus, I used the occasion of dismantling the three  staging as an opportunity to create yet another video animation. This one combines techniques of stop motion and “stopped motion” to create an illusion of objects magically appearing before your bedazzled eyes (and don’t we all inspire to have our eyes bedazzled every now and then).

Here’s the video, featuring an absolutely awesome 1947 track from Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Don’t forget to share with all your friends far and wide!!

Read Full Post »

Records + Toys + Time Lapse = Video Fun!

Oh, happy day! I have much to share with the blogging world! A new post (which you are reading), a new photo and a new video!

Your Baby's First Year, 1964

Back in February, while out on the vinyl prowl, I found a really great album at one of my favorite record stores, Nickelodeon Records located on Adams Avenue in San Diego. I knew, at the time, that the cover had great potential as the backdrop to one of my photographic creations, with a cherubic newborn gazing up at her unseen mother, from the cushy comfort of her frilly bassinet. Surely… this cover image must be defiled!

Here’s an audio sample from the beginning of the original LP, in all its early 1960′s glory!

Looking at the cover, I envisioned all kinds of things that potentially could be commanding the gaze of this unspoiled infant: baby heads, paratroopers, astronauts, a big scary devil head (which, of course, I’ve done before)…

No matter what I decided to place just beyond the reach of those chubby fingers I would first need to devise some kind of rig that would allow me to suspend objects before the baby’s face, and not have those objects subject to vibrations that would blur the finished photo. Fishing line? No. One touch and I could anticipate waiting three and a half hours for a plastic paratrooper to stop swaying in the imaginary. Putty? Sure, the devil head would be fixed and motionless, but it would also look as though it’s just been stuck to the background and lack the illusion of floating in space before the baby’s watchful eye.

My solution was to build a tower out of Legos behind the stage construction, and from the Legos extend stiff, heavy gauge electrical wire (the kind of which you’ll find inside the walls of your house) to suspend objects into the foreground, brushing out the wires during post-production. Genius!

As I was building the Lego tower a story began to take shape in my mind where the baby on the cover would be using telekinesis to make a series of blocks float in the air to spell out her thoughts, all the while imagining the life she saw for herself — while, counter to her thoughts and on the other side of the composition, would be the life intended for her by her parents. (Yes, this is how my mind works… I know… it’s a problem)

Setting up the remaining objects took about a week’s time until I was satisfied with the composition. Post production consumed another 4 or 5 days as I painstakingly painted out the electrical wires and background text, and generally punched up the colors, vibrancy and definition to give the photo more impact. I also spent a lot of time applying digital repairs to the cover of a book I’d placed in the frame, which otherwise was peppered with pretty gross looking spots of age.

Here’s the final result!

Despite her parents' righteous determination, Baby Haley dreamed to follow her own path

Ta da! I decided that the baby should be named Haley. On the left are the influences brought into her life by her parents. On the right are her own Generation Y (Z, maybe?) self-indulgent aspirations for a Me! Me! Me! future of fame and fortune.

With the new photo complete and still set up in the light tent with all the staging, Legos and electrical wire still in place, I had an opportunity to give Baby Haley a brief taste of fame in the form of video animation.  In the past I’ve created similar video using a variety of animation techniques to create the illusion of a photo stage being constructed from the ground up.

How is that possible?!?!? you wonder in mock amazement. You just told us that the photo is already done!

Well, yes, it is. I create my animations in reverse, starting from the finished piece, then moving or removing objects from the scene as I shoot frames. When I’ve finished I load all the frames into my computer, reverse the order of the images I captured, and the resulting video looks as though it is running forward — from empty tent to the final, pop culture filled scene.  Get it?

That’s exactly what I did with the video for Baby Haley. The original photo was shot using a Canon XTi DSLR, which lacks a movie mode, so for the video I placed a Canon SD1000 point’n'shoot on the tripod and set the movie mode to capture one from per second.  With the camera running I then slowly began to remove objects from the scene, reaching over the positioned camera to snatch away each object. After the ol’ switch-a-roo, it appears as if I am building the scene piece-by-piece, as if I had the entire scene and the position of every object clear in my mind as I constructed the scene for the photograph. But we all know that isn’t true… As I said earlier, the development of the composition took the better part of the week.

The final step in creating a new video is adding music and title credits. The music is fairly important (he said, stating the obvious). I select music that fits the theme of the photo and the pace of the animation. For Baby Haley I chose a track from the debut album by The Toy Dolls, Glenda And The Test Tube Baby, which would be fast enough to match the rapid pace of the video, and the lyrics would be a nice compliment for Baby Haley and her moral adventure.

I hope you all enjoy this glimpse into the process I use to build and shoot my photos.  Feel free to share with your art and film friends, and jump on over to YouTube to see more of my video creations.

Read Full Post »

Cool New Videos Now LIVE!

Last week at the Opening Reception for the “Seven Signs of the Kewpie Apocalypse” exhibit, people really enjoyed the stop-motion animation and time-lapse videos that were created for Unbeknownst to her Creator, Eve longed to become a cheerleader and Financial Freewheeling and the futile pursuit of the American Dream. We didn’t want to leave anyone out, so we’ve posted them on YouTube!  In the videos, you can see how the still life dioramas that eventually become the photos are created. The Eve video was created from 2,100 separately shot and edited photographs after the actual gallery photo was shot. The action was then storyboarded and the animation was shot in reverse. The entire production required about 8 weeks of work.

The Financial Freewheeling video was created from time lapse footage showing the construction of the photo.  The video was actually created during the deconstruction of the diorama, one shot every two seconds, then played back in reverse to create the effect of “building” the final scene. You can also watch the video, “The Fantastic Plastic World,” which shows the installations that were on display as part of the exhibit “And The Beat Goes On” at the New Puppy Gallery in Los Angeles last year. The four videos also feature super fun music by Fantastic Plastic Machine, Moby, and James Brown, and Nina Simone. The last new video that’s been posted is a retrospective of select works from 2004-2010. AND, we’re also excited to announce that these videos can be found on a newly re-designed Videos page on the Wind-up Dreams site. Feel free to leave comments and let us know what you think.

Of course, you can still see the videos and photos live! in person! at Pannikin Coffee & Tea, La Jolla, CA through July 30.

Read Full Post »