Burning beats factory party in Zbrojovka factory - Art?.

This series is from a performance from curator Kateřina Olivová during the last burning beats factory party in Brno. It started on the second floor of the building and continue to street without any incident but the people did not pay too much attention neither seemed surprised. It can be shocking for some people and certainly it is, a woman being carried as a dog/slave/animal/object in the name or under the excuse of "art" is something we dont see everyday but it is certainly not new in  anyway.

Burning beats factory party - The Girls

Following the previous post, this is another set of "snaps" that I took in the same event. If someone said that czech girls are cold, maybe is just because he did not know how to approach them. For all this photographs I asked them in my bad czech if I could make them some photos, from all only one say no.

 Flirty model during catwalk.

Mysterious girl from one of the shops.

You can see the whole set in the Burning beats factory party gallery.

Burning beats factory party in Zbrojovka factory.

Last weekend from 10 to 12 of june there was a special event here un Brno at an old gun factory, now abandoned. It was the burning beats factory party, an event that combined, art, fashion and  music under the pretty "underground" atmosphere of an old gun factory Zbrojovka.
These are some photographs from that event in an style more experimental, playing with the  over saturation, the same style I did  with my photos from Lisbon.
Enjoy it.

Speakers from some of the stages, there were many djs playing, each with a unique style.

 

Extras 3 - Petra

Now is the chance for a czech girl, Petra from the city of Brno.

Extras 2 - Viktoria

Today the photographs are from a musician friend from Belarus, Viktoria, she is a very  talented cello player. I have seen her play many times  and she really does it with emotion.

So you know now that you don't have to look only for sexy models, if you a have an interesting girl in front of your camera and your head is full of ideas, simply GO FOR IT, don't be afraid of failure, exploit your imagination, that the results may be better than you expect.

 

Extras 1 - Catherine

When you see a project finished, you always see only a small fraction of the amount of photos that were taken for the project. Many simple won't pass the edition process and other despite the fact that the photographer may like them a lot must be discarded because simply they don't fit exactly  in the thematic of the project due to your project is changing direction or simply it may lower the quality of the final series.

In the following posts I wil share some photographs that sadly won't get to the final edition of the  series I am working now. However I like them a lot, I think they are good and it will be a waste to keep them on a hard drive. 

She is a friend from Russia, studying now in the city of Brno and a wonderful person to photograph. Enjoy it.

Živé sochy - The winner.

Following the story from my previous post, Živé sochy - Living statues in Naměstí Svobody, the winner was the one I called The unemployed. This post is just for him.

He thought it is time to change his life.  

He looked for a job.

Thinking about one add found. 

Decided and in the way to the interview.

Sadly, he did not pass the interview.

Life is like that, keep going.

You can see all photographs in the Živé Sochy gallery of my website.

Živé sochy - Living statues in Náměstí Svobody

Last Sunday there was a contest of  living statues or živé sochy, as it is said in Czech language, in the main square , known as Náměstí Svobody, in the city of Brno.
When I was informed about this event I asked my self, uhm... now how I do I take it? The options I had were:

A) Go and snap the "statues" in a journalistic style. Try to catch how the people interact with them, uhm....  no.

B) Simply portrait them in full body with the buildings, people, etc as a background and in post production change the colors to give them a "sculpture look". Uhmn.. no either, It would had not worked because a good photo of that kind depends on factors I cannot control as the background (it could be ugly or do not match  the statue look), people waking around, etc plus the idea that it would look very similar to many other photographs out there with the same subject.

C) Last one, take a reflector or diffuser, place it behind the subject, as a background, to isolate it from the context and make the photo so I can have just the statue and nothing else to distract.

I liked the last one the most, however it would not be so easy. I did not have anybody to help me to hold the reflector behind the model so I would had to do it. How? carrying with me a tripod or stand like this. Uhm...backpack with camera equipment at my back plus a bag with a tripod and a reflector on the hand, heavy package... no other option, when you really want to do something, you do it.

So I went for it. The square was crowed because there was too a marathon competition. The statues were quite close to each other by a stage where there was a show and me trying to walk between the people to reach the statues. I think I must had been a kind of show, someone just appearing between the people setting a tripod with a reflector, pick a "big" camera with a "big" (my 70-200mm) lens, move around and start to shoot a person pretending be statue.

Everything was going fine until I realized there was another photographer, pretty, by the way, and  I think was a serious hobbyist for the kind of lens she had that was taking taking "advantage" of my setup and making her own photos, I don't mind if someone just snap some shoots but she was doing it with every statue where I set the reflector! so where is her creativity I tough, I mean  if  in any kind of art the goal is to try to be original or come out with something unusual why "steal", I don't mean I am the first with this idea but in that context was my effort to carry and set-up all by self. At the end I did not say anything, being a street show actually give to everyone the freedom to take photos whenever and however of what they want. The good part is that, her action lead me to change my original idea. If at the beginning I had tough with the reflector make a frame inside the photo to isolate it from the environment I decided to avoid it completely simply  extending the reflector edges with the magic of Photoshop.

The results are these, hope you like it.

The cyclist.

 

The flautist.

A virgin or saint?

 

Another flautist.

The musician.

The unemployed.

Who do you think was the winner?

Conceptual portraits - Self portraits.

Lastly I have been working in a series of portraits of women. Portraiture is not a new field for me but this time I wanted to make images that have some mystery or intimacy however during the process I realized that these images were actually more self portraits than portraits of my subjects/models. I became aware that I was not trying to "catch" their  personality, instead I was expressing myself trough someone else face/body/sex gender.

The results are interesting and make me think.

Lisbon Technicolor.

Today I want to share some more photos from my trip to Lisbon.

These two are the sign to show the toilets in the Berardo Museum, collection  of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Cool way isn't it? 

These are statues from The castle of Sao Jorge. 

And the Belem tower, an incredible construction from 1515.

And to finish more graffiti!!!

Choosing the right photography website for you.

Recently a friend request my advice about what company to choose for her first  photo website. Companies like livebooks, creative motion design, bludomain, aphotofolio, etc are good examples of the diversity of options in design and prices a photographer have today. My favourite in matter of  design is Creativemotiondesign.com and aphotopholio.com, each one with their own benefits and disadvantages.

Personally I would recommend the guys from photoshelter. They offer primary an online archive, which is good because you can always access to your original files wherever you are plus some e-commerce options (it means you can sell you photographs as prints or rights managed, straight from your website), unlimited galleries and templates to show your work. So instead of have to prepare you images, re-size them, upload them and then add captions and keywords, simply upload your final file, and photoshelter does the rest (they don't add meta data for you) but the system take it from the iptc info in your file.  If your photo is a .tiff of 200 mb, no problem, and .psd with multiple layers, easy.  They support around 400 formats. As well you can deliver your photos to your clients, friends via private galleries or password protected. Plus some other features like sharing to social media (facebook, twitter, etc), discount coupons for clients and you can customize the templates or integrate them into your existing website  if you know some html or css language.

So why pay, $ 20 or a higher fee just for a website design. If as a photographer all is about the image, keep it simple, Show your images, have the option sell them online and the most important thing  have a back up!!! your hard drives can die, your dvds scratch.

Here some samples, right now my website looks like this:

But I can change it to:

 or:

If you have some galleries that would like to group together, so you can create a collection:

The images can shown in thumbnails:

or in a flash slide show like this:

If you like it you can grab it and paste it on your own blog.

You can buy some photos too:

All from one place.
And of course the password protected galleries: Pictures of a pretty girl. Want to see it? guess the password ;-) is not hard (sorry nothing in life comes easy). I use this option mainly for family photos, as my parents live in Peru and me in Czech Republic, they want to see photos of their grandson,  for me is easy, upload, copy to a gallery which updates in the moment and that's all. They already have the link so they only have to look at it to see how their beautiful grandson is growing.

I think it is the best option out there. I use it to back up my priceless family photos, project files and  of course to show my professional work.
In the other hand if you cannot afford a monthly fee or simply  do not need all of that I would recommend you Creative motion design which I use too for other commercial work but honestly give a try to photoshelter, you will love it.
Ready for it? using this link will give you a discount when you join or share this code with your friends: CA2LX24B6 to use when joining, don't be selfish, everybody likes to save. :)

Ah, by the way, my friend is still thinking about it, some people is so hard to convince.