John Grade – Middle Fork at the Renwick “Wonder” Exhibition 2016

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Last year we went to an exhibition of installation artists called “Wonder” at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC.  Several artists made very interesting pieces for this show.  Using hundreds of thousands of pieces of reclaimed, old-growth cedar, John Grade built an intricate structure – Middle Fork – based on plaster casts taken of a massive, old-grown hemlock tree in the Cascade Mountains.  At Wonder, I shot cha-cha’s with my Sigma DP1-M and a Sputnik.  Tripods were not allowed, but I was incredibly lucky: each room in the Renwick had a fairly broad chair rail along the wall, wide enough to give good support to the Spud.  The exposures were typically 15 to 30 seconds.

Bazaans A315

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Another model I’ve been working with since 2016, this one is still in town good for more creativity!  With her I’ve been trying to explore what I call “Challenged Glamour.”  THat’s were I create an image that is nominally an ordinary glamour image, but then I put in some details that disturbs or mocks the normal first impression.  

2015 UCI Worlds from Libby Hill

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The Union Cyclisme Internationale held its World Championships in Richmond recently, to the great delight of bike racing enthusiasts all over the east coast, but especially central Virginia.  This view is overlooks the crowds on Libby Hill, the next-to-last climb on the about ten miles around loop of city streets that the riders raced (but they raced something like 15 laps).  Ben King, a Charlottesville native, was in the race (he raced in the Tour De France last year as well), and many C-villains were there to cheer him on.

I shot my pictures of the event all at this basic location.  From the very bottom of the hill looking up, and also from halfway up, and then this view looking down.  You can make out the cobbled road snaking down left and right through the crowd.  This was a very difficult surface to ride on – keep in mind the road is ridiculously steep here, and the cobbles reduce traction on your tires.  Coming around these bends, most riders tried to stay in the gutter, which was made of poured concrete – much smoother.  But the gutter was only ten inches wide or so, right next to the crowd, thus also presented its own difficulties.

I shot a twinned set of GoPros from this location also, trying to capture the action in 3d video.  Alas, one of the cameras was malfunctioning (but I didn’t know it – GoPros will sometimes be failing and not let you know….  not good!), so all I got was the “flat” video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ZElh8q-Ws

You’ll hear a lot of noise in the video which is me fiddling with the Sputnik – I was sharing the same tripod with both cameras.  A twin camera bar held the stereoscopic GoPro enclosure on one side and the Spud on the other.