Archive for December, 2008

This kid doesn’t have potential. Potential implies that you’ll be good some day. He’s already there.

It was snowing here in San Francisco’s Dogpatch district, so Mark and I ran to the roof of the Revision3 building to catch some of the snow fall on video!

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Happy Holidays to you all.  The biggest inspiration for this photo was “Dali Atomicus” by Philippe Halsman shown below. The dynamic nature of the photo is amazing, and as Alison pointed out, the “madness” theme of the photo is perfect for Dali. And I suppose, by default, for us as well.

According to http://galadarling.com/article/dali-atomicus:

“This photograph was shot live. It took 26 attempts, & over five hours to get it to look like this.”

First of all, amazing.  Second, there’s no way in hell I’m going to toss my cat in the air multiple times.  Instead I gently held her in position, then photoshopped any suspicious fingers out of the way, added her motion blur, and drop shadow to the wall, all in post production.  In retrospect, there was a bit too much post production in our photo.  But with no assistant and low lighting (diffused lampshades, china balls, and tracked ceiling spotlights, all of different color temperatures), we had to composite everything to get everything and everybody in focus.  I also took the liberty to perfect our skin using some of the many tricks available online. Not… that anyone need skin clearing… I swear.  My scarf was held up by Ali with a coat hanger, which was also shopped out and motion blurred added after the fact.  The sepia/vignetted nature to the photo was whipped up using a modified template in Adobe Lightroom, my photo processing software of choice.

Next year, less compositing (which led to some of my least favorite aspects of the photo) and more of the Philippe Halsman’s live approach.  Maybe even a strobe kit if Santa is good to me.  We shall not “fix it in post”.

PBR Lean, originally uploaded by maubrowncow.

Good times at the uptown last night. The Canon SD600 has less than ideal picture quality, but sometimes some heavy grain is perfect. As is Mark Rebec’s sense of symmetry.

Here’s a great video for N.E.R.D.’s “Sooner or Later” with a stock market crash theme featuring a Rob Dyrdek cameo at the end. The Virginia boys are still skaters at heart.

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I made this “mash-up”, mainly to see what it would really sound like to slow down the chipmunks “Christmas Time is Here” as mentioned in Patton Oswalts skit on “Christmas Memory”.

Once I had it slowed down, I was by chance, listening to Royksopp’s “Triumphant”, and well, this mashup happened.  I even tossed in a little Charles Webster, Human League, and Queen just for good measure.

It ended up on Oswalt’s site about 4 years ago.  So here it is again.  Enjoy the holidays.

Originally released 1971. I stumbled across this gem on BBE’s Funk Rock compilation while flipping thru Claremont’s Rhino Records.  There’s very little information offered on the interenet regarding this band, which give me more reason to want to get my grubby paws on this record.

Those guitars are NASTY. And the drum break is hot butter on your breakfast toast.

RSPCA - Simon’s Sister’s Dog ‘Fed Up’

Guilty.

Here’s a little video of the massacre that was cupcake camp I whipped up this morning. The place with a sugar high madhouse.

Cupcake Camp 2 free for all. from Maubrowncow on Vimeo.

btw. The HD quality of this vimeo video is far better than youtube’s.

Or as Moujan Z called it, “Cupcake Massacre Camp”.  People were a little too physical.  Putting down a tray of cupcakes with tantamount to a hockey referee throwing down a puck on the ice for a face off.  Here are a few photos from the 1,845,120 photographers at the event.