—

—

—

Essentially you just put some water in a glass bowl, put something reflective under it and shoot it with a macro lens on a tripod.

Tech-wise, you use a fairly large aperture to get the surreal color blur under the bowl and a lot of light to ensure a fast enough shutter speed to capture the bubbles. You also need a macro lens, but that kind of goes without saying.

Aside from that, the rest of my supplies were a clear baking dish, tap water, canola and olive oils, some glittery wrapping paper and a couple of utility lights.

My first attempts were shot in a window filled (but little direct sunlight) room with 2 hardware store lamps outfitted with 100 watt daylight balanced compact fluorescent bulbs shining bare into the water. The shots below are enhanced very little. I haven’t even cleaned up the stray bits of debris that landed in the water. Here are the indoor shots. Click to enlarge:

Colliding bubbles of oil, slightly soft

—

Small and Large Bubbles

—

Olive oil is what created that oil slick look. Looks like a sun flare, or magnetic field.

—

I just like this one.

—

A little off balance, but I love the background colors.

—

After reviewing the shots, they were softer than I wanted. I needed more light to get a faster shutter speed. Wanting to keep a low ISO, I decided to take my setup out to my front steps and into direct sunlight. With that, I could get the exposure above 1/1000th of a second:

I was whisking the bowl with a chopstick when I shot this.

—

Plain clean bubbles

—

Yet more bubbles

—

Totally unreal

—

Over/Under

—

More strange shapes

—

Looks like cell phone wallpaper

—

At a point I'd made too many tiny bubbles, the water got too dirty and I had to call it a day

—

The more I stare at these patterns, the more I see them wherever I go. I find them soothing.

That man was Domenick Crimi. Cappuccio’s is a family business, but Domenick spent most of the last 20 years working as a professional photographer. Once hearing of the 8 or so of us lingering outside his store, he came out to chat and then invited us inside to shoot the exciting world of sausage making. Next week is the annual 9th Street Italian Market Festival and Dominick was busy preparing 70 pounds of sausage for it. I’ve had his sausages at past festivals and will absolutely have at least 1 this year. Below are my shots from the night. I’d link to the rest of the posse’s photos, but I don’t think any of them are up yet. Click to enlarge:

Domenick Crimi

——

First you grind it

——

Grind it

——

Mix it

——

Then you add the spices

——

Add the spices and some water

——

Then this:

——

Pack it in the sausage stuffer

——

Stuff them in natural casings

——

Repeat late into the night

So every once in a while I’m sitting around trying to attach a SQL database to a laptop when a random request comes my way.

“Steve, Shepard Fairey is coming tomorrow and no one is covering it. Can you shoot it?”

“Yes.”

And with that I found myself covering a very small and almost completely unknown, but supposedly public Shepard Fairey wheatpasting extravaganza up on Girard Ave. It was me and a freelancer sent by the Fishtown Star.

The event itself was pretty awesome. Highlights included the fact that the man himself is a gracious, friendly and by all accounts decent human being… which goes against the norm with a lot of people of his stature and fame. Otherwise it was interesting to hear war stories from his collaborations with Banksy, witness a wheatpaste project from start to finish and finally fulfill my personal mission to ask him about the Toynbee tiles. That cuts my list by a third:

Shepard Fairey ✔
William Gibson X
Larry King X

For the record, he knows of them, but not much about them. My experience has been that most street artists that retain anonymity do so only outside their circle of peers. Within the club, they’re well known. Being completley anonymous has caused the Toynbee tiler to slip completley under the radar… even among fellow artists.

I did explain how non-labor intensive their installation was and encouraged him to explore the medium. I highly doubt anything will come of it.

All in all, it was a good event that totally blew my previous day’s meeting of Tony “no photos” Danza out of the water. Here are some shots from the afternoon. Click on any to enlarge.

—–

Speaking with Students from the Mural Arts Program

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

Chatting with Mural Arts Director Jane Golden

—–

—–

—–

—–

——

—–

Henry Moore with airplane phone

At Home

Highest honor possible, the Congressional Medal of Honor

]]> http://www.steveweinik.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1950 0