It is amazing what can be done with makeup and lighting tricks. Vogue Paris did a photoshoot with a single model, changing only makeup, hair styling, and lighting to show ages ranging from 10 years old to 60.
For those of you who care to know these things, I am kinda-sorta going to be in Aida in a few weeks. I did not audition for the show and I did not particularly want to be in it, but somehow things worked out that I am going to be in at least 8 or 9 performances. I am going to be what they call a ‘swing’ for several people in the show. Basically, I will be filling in for cast members (2 to be exact) who have perforance conflicts. The cool thing about it, is that I do get to do the show, but without the full-time commitment that shows normally take. I will be performing one part the first weekend of the show, and a different part the third weekend. For those who don’t know, Aida is a relatively new musical with music written by Elton John based on the story of an older Opera. The story is set in Egypt and is somewhat but not really, kinda-sorta a Romeo/Juliet type of thing. From the few rehearsals I have been at, this show is going to be incredible. The voices are outstanding, and the dances are fantastic. The rehearsals for the dances are not quite as fantastic. I was sore for three days following the first dance rehearsal.
In other news, it is not looking like I am going to be doing 1776 at this point, despite the earlier impression I had. I will, however, be auditioning for The Fantasticks in a couple of weeks. We shall see how that goes.
Regardless of your personal feelings on the subject, a gallop poll from a couple of months ago would suggest that as a whole, the Republican party has lost touch with the US population as a whole, with only 4 states even leaning toward republican. Someone, somewhere needs to come up with a better gameplan, or we might be seeing a new party rise up and replace the republican half of the dual party system we have going here.
In another instance of my photography showing up places, The Consumerist, a popular consumer rights website used an edited photo of mine for an article. The photo was orignally a mock fight between my wife and her step-father during her sister’s wedding a year ago.
For those of you who don’t live in Brevard County, Amy and I recently entered a photo contest hosted by Florida Today, the local newspaper. The contest was associated with a photography exhibit at the Brevard Museum of Art, which featured Annie Leibovitz portraits of women. As such, the contest theme was “Women”. Fortunately for me, I am married to a woman, so we set out trying various shots. We ended up with this:
Amy has gotten a lot of flack for the photo, presumably because you can’t see her clothes. For the record, yes she is in bed in this photo and fully clothed. Her shoulder just happens to be hiding her shirt strap.
That being said, this was exactly the expression we were trying to get. Amy has this thing she does when she does something embarrassing, cute, or any number of other things. She will hide behind whatever is available, be it a blanket, hair, her hands, whatever, and slowly peaks out. That is pretty much what is going on here.
Technically speaking, the photo was taken with my new Canon XSi with a 50mm F/1.8 lens. I was also using a 430 EX II top-mounted flash that I recently bought from the soon-to-be-gone Circuit City. Other than the conversion to Black and White, the only other editing was a slightly lightening of her eye which was shadowed a bit too much.
As most everyone in Brevard already knows, we won first prize in the judged half of the contest which was fun. This basically amounts to a big photo in the paper and a year membership to the museum. The article in the paper also had a short interview from me:
Our judging panel included Steven Maklansky (the incoming president of the Brevard Art Museum), Malcolm Denemark and Pam Harbaugh (yours truly, arts writer and theater critic for FLORIDA TODAY).
Coming in first among the judges was Jonathan Goforth, 28, of Merritt Island. He used a Canon Rebel XSi, a 50 mm lens and a top-mounted 43 EX2 flash to take this photograph of his wife, Amy.
“We took a whole bunch of pictures. Probably 30 or 40 for this one. . . . It’s her expression, something she does. I find it very cute. I shot it on that white fabric, it just
stood out better. I guess the skin tone, the colors, seemed distracting to me. Her face got framed in the pure white of the fabric. It made it stand out better to me.”
He said his visit to see the Leibovitz exhibition expanded his view of photographic portraiture and influenced his own work.