Exploration with Culture
Last week my buddy and fellow photographer Paris Gore stepped into Tracy Lang’s Ryderville Ink realm to experience his first tatt. He wanted a skeleton cedar tree. She designed it, sketched it, and then drew it under his skin. It was nice watching a friend feel the pain while photographing. It made my time under the needle more enjoyable (the beer is a prop in the above photo).
Hot off PS6, I’m stoked with my most recent image. Shot yesterday with Casey Zautke of Barn Owl Builds, he and his brother Josh own a customized furniture company. Each piece of reclaimed wood is hand-picked specific for each order. Here, Casey runs a thick fir plank through a joiner in order to flatten its surfaces as they begin constructing a conference table.
Over the next couple of months I’m thrilled to be working with them, creating content for their brand and new website.
Location: Barn Owl Builds – Seattle, WA
Camera/Lens Specifics: Canon 5D Mark III with Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens
16mm, 1/60 sec at ƒ/10, ISO 100, tripod, composite.
Post: LR4 & Adobe PS6
Tracy Lang moves from huge woodblock prints to the art of the tattoo. Welcome the new Ryderville Ink. Unlike any tattoo I’ve seen before, her Tsunami Over Mt. Baker wraps the right shoulder with a pinhole view of Mt. Baker as the body’s shoulder blade carries a wispy yet powerful Japanese-style tsunami over its summit. Bad ass. And if you would ever want a piece of art on your body, it would be by Tracy Lang of Ryderville Ink.
I shot this series of images as Tracy’s friend Shelley from Whidbey Island sat through the final three hours of work.
Having recently connected with International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Seattle Chapter, doors opened to a host of incredibly humbling experiences. Shooting for them takes me back to my travel roots, experiencing other cultures and the people. The above photograph is a group of recently arrived refugees from Nepal and Bhutan who wanted to create a knitting community. The experience being there resulted in the women erupting in traditional song and laughter, with communication spoken via hand and body gesture.
Started in Seattle in 1976, little presence is known of their existence within the city. The continuing goal working with them is to create a library of imagery that they can utilize as posters, thank you cards, newsletters, website material and more. Below are more images taken for IRC’s Seattle Chapter.
A knitting community created by recent arrivals of IRC’s Seattle Chapter
A daughter who recently arrived from Eritrea sees her father for the first time in over one year.
A joyous father is happily reunited with his daughters after flying into SeaTac from Eritrea.
A woman practices job training skills at an activity created by IRC for newly arrived refugees.
A man from Burma studies basic job training skills in Tukwila, WA after arriving to the United States three months ago.
A teacher back in Burma, now faces a new language, a new culture, and a new set of skills acquired at IRC’s job training class.
Denis, a refugee from Bosnia under IRC from over 14 years ago, now volunteers to help new arrivals adapt to American culture and job market.
Learn more by visiting IRC Seattle Chapter
I invited Matt over on an unusually warm late winter day in the PNW. Two ideas: Matt in his element pruning trees outside (above); Matt taking the outdoor technique indoors and getting a little carried away (below).
This blossoming flibert tree (also known as a hazelnut tree) is a sign of the beginning of spring. The pollen on each flower is loaded, and the slightest gust of wind releases plumes of the fine yellow dust. Honey bees were loving it, one of their few choicest sources of food this time of year. Matt climbed the ladder. I positioned lights and posted on top of his car. Snap.
Banzai pruning is an artform, same as large-scale pruning, but on a different level. Instead of setting up Matt to look like a Zen master delicately snipping away at this miniature money tree, I wanted him to look guilty, cutting away his profits with shock and awe. Maybe it also reflects the scale of environmental damage that the fracking on the Bakken Shale in Montana and North Dakota cause, as well as the further advancement of permitting for the Keystone XL Pipeline. As an individual, spending his days outdoors working with trees, Matt chooses the preservation and cultivation of nature over the growth of the “money tree”.
For the Gun Buy-Back Program project, I had to purchase an armory of squirt guns. Instead of letting them go to waste, I laid them out in a different scenario. Could this represent the gun collector at age nine? Or does our adult behavior represent the love and care of our parents and the environment in which we’re raised?
Now this was fun. I brought two of my buddies over with the idea of creating an ad for a flatscreen TV. Composited of multiple images, I slowly pieced through from right to left until the final shot with the action. And we were nervous. I heard of dangerous fumes inside old tube televisions, but this wasn’t that old. So with a couple of deep breaths, some practice swings and snaps, and a wooden baseball bat, we counted down. One. Two. Three.
It was the loudest sound. Bat bouncing off the screen, cracking the wood but not the glass. We were amazed. Maybe he just swung wrong. Second time. One. Two. Three.
Again, this time the bat shattered and our ear drums rang. Okay. Something heavier. With a neighbor’s sledge hammer we felt more confident, more practiced with the swing and the shutter release. One. Two. Three.
Glass everywhere and the beautifully astounding sound of exploding glass. And then the poof of powder, fumes. We dropped our gear and ran out of the house.
All and all, once the dust had settled, the ventilation flowing, a mere two hours with a Shop-Vac and thick gloves cleaned the disastrous mess, revealing a 2-inch thick screen of glass now in a million pieces. The bat never had a chance. A few hours of PS6 later. Success.
An idea pops into your. You’ve been listening to the radio, following current events, examining your place in the constant shifting world. Then the idea takes shape, morphs into words, thoughts, conversations and a variety of imagery.
The gun buy-back program has been incorporating our society. The process flowed through my brain-waves and thus the above image. I wondered about the origins, the beginnings of such violence permeating humanity. Then I read an article in this month’s National Geographic entitled The Left Bank Ape, which explores the unique adaptations between two species along the Africa’s Congo River. The north side (or right bank) are our common ancestors, the chimpanzee, whom we share 98.4% of our genetic DNA, while the south side (or left bank) is the bonobo. And what makes these two species of primates markedly different are their social behaviors; during disputes the chimp is more aggressive, often resulting in death, while the bonobo prefers the tender acts of affection and using sex to solve issues within the community.
Observing today’s violence around the world, I ask: Where did we come from? Where are we going? And what are we doing to get there?
Aaron Kuester is a busy man. With a wife and 3 year old son, work as a steel-shaper of sorts at Kitsap’s Naval base, and an enthusiastic car builder and racer. Currently, he’s working on building a custom Volkswagon Beetle Baja Desert Racer, not necessarily for the Baja 2000 Off-Road Race, but some day… some day.
But with The Sequester approaching on March 1st, 2013, government spending-cuts will affect Aaron and his family. As an employee repairing the steel parts of submarines and naval ships, the full-force of the $85 billion-dollar cuts would mean his 5 day work-week will crunch to 4 days within the 22-day furlough. Anything longer will be technically a lay-off, which Aaron, as well as every other government employee, hopes will remain a distant impossibility for him, his family, and his hobby.
On a quiet President’s Day afternoon, Aaron invited me into his garage, and below are some of the images I created with four strobes, some daylight fill and a little PS6.
Cameron Karsten's Imaginarium 
Photo of the Day: Athena Devouring Her Soldiers
Inspired by Francisco Goya’s 1819-1823 oil painting Saturn Devouring His Son, the above project speaks of humanity’s innate compulsion to send its soldiers into the throes of death. We fight for land. We fight for possession and power. It is our willingness to send man and woman into war; and Athena above, goddess of warfare (and wisdom) unleashes her rage over the very men and women we as a people send into battle.
On the other side of the coin, we also fight for freedom, for a voice, for the ability to live our lives as we choose. There are always two sides, our decisions coming from a place we find within ourselves.
Shot with three Q-flashes, black back drop, and a 6-stop neutral density filter allowing me to shoot wide open, I brought the subject as close to the wide angle lens as possible to create distortion in her face and hands. Goya’s image is offered below for reference.
Location: private residence
Camera/Lens Specifics: Canon 5D Mark III with Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens
16mm, 1/80 sec at ƒ/2.8, ISO 100, tripod.
Post: LR4 & Adobe PS6