thelabmonkey

The American dream lives on in (occasionally) sunny Eugene, Oregon.

I was visiting old friends and one suggested we do a pinup shoot. She's got the wardrobe and the smile to back it up, so I thought 'Yeah, let's have some fun!". Little did I know, she was a 50s dream lady waiting to happen!

We did a couple different themes, but this shot just jumped out at me.We were shooting a gardener-theme and one of her house-mates came out onto the porch for a smoke. It was just too perfect! Like he's home after a long day at the, I don't know, rivet factory or something.

Can't you imagine the apple pie on the window sill? The bomb shelter in the back yard, stocked with canned goods in case the Ruskies get any ideas?

This is a shot from a Traditional Indian Odissi dance recital, performed by Mallika Bhandarkar after many years of training.

It was 75 minutes of solo dancing with a 20 minute intermission in the middle. That's a lot of dancing.

She filled fully half of the theater at Cañada College in Redwood City.

The impetus for this whole gold theme was when I acquired a number of gold belts and hand bags for free at a community yard sale that was closing up shop. I figured, hey it's free, I can find something to do with it later...

Fast forward almost two years later and I get a message from June (model) asking me about the gold themed photo shoot idea I had listed on my Model Mayhem profile. It is always great collaborating with someone who is enthusiastic and creative like June!

We talked some about accessories and gold body paints and I decided to see if Miranda (stylist and makeup artist) wanted to join us.

FYI, Miranda is miraculous! The hair piece is real hair extensions, treated and crimped into shape, then sprayed with gold paint. Miranda put some serious work into that. You can also see one of the aforementioned gold belts being used as a head-band!

The gold body paint we found was... difficult to apply... eventually June and I found a technique for sponging it on that was vaguely even, but it was not nearly as opaque as we had hoped for.

It must be said that it did feel somewhat odd to be sponging gold body paint onto a stranger in my kitchen.

My MM: modelmayhem.com/maxjohnson

Model June Huang MM: http://www.modelmayhem.com/junehuang

Stylist Miranda MM: www.modelmayhem.com/stylistmiranda

My neighbor was having a party for her friends with all their 6-18 month old babies all dressed up for Halloween a couple weeks ago. She asked if I would mind taking photos for everyone.

In order to add some variety and to make sure I had something to match any color costume, I converted the studio into three wall sections: white with a big spider, brown with a cauldron, and black with a skeleton and webs. I also had a stuffed bat on a string tied to a yard-stick that the parents could bounce around to keep the babies' attention...

I managed to take photos of 10 babies in 45 minutes! Whew!

I'm gonna be a daddy!

Kristin is 12 weeks pregnant and I've been given permission to un-bag the proverbial cat! The baby is due May 17th, right between my brother's birthday and my own.

Remember summer? The bees do.

I managed to get this shot thanks to high-speed sync on my speedlite 580EX II flash. At 1000th of a second, the mid-day sky actually looks blue instead of bright white. By using the flash in high-speed sync mode, I was able to use it as a fill-light and get everything lit pretty evenly.

Kristina, ever the consummate model, plans her next pinup shoot while doing a pinup shoot. Talk about meta-modeling.

I love this pose so very much. I'm also pleased with the soft, but defined shadow that's being cast on the backdrop. I usually detest shadows in my own work, but this adds a little something.

Yes, that is a big book of Elvgren pinups she is studying...

I do have new photos, but I like the ones from this older set so much I wanted to post one more.

This is from the same shoot as this one:
www.flickr.com/photos/10178669@N00/2461132114

I don't know what that title is supposed to mean. She looks pensive and her hair is highlighted I guess.

This was from my first shoot with a 'real' model, Klaudia. I'd replied to a craigslist request for a trade shoot at Villa Montalvo. It was like a blind-date but without appetizers or the intent to actually, you know, date.

This is actually a candid shot I managed to snap while she was adjusting her dress. I hate that her hands get cut off, but I don't think it ruins the picture...

I also uploaded a second picture from a more recent shoot but I have classified it as "Moderate" restriction, so you'll have to go my flickr acct if you want to actually view it.

This was the product of an impromptu shoot with Elle. Neither of us had any plans on a Saturday night, and I'd bought a massive still-on-the-branch pile of thai chili peppers at a farmer's market the week before.

About a year ago I noticed that just about anywhere I go, I'm looking at stuff thinking "Hey, that could make a cool photo shoot...". Thus the purchase of more thai chilies than any one man should have a reason to own.

Shot on location on the sunny beaches of... my living room! We were trying to recreate a different pinup which featured significantly less in the way of clothing.

That bathing suit is the genuine article (pun intended). It's true classic vintage. Desi did her own hair and makeup as well... beautifully I might add.

I was approached me a while back by a self described neophile (an individual who is unusually accepting of new things and excited by novelty).

She wanted to do a goth lolita shoot. I'll admit, I have only the most tenuous grasp of what differentiates the various flavors of goth dress, but it sounded like fun.

I found a great location in the cement basement of a friend's apartment. Granted, I did have to sweep some broken glass off the floor before this shot was taken, but we were only interrupted once by workers coming to empty the dumpsters by the garbage chute...

Lunch at a cliff-side cafe in Positano, Italy. Kristin and I walked along a sea-side path that took us East of the beach and tourist dock. You can just make out a stone watch tower in the background.

The waitress was awesome. Between my broken Italian and her (admittedly superior) English, plus some gesturing, we established that she thought my camera looked like a bazooka. Hehehe.

What do any of the things in the post title have to do with each other? Nothing, except that they happened last week.

Zombies walked the streets of San Jose last Wed. for the Zombie-O-Rama. I went with a couple friends to watch and take pictures. Grrraaaahhh, braaaaiiins.

At work, I've been doing something that I am pretty proud of. I've been doing research into getting high-resolution normal maps from 2D pictures. For those of you who don't know what a normal map is, it's like a bump map: a picture which describes height instead of color on a 3D model. Very useful for 3D models with simple geometry. Example, a wall with bricks. You can have one big polygon with a normal map, and it looks like the grout is indented.

I've been experimenting with taking a photo of, say, my face with a big soft-box for light to get a diffuse picture (no shiny specular highlights), then pictures in the exact same position with a flash on the right, left, top, and bottom. Then I can get the difference between the diffuse and the diffuse+specular photo to find just the specular reflections. What this does is give me an image that looks kind of like a bump map of all the little pores and wrinkles in my skin ( with dark being indented, and white being raised).

It works remarkably well, considering the do-it-yourself nature of the setup. I was able to get something that looked comparable to a head scanned by a multi-thousand dollar 3D scanner. Yes, it did take some extra work, but if I had everything already set up, I think I could do a head in half a day or less. If I had a little extra money to get a more ideal setup, it would be even better!

This weekend was spent up in Lake Wildwood with Susie and Ray at their lake house. They had an inflatable kayak that Kristin and I paddled around the lake on, and Saturday night we went to a dinner/dance in the park that was a lot of fun.

Sunday, I had my third wedding photo gig, and the first one with 100+ people. It was mostly a favor for a friend of mine was the maid of honor, but I was paid a little. It was a good learning experience, but makes me glad I don't do this professionally. I think I did right by them, but there were some equipment malfunctions that ruined a few non-critical shots. Very stressful.

This was part of a whole set of shots I took with Kristina out in Alviso. There were these mudflats that had a thin crust of crystalline salt. Unfortunately it really was just a thin crust, under which was that greasy, fetid, black mud you get in tidal mud flats.

We were shooting around sunset and it was starting to get pretty chilly. Setting the white balance for tungsten lighting gave everything that icy hue.

She was a real sport, between the salt crystals which burned a little, the icky black muck, and the chilly wind. The things we do for art...

It's a little early for Halloween pics, but since the costume stores seem to be in bloom, I though it was close enough.

I've started shooting more pinups lately. They are really a lot of fun, so I expect there will be more on the way.

First, let me say that I'm sorry if you live in Oregon and I did not get to visit you. It was jam-packed with stuff and driving and driving to other stuff.

( Stuff which is behind a cut since there's a lot of it and a big picture. )

I've still got a staggering backlog of photos from the Italy trip in May. I've been posting a lot of model photos, so thought I'd mix it up.

After Kristin and I were done exploring Pompei, we were, understandably, very hungry. We dodged past the touristy food stalls crowding the exit area and went just a half block down the street.

There was this building with an old leathery guy in a plastic patio chair under a sign that just said "PIZZA". He saw us looking and waved at us from across the street.

Their pizza was probably amazing, from the looks of what other people had ordered, but I could not resist the sweet siren call of grilled swordfish.

One of the successful images from my guerrilla shoot with Lilian sneaking around the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

We found the stairwell appealing because it was opulent, but still afforded a modicum of privacy. Except for when two middle-schoolers came running down, but luckily what was before she was down to her underwear.

Kristina contacted me about doing a martial arts themed shoot a month or two back. She wanted to try to recreate one of the iconic photos of Bruce Lee (this is not that photo, btw), and do some other tough girl stuff.

She had hair and makeup done and looked great, but I wanted to get that bright specular sheen you see when people have been working out hard and there's a layer of salty sweat all over. The solution? Moisturizer first, then a layer of baby oil.