compassionate adventure in Ecuador

Posted on by
1

I’m off to Ecuador early Sunday morning: a compassionate adventure with the winning 3-man team from ABC’s Expedition Impossible (which was a race across Morocco last Spring) as the Modern Gypsies explore Quito, paddle in the upper Amazon region and ascend 18,000 foot strato-volcanoes (Cotopaxi) and then on the back end of the trip dig trenches and lay pipe to restore water to a village in the Andes.  We’ll be there for three weeks. I’m shooting stills and motion with one other cameraman/producer.  Here’s more about the Modern Gypsies.  You can also check us out via our Spot Connect satellite messenger which will be posting our messages and updates laid over a google map: This should be active once we turn the unit on in Quito Sunday night…
Our satellite updates on FB /themoderngypsies and Twitter @modern_gypsies

The Chancellor and the Allosphere

Posted on by
Reply

UCSB Chancellor Yang and his wife stand within the AlloSphere, a large scale immersive laboratory at the California NanoSystems Institute at the university. The AlloSphere is “a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story near-to-anechoic (echo free) cube, allowing for synthesis, manipulation, exploration and analysis of large-scale data sets in an environment that can simulate virtually real sensorial perception.”

Photographed last month, this is the holiday card that UCSB and the Chancellor’s office sent out.  Shot with a fisheye lens from up in the rafters with added red and green lighting and two gridded spot strobes on the sides of the catwalk. When completed the entire inside surface of the sphere will be the visual surface where the researcher at the center manipulates the data around them in 3D.  We experienced a few examples: flying into a human body to observe nanoparticles delivering chemotherapy to tumors without harming healthy tissue,  examining hydrogen atomic bonds surrounding us while speakers provided sound representing electrons changing orbits and finally a giant brain constructed from hundreds of MRI scans to gather data on blood flow.

The UCSB Chancellor and his wife stand within the AlloSphere

Running from the total lunar eclipse

Posted on by
Reply
The setting lunar eclipse, up at 3700′ on Camino Cielo at 6:25am with Sarah Mandes. Our first shot. The sky a few minutes later lit up with twilight and the moon faded into the sky as we shot some great wide landscapes of the “sky road” above SB.  Sarah was out this weekend visiting from DC, her new home since leaving SB this past Summer. An awesome runner, this month she’s in both Runner’s World and TrailRunner magazines from our shoots earlier this year.

The setting total lunar eclipse behind a runner.The setting moon in full eclipse is pretty small in this wide shot. Santa Barbara down below on the left, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands 20 miles off the coast. Gibraltar Rd winding up to us. Twenty minutes from my house: another world. To the right is wilderness for 50 miles.Camino Cielo sunrise and lunar eclipse moonset above Santa BarbaraRunning at Sunrise on Camino Cielo Later on in the day she also took part in my Falling Water series which has so far featured Christine here and started with fellow photographer Logan here as my first brave subject.Kevin Steele Falling Water Series

SolsticePeople gallery opening this evening

Posted on by
Reply

This is the second year I’ve created ad hoc studio portraits at the beginning of the Solstice Parade. Last year I approached Claudia Bratton with the idea and she promptly amplified it into action, securing the studio space in the perfect location. I was really not sure what to expect but was prepared for anything.  To put it simply: the project rocked. It’s led to exciting creative projects and assignments and provided a lift to the community both in it’s meager financial support of the Summer Solstice Celebration but also in the smiles and high fives from all of those who participate in this wonderful parade :-)

The Jungle theme this year brought out the wild side, the cats and animals, the urban junglers and primitive costumes alike.

This year I shot a little differently, blown away by the “accidental” Mad Hatter image last year when I had to step back to fill the frame, I loved the idea of capturing the whole set.  The images in this years book are actually cropped in quite a bit from the full frame of the whole scene which was shot on a very high resolution Hasselblad 40Mpixel medium format camera.  The full frames are incorporated into a stop motion movie sequence as are two other synchronized cameras that captured the events from different angles.  I wrote about the setup on my blog here.
Hundreds of prints will line the walls. Stop-motion projections will play on the neighboring building and a gallery book, 8”x8”, with all of the 100+ characters will be available. Fifty percent of the proceeds benefit the Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Celebration.

Ad campaign for St John’s Health Center

Posted on by
Reply

I had forgotten to post this shoot – both a print ad campaign (billboard, buses) and a short motion piece for their website that we filmed the same day.  The concept was authentic people, real former patients, with stories to share of their comforting experiences with the caring staff of St John’s in Santa Monica during difficult times.

Meagan, intern and assistant earlier this year, standing in for the light test.

Opera Campaign – Promotion Stills

Posted on by
Reply

Earlier this year I shot a series of location scenes for the 2011-12 Opera SB ad campaign. It was definitely one of the most fun shoots this year. I blogged about it back in May, including some behind-the-scenes photos. The first Opera “La Boheme” debuts this Friday at the Granada.  Last month, as the actors arrived from around the country to rehearse the production I created a set of production and publicity stills, shot in courtyards off De la Guerra, turning SB daylight into Parisian cafe evenings: