So we opened a mustache store on Etsy and now I need to photograph some mustaches for a project. Right now I’m keeping it secret until I unveil my line of mustache items. If you know anyone with a big or interesting mustache and willing to have it photographed let me know. Haley took this photo of me last night for the store.
One of the first photo projects I had this year was a shoot with a friend I met a few years ago when I was going to Marshall regularly. Tori had inquired about a photo shoot a couple months ago when I was working with The Disgruntled Clown. We didn’t get around to doing anything until last month. We decided to meet at Ritter Park and before we even got started there were problems. We had planned on shooting in an abandoned floor of a building downtown and after being assured it could be done I was unexpectedly informed we couldn’t shoot there just minutes before we were to start. Not to be deterred I had a back up location…that fell through as well. So here I was with a camera, a model, and nowhere to shoot. Since I’m not from Huntington I texted a lot of people for ideas and Varble pulled through for me. He suggested the basement of Smith Hall at Marshall University. Unfortunately for Tori it was FREEZING. We, however got some good shots there.
After spending about an hour there we exhausted our capacity to withstand the weather. With nowhere else to go we just started wandering campus. The next place we shot was Drinko. Shooting became easier and we hit a stride there.
The windows afforded me an opportunity to tinker with exposure in a way I had never done in a photo shoot. Unfortunately there’s only so much you can do in a place full of people and with a few big windows and only one colorful wall.
The rest of the place looks so dated. After shooting there we were directed to the Joan Edwards Auditorium. We had been told it would be a great place to shoot. When we walked in we laughed because it was so ridiculously early 1990s that it just would not work. After attempting to use some areas of the lobby we, again, opted for some window shots. I decided to tinker with both exposure and white balance. We came out with some pretty cool blue toned photos.
It’s at this place I must stop. We didn’t finish the shoot. We decided that for the last change of clothes we’re going to wait to find the right spot. I think we’ve done that now and all we have to do is schedule a time to shoot.
So for now this blog is to be continued.
For now, if you want to see the rest of the photos from that day click here.
So I tried to get back into the groove of things yesterday. I decided to shoot something. It’s simple but it’s the only thing I’ve shot other than people in a while. Hopefully there will be more where this came from. Maybe I’ll go back to the photo of the day thing that I failed miserably at on day 10 or some ridiculously low number. I’ll attempt another tonight. Don’t expect anything outdoors until Spring.
You’ve most likely noticed I haven’t been blogging lately. You’ve most likely noticed I’ve taken no artistic photography in a while. I have this affliction called hate. I hate Winter. It’s a serious problem for a photographer to have but I simply cannot see the beauty in anything if it’s Winter. I hate it so much. I had planned on conquering that this year but it didn’t happen. At the first sign of snow my heart filled with hate. I stayed cheerful through the holidays to help Haley enjoy Christmas but I can’t stand it anymore. I’m glad it’s all downhill from here. I’m taking necessary steps to restart my artistic endeavours indoors.
Haley and I went to her parent’s for Thanksgiving. On the way there we pass a home that every year has dozens of lawn ornaments outside. I’m told that they were at once for sale. Haley and I stopped in a bank parking lot close by where I got the tripod out and took some shots of a few of them. Nothing too artistic but they’re interesting. I’m going to try to take plenty of Christmas photographs this year so I can get in the holiday spirit; something I haven’t done since I was a kid.
A few weeks ago I had a contest. The winner was a girl named Sharon and the prize was a free photo shoot. We had talked for a few weeks about what we’re going to do but we never really seemed to get it together. What we had discussed was some cool toned, depressive, minimalist photos taken at her home. Well, we never really got that worked out either. Yesterday we met with no definite plans. She came with outfits I’d never seen with a vague idea where she would like to shoot and we were off. I’d never shot so blindly so I was pretty nervous and had little confidence in my ability to adapt to whatever environment I was thrown into. I still get nervous before every shoot, fully expecting myself to fall on my face and not get any good shots. It also didn’t help that she had never been to any of these places either. She was, however, an excellent model and the photos reflect that. Here are a few examples of that shoot. The rest can be seen on my Flickr page.
I’m pretty happy with the results of our work. I’m thrilled with the tonal range of the photos. I’ve been fond of using warm tones in the past and wanted to flex my muscles using cool ones. I think photographers, and artists in general, can sometimes get caught in a rut and produce similar work to what they’ve done in the past. I try to go out of my way to make each shoot very different from the rest, I hope that shows.
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on a regular basis. At least a week. I’ve been very busy trying to wrap up my thesis, which has turned out to be over 100 pages. The current version is making it’s way through my thesis committee and will be given back to me after Thanksgiving, at which point I will revise it a final time. So right now I’m waiting, and while I wait I’ve decided to take on a new project. It’s a version of the 365 day self portrait project but I definitely know people don’t want to see 365 photos of my ugly mug so I tweaked it. Every day I’m going to try to photograph something mundane to me, some everyday thing around the house. If I’m away for the weekend it will be something where I happen to be. The point is to push myself into seeing photographable material, keep me active, and help me practice technique. Haley is currently doing something similar but taking photos of something that represents the day for her. I’ve been doing this for 5 days now with mixed results.
Day 1 was just me wanting to capture something orange, my favorite color. I like the humor of having an obviously candy drink in a juice glass.
Day 2 was an attempt at minimalist black and white, something I’ve done very little of. This is a candle Haley’s had for years.
Day 3…well…I’m not sure what it was. My muse wasn’t working well that day. I was going for shape but I’m not entirely happy with it.
I might be even less happy with day 4’s photo. I’m not done trying to photograph my pipe collection.
And today’s photo is a tribute to my favorite comedian, Eddie Izzard. In Dress to Kill he talks about the Spanish Inquisition and how it would never happen with the Church of England because you can’t have extreme points of view. He cries out, “you must have tea and cake with the Vicar, or you die!” Then goes into his most famous bit about choosing between “tea and cake or death”. I highly recommend Dress to Kill to anyone with a brain, especially anyone with a fondness for history and a tolerance for a British man dressed as a woman. With that, here’s today’s photo.
I’ve not been blogging like I should, I’ve been concentrating on my thesis this week. It’s put me behind on everything else. I definitely wanted to get today’s done though because not only is this one of my favorites, this is several other people’s favorites as well. Had some requests for this one.
By: Aaron Varble
Time slips through your hands in ways that you never thought possible. Have you ever had a moment where you had to widen your eyes, look around you and check your wreck? As I stood on top of Smith Hall, essentially 9 stories high looking down on Marshall University’s campus on that piss cold July night in Huntington West Virginia I really had to check myself. As the rain stung me in the face I looked up next to me, standing on a huge stack of unpacked roofing material was Justin Brock taking a picture of the Huntington skyline. This was the same Brock that had the previous distinct privilege of being the subject of a little game that I liked to call “Annoy the Crap Out Of Brock Until He Kicks You The Hell Out Of His Room” when we went to school at ***** ****** College years prior. I would sit on his bed or an adjacent chair and call Eric Clapton gay or keep asking him how to spell words as he tried to focus on his computer screen or television screen until he would finally break and announce “GET THE HELL OUT!”. And I always did, just to return sometime in the next hour.
“I think we’re getting some really great shots” Brock said as he stood up on top of this probably very unsafe stack of roofing material.
“Great” I said looking back up, having to shield my glasses from the rain. “I hope they work!”
“I hope I get paid” Brock quipped back
“Me too, but god knows I don’t” I said. We were talking about Up Late with Jamie LoFiego. It had already consumed my existence at that point. This is why I was up there, to get some skyline shots of the city of Huntington West Virginia to use on the back lit backdrop of the new set. We were going HD and excitement was in the air. I’m still not quite sure why Brock was up there. He wanted to start taking his photography on a more legit level.
He was always taking pictures, even at ***** *****.
Except he wanted to extent his portfolio beyond photos of the baseball team getting away Scott-free with showing up hours after curfew, and drunk as piss, and offense that would have rendered any other student expelled. Jamie had already seen Brock’s shots, and he liked them. We were going to use a lot of them as bump shots in-between commercials, some pictures I remember him showing me when we were at ***** ***** together. One of them was one of the only reasons that he ever knocked on my door when we lived in the dorms.
“Dude, come down here and look at this picture!” Brock said to me as I opened my dorm door.
“What is it?” I said, surprised to see Brock and not an RA asking, “what’s that smell?”
“Just come down here” Brock said as he turned and went to his room. I lit and incense and walked down the hall to Brock’s. “Check this out!” Brock said to me as he showed me a picture of a haggard looking middle aged Creeker (a resident of Caney Creek) riding a little girl’s bicycle. “What do you think?” he asked. Brock had just gotten a digital camera. I could tell he was enthused in capturing time. It is kinda cool when you think about it.
“I’m gonna take one with **** **** *****” (it is censored because I honestly don’t remember what he said but it was something in nifty photographer speak). Brock said to me as he jumped down from the pile of roofing material. “Then we’re outa here”. As we looked at the skyline of Huntington a red glow was stirring in the horizon, who knows if it was due to the rain, or the cosmic karmic irony that made that night look so damn unusual, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.
“Jamie better like these!” Brock said, “cause I’m not coming back up here again!” (we went back up to that roof to take skyline pictures two more times before it was done)… “And I better get paid” (to this day Brock has not been paid).
“I hope he likes them too” I said looking over at Brock. I walked over to the edge of the roof and starred down at the Bike Night festivities at the BBQ restaurant below us. “Taking Care of Business” blared out over the noise of Harley’s raging. “Not a bad cover, Bachman-Turner Overdrive would be proud” I said.
“It’s a recording” Brock said as we heard the voice of the singer wish someone a happy birthday. “Oops” he said smugly. Brock hoped back up on the stack of roofing materials and checked his shots. The rain was clearing up a bit. “These look good” he said.
“Groovy” I replied as he handed his tripod, now sans camera down to me. As I folded up the tripod I laughed at the chances that my expertise as a producer would extend the entire gambit of Brock.
My first job as a producer was at WWJD (not making that up) as producer of a show called “Brock Talk” a political/social commentary radio call-in show, that if we had an audience that had an intellectual conversational ability that extended beyond hunting, fishing, and NASCAR then it would have been very popular, instead “Brock Talk” was only a venue for other DJ’s to call in to nonsensically plug their own shows, damn shame.
My most recent gig as a producer (executive producer at that) is at Up Late with Jamie LoFiego, a late-night comedy talk show. I had given up on radio as I had already had the epiphany that radio was full of douche bags, and it was also an extremely archaic form of media and moved onto television, but for some reason the gods had put us back together. Brock’s work can be viewed behind Jamie’s desk on a weekly basis now, right along a wide-array of guest of any B-list (or lower) greatness.
Brock packed up his camera, one light-years superior than the one that he cut his teeth on, spying on the privileged baseball in the parking lot across the street from his dorm window 3 stories up. Now he was sporting a camera with gnarly features and digital glory 9 stories up, but still looking over and seeing the same fat douchebag, me.
