So I’m still on the road. Had some more bad luck en route. Within 24 hours after the rear-ending incident, I got a flat tire when shooting near the Salt Flats. Things got worse late that night, a coyote (!) an out in front of my car and met its unfortunate end. The front of my car also met a mangled fate… So now my car is pretty messed-up looking. I taped the front bumper together, and cut off dragging bits of plastic, but it needs some extensive body work when I get to Michigan. After all this, I stayed and my uncle’s place in Denver, relaxed a bunch, played GTA IV and John Carpenter movies huge via a digital projector, ate yummy food, and did another shoot while there.

Anyway, I’ve just posted shots from working with two very awesome models in Berkeley CA, as I left town:

Mylen, who you can see my shots of here and here.
or check out large versions on my Flickr (click the thumbnails):

and Mirela:

…who you can see here and here.
or check out large versions on my Flickr (click the thumbnails):

I’ve been focusing on getting more commercial fashion stuff in my portfolio, and these two add quite a bit to that. I look forward to working with both of them again, once I get back to California.

So thing have definitely changed since my last post.  The place I was going to stay at in LA fell through, and I also ran into money problems. All this happened in the last week. Yayyyy… Thus, I have to put off the LA move for a couple months. My lease is up in SF though, so I’m moving back to Michigan probably until February ‘09… to save up some cash and help my parents get their house ready to sell.

I’m pretty bummed about it, so I gave myself a consolation prize. Instead of heading straight back to MI, I’m going on a leisurely road trip, visiting friends and family, and doing a bunch of photo shoots on the way. So far, I’ve hit up Ventura CA, Los Angeles CA, Las Vegas NV and Salt Lake City UT. Tomorrow - after a shoot in the salt flats - I’m heading to Denver CO to visit my uncle, then on to Omaha NE, then Chicago IL, then finally Michigan.  I’ve already done 5 photo shoots since I left, and have a few more scheduled, so I’ll have a bunch of new stuff to showcase over the next few weeks…

The trip has been fun… two bad things happened though…. First, I got a call from the data recovery lab. They can’t salvage anything on my hard drive. Thus, I’m basically going to have to start over. I can recover some of my work through friends, and through hi-res scanning of prints, but some is lost forever, except for the small-size images you can see on this site. Thus, I’m going to have to put off the “buy prints” section of my site a little longer, until I get new stuff to sell.  I had a couple weeks now to prepare myself for this outcome, but I thought they’d be able to recover at least some of the data, since the hard drive was at least responding somewhat. Shows me to trust a hard drive (even though it was only a year old).

The other bad thing that happened was tonight in Salt Lake City, some guy came up too fast behind me at a stop light and rear-ended me…

This picture doesn’t quite do it justice. I’m going to have to get a new rear bumper and hatch door. Sucks man… I just got the car last year, and it’s my baby.  This picture pretty much sums up the trip so far.

Anyway, off to sleep. I have a very bizarre, interesting shoot in the flats tomorrow, which will later be turning into an illustrated-photo piece. It’s an idea I’ve been wanting to shoot for two years now… More updates later!

Hey everybody. Things have been very hectic with packing up for the LA move, but there’s a big event you should attend this weekend if you’re in the Bay Area… Alternative Press Expo (APE, for short)

SATURDAY November 1st 11am - 7pm
SUNDAY November 2nd 11am - 6pm

The Concourse  - 620 7th Street, San Francisco  (Directions here)

More info here.

This will be my third year tabling at the show, with my usual gang of comic-making buddies…  Ryan Sands, Hellen Jo, Anthony Wu, Derek Yu, and Calvin Wong.

We will be at table #415, listed in the program as “The Bang Gang”. That’s in the back-left corner of the main exhibition floor. (here’s a map)

Ryan and I will be showcasing our two recent big projects:

Electric Ant issue 1: Our baby. A collection of comics, short stories, nonfiction, art, lists, etc. Some of the many awesome contributors include Hellen Jo, Aaron K, MC Lars, Gea, Derek Kirk Kim, Anthony Wu, Michaela Collette, Derek Yu, Eric Nakamura, Julia Wertz, and many more.  Ryan created, edited and published it. I did much of the layout and illustrations. Also edited by Alice Kim. The official launch date is November 1st.

Tokyo Zombie: Yusaku Hanakuma’s slapstick zombie judo bonanza that we adapted into English.  Ryan was editor and translator. I did lettering, touch-up art, and book design.

Also, I will be selling prints of my illustrated-photography.

Hope to see you there! Come on by and say hi 

Hi kids.  First off, I wanted to highlight some shots I did of the lovely Kristine. Click the image below, or click here to see more…

There’s a lot of things going on right now…. some good some bad.  The bad first.  My hard drive decided to die last week, and I hadn’t backed up to DVD in a long time (argh).  Took it to a computer wizard but he wasn’t able to extract any data from it, so now I’m going to take it to one of San Francisco’s expensive data recovery specialists… Not sure which one yet, but I definitely need to get that data back (all my recent art).

In good  / stressful news, I am moving soon.  I’ve been in San Francisco for almost four years now, and it’s been great, and if I had my way, I’d stay here for a lot longer, and make my career happen here.  Problem is, it seems like SF is not the best place to make a photography career happen. Also, since I intend to do more commercial work in the world of automotive photography, it seems clear to me that LA is the place to go. So with a heavy heart, I am leaving SF on the 3rd or 4th of November, and heading to the city of (fallen) angels. It just seems like a better place for me to be, career-wise… so if you are looking for a good photographer, call me up!  Make this move worth all the stress! (jk)

So a couple weeks ago, I met up with my friend Star and her friends (including Marie, who I had the pleasure of meeting last year) in San Luis Obispo, at the Madonna Inn. (You can see Star’s posts about the trip - so far - here, here and here.)

The point of the trip was to exploit the bizarre / whimsical / schizophrenic looks of the Madonna Inn, and take lots of photos of photogenic people.  I took a ton of pics, but here’s just a couple for now….

Reed, shot in the leprechaun room

Audrey, shot in the cowboy room

To see another pic of Audrey, click here.

I have more to post (much more)…. other new photos. good news. bad news. but I’ll save that for later this weekend…

Hey kids. I just finished a new illustrated-photograph, the third in my post-apocalyptic series… “Lone Wolf”:

I did this shoot in Detroit with the lovely alternative model & Suicide Girl, Vivka, during my recent visit home.  It’s been a while since I got a chance to explore an abandoned building (not as many of those in the Bay Area), so this was super fun. Vivka and I did another shoot while I was there, but I’ll probably be illustrating that a couple months down the line, as life is super busy right now.

Another recent thingy, although I didn’t blog about it before… I took some publicity shots of a local rapper, “Venom”, and his car. Check those out here. Here’s a shot of his car:

Other than that, I’ve been doing product / lifestyle shots for the fall lineup of Infectious. I’ll post some of said shots when the product lineup is live.

In other - major - news… I’m moving to Los Angeles at the beginning of November.  I (and everyone else in my company) got laid-off a month ago, since the company is shutting down.  I’ve been doing freelance photography and graphic design this past month, but I’m thinking if I really want to benefit my photography career (especially for automotive photography), I need to get down to LA. Right now seems like a better time than ever to take a chance. Thus, after tabling at Alternative Press Expo in SF (more on that later), I’ll be moving.  Life is crazy, as usual!

Here’s my newest illustrated-photograph piece, hot off the Wacom….

"Sniper". It’s the second in my post-apocalyptic series (as started with The Equestrian )

This is the result of the third shoot I did with Katie Soo. We shot in Alameda, CA, with a loose idea, but luckily, her boyfriend had a huge collection of air guns for me to choose from for props. It was a lot of fun…

Here’s some behind-the-scenes outtakes:

Also, my apologies to anyone on Safari, IE, or Chrome for whom there might be oddities in the CSS layout. I’m really not a programmer by trade, and until I can get someone to help me fix the layout weirdness, for now it looks best in Firefox.

So while I was in Michigan / Columbus, I did a lot of photography. I was most excited to shoot with my old friend / best muse Dawon… We did some fashion / swimsuit shots, as well as something ridiculous which I am working on now and will soon post…. (hint: the robots are back!)

Anyway, click below or here to see more of the swimsuit shots…

Sorry for the super-long delay in posting. I was attacked by a zombie horde . I got busy with day-job stuff and went out of town for a week…

in mid-August I shot with Katie Soo . We did a couple of fashion shoots (which I have uploaded here ) and shot some crazy photos that I’ll be using for an illustrated-photo.

In other news, When I was in Michigan & Ohio this past 10 days, I did several shoots…. More about those soon… Right now I am jet lagged & sleeeeeeepy….

Hey kids. I just finished a long and laborious new illustrated-photo work… "Automaton JDM "

JDM stands for "Japanese Domestic Market". This is the sequel to "Automaton Classic ", which I made in spring 2006. With this one, I really wanted to make a significant jump over the last in regards to detail, setting, atmospheric lighting, and impact. This piece is made of 26 different Japanese cars & motorcycles (production and concept) that I shot in Japan and in the US. Bonus: the main red car in the chest plate is actually my Mazda3. A few other vehicles includes are the Nissan GT-R, Honda Evo 6 concept, Nissan March, Mitsubishi i, Mazda Demio, Mazda Furai concept, Mazda Taiki concept, etc… The background is at the Ebisubashi Bridge in the Dōtonbori area of Osaka, Japan.

If you’d like to see a detail of Automaton JDM, go to its gallery page ….

I’ve been so busy this past few months, and I’m finding myself not being able to just focus and make as much free-time art as I’d like. However, even though I don’t have the time to make the quantity of work I once did, I’m trying to compensate for that by making very deluxe illustrated photos this year. (quality over quantity).

Aaaaanyway, on to the next piece …as well as back to work on the zine (more about that later). See you soon!