Archive for the ‘dance photography’ Category

some new old work done today

July 28, 2010

sometimes i do shoots with the sole purpose of working on them later in photoshop to achieve what my vision is. this series is a work in progress with many fits and starts and today was no exception.

i had lots to do other than going to the farmers market and buying fresh vegetables but it was the time to sit here trying to make a few, well actually two images  happen. but the jury is still out on one of them while i love what happened with the other one.

so i’lll try and let you into my mind a bit and ‘show not tell’ one of the few things i learned in screen writing at ucla.

this is what i began with in the studio, mary made the costume as she has a sewing machine from my idea

abstract dancer suit

dancer suit

here is the final image i originally envisioned. it’s a composition of three different images reworked via layers in photoshop

birth of the tree of life

born of the tree of life

this process i learned from a very talented director i worked with on As The World Turns, Paul Lammers, adapted for sure to what i am doing now but always kept in the back of my mind. tricks sort of act that way, it has come in very useful over the years but like anything good only has limited uses.

untitled

now this image is straight from the session, notice the different quality of smoke and how it affects the photograph, while the images works on it’s own i don’t think it as powerful as the previous image.

here is the another image from the same session that i’ve done a number of times and i might get one that i really like but this will do for now

man nude birth

born of

i guess you can see that i have a thing about birth. it all comes from seeing a movie when i was young showing natural childbirth i was fascinated and i still am by the whole process, but it goes by so quickly i hardly remember seeing my own sons head pop out then body sliding into the nurses hand.

who knows really what generates our creativity. i am happy to be away from the hungry ghosts of the past and to be able to have days like today with a farm fresh vegetable salad for dinner.

don’t you just love summer?

jene

update on Dance New Amsterdam studio rally, what you can do

July 22, 2010

i’ve been corresponding with Martha Chapman about DNA loosing their current home and city hall demonstration in the rain.

lone dancer (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Dance joy (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

it really would be a great losses to this fair city to loose a very nice performance and studio space in the city. i know DNA is furlonging their staff to keep expenses down so it’s hard to get more information about what’s actually going on there. but you could do dear reader is write and send an email to Hon Mayor Bloomberg expressing surport for DNA here and ask the mayor to help in this matter. write of call 311 ask for the mayors office and speak up for our arts and culture.

does the city really need this space and monies or does the city benefit more from having dancers dancing.

i’d hate to see groups of dancers hanging around on street corners dancing for spare change or food.

c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

NY1 covered the rally and heres a link to NY1’s story because a picture tells a better story than i do. also New York Daily news covered the event see their link or one can go to DNA’s facebook page to keep up late developing news. better yet go directly to DNA’s web page for class information.

Keep dancers dancing (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

New York Photo Festival submission

May 1, 2010

well today, at midnight, is the deadline for submission to New York Photo Festival and i’ve been racking my brain, what little i have left, for images to submit as a series.

i am not crazy enough putting together a catalog & price list for my Burlington Vt show next week so late least night i said oh well just pick one strong image. who cares i never win these things anyways, just like the lottery which i’ve never won either. just the other day i asked a photographer if he’d look at my portfolio and make suggestions. short answer was he didn’t know me well enough to give me an honest answer. that was an honest answer, not the one i was looking for but honest, that’s why i approached him.

but none of this is either here or there and i am just as confused now as to how and where i might try and market my wares. but our conversation did lead me to saying that i didn’t need to sell my work but i would like to, send my children, as i think of them to good homes. making money to  pay for expenses isn’t  a bad idea either.

so i sent my little image somewhere in the world to have someone glance at it for maybe two seconds before they move on. i do make these things because i love to be creative and it keeps me from wondering what the soap characters are doing now.i get such a kick out of discovering, comes from my darkroom days, images as they develop or even appear on the screen.

tada

female dancer

woman in white

jene

new york photo festival outtakes or maybe intakes

April 27, 2010

i am trying to select a series of photos to enter in the NYPF that closes 5/1/10 and i am finding it really hard maybe because of the amount of images 5 to 15 and what might at least win. win what ever? my work is somewhere between photography and……….. well i really don’t know. yet today i got a check from a gallery for one of my images selling. some people buy my work and i am always surprised.

the real fun about entering these contest is going through my hard drives looking for images and finding some like the ones below.

but i always knew about this since i have prints of this hanging on my wall, these were done 2008 so that was some time ago but the other images i had forgotten about. this image below is from a completely different session using the same red cloth but in a totally different way.

red cloth wrap

one is a dancer the other is not, but the cloth is still red silk. the reason i think these images work besides them being lovely young women in shadows is for the red silk. the one below i remember working on the cloth bring out the redness but i had forgotten about it.

female nude

letting go

it reminds me of a crane or stork.

a lovely image  the way the light reveals the female body yet keeps the mystery. this is one of the reason i left the manhattan figure study & lighting workshop. i need to work on my own discovering these moments. i also don’t like to share my work even though i do.

it’s like my personal relationship with mary, a journey, discovering new things along the way. that’s life

just my opinion

jene

Bellyqueen performance, 3/28/2010

April 2, 2010

last sunday 3/28/2010 i designed lighting for this concert and brought my camera along, hey you never know. besides designing the lights i did the projection screen and put up the red fabric to give the show some production value. the Kraine theater is a small black box with a running show in place. we couldn’t do much focusing so all i had a chance to do was re-gel some lighting, otherwise we would have had no warmth to our show.

bellyqueen performance kraine theater nyc

i also ran the lighting board during the show and took these pictures from the booth. Kaeshi Chai the artistic director of Bellyqueen had some people come in and tape the show which i haven’t seen yet. this whole production was a family affair like one of those showbiz movies from the 40’s.

yes i did mange to get some in focus pictures but i find these types more interesting.

Bellyqueen performance

jene

writing LMCC proposal or wasting time looking for something found

March 23, 2010

today i am trying to finish up a Lower Manhattan Culture Council application for a workspace. this is my first time application for anything of this kind. seems collage people take classes in this or are born with these qualities. for me it’s a big push, not in doing my artistic work,  just writing about it. glad i took those creative writing courses at the new school. i am sort of stymied at doing a resume, i don’t want a job, i’ve had too many of those. all i want out of this is a clean space to work.

so i needed to put together a cd of images and all the ones i selected are a few years old, lets dig through a HD and see what i can find, it’s always interesting.

indian female dancer

Parul Shah Dancer

these images are part of a commission work for the Parul Shah Dance company advertisement but are my outtakes. originally they had me shooting in a dance rehearsal studio way too small and ugly background, but ‘all we need are the images and we’ll photoshop the background out.’  OK

Parul Shah Dancers

but i think listening to me and doing these images in a more controled enviroment is better for the images, but hey what do i know

Parul Shah Dancers

these images are from  reshoot in my studio because my camera canon 20d at the time stopped working. it does that every once in a while oh well. so we did these the next day. but i can’t remember if they were happy with the other images or what but i got a couple for me.

female indian dancer

Parul Shah Dancer

odd that some people come through my life briefly and i never hear from them again while others keep in touch, life is that way.

jene

two gallery openings last night

March 12, 2010

last night i made the effort to leave my safe warm house to attend two photography show openings. the first gallery was the Aperture Foundation Gallery and Bookstore opening of ‘Angry Black Snake’ by Michael Corridore which runs from 2/25/2010 thru 4/8/2010, 547 W 27th street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10001.

In the words of Aperture book publisher Lesley A. Martin, “Corridore’s project, Angry Black Snake, is an exercise in minimalism. Each image has been pared down to the barest of elements—urgent gestures and barely traceable figures cloaked in smoke and dust. Yet each image pulses with palpable emotional tension, telegraphed by these barest of representational sketches and the subtle shifting colors of the clouds that descend upon each scene like a flimsy curtain.”

but what i found really exciting at aperture  was the exhibit ‘ No Singing Allowed‘ Flamenco & Photography which runs 2/6/2010 thru 4/6/2010,  with prints supplied from collections from all over the world. Yes they have an accompanying book for sale. in the web page notes

Whether as social phenomenon or musical expression, flamenco has been of enduring interest and inspiration to photographers from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. While some photographers from outside of Spain went in search of it or encountered it by chance, to others flamenco and its practitioners are an essential, if not innate, aspect of their cultural heritage and their photographic work. This artistic form—also considered a way of life or being—has generated fascination in cultured urban circles, remaining one of the most secret, mysterious, and seductive manifestations of twentieth-century European popular art. Marginalized and ostracized, the world of flamenco took root in an economically backward region of southern Europe, culturally peripheral and marked by a history of authoritarianism and local despotisms. This exhibition of more than one hundred and fifty years of images, frequently taken by foreigners rather than Spaniards, is an extensive survey of how photographers of different eras have approached the universe of flamenco, whether documenting the dance itself, gestures that recall it, or the culture that is developed around it.

way cool was the best discovery of the night Wendy Paton’s work at Sous Les Etoies Gallery, 560 Broadway,#205, NY, NY 0012, 212 966 796, runs from 3/11/2010 thru 4/30/2010. her show is called Visages De Nuit consisting of a series of gelatin silver black & white candid night images that are intended to provoke compelling and mysterious emotions of uncertainly .

wendy paton

wendy paton

the gallery program says Wendy Paton ‘allows herself to disappear in order to let her subjects emerge from the night.’ ” my experience is that people act differently a night. they let their guard down.they become who they really are, or they transform themselves into someone,real or imagined,that the want to be. there are seemingly no restrictions at night. life seems to become more free flowing as opposed to how people tend to act in the light of day” she says.

but at the opening Wendy was the shining light with her red hair,  busy talking to everybody, it surely was her night and she looked lovely. good luck

jene

letter reply from Canon CEO & President Mr. Adachi, 5D MK II

February 23, 2010

Your recent letter to Mr. Adachi has been forwarded to my attention for reply. I sincerely appreciate your concerns and would like to apologize for any misunderstanding you may have encountered during your visit at the 2009 Photo Expo.

The EOS 5D MK II is the first and foremost a still image camera, and offers the ability to make high quality video clips. Unfortunately, HDMI output at 1920 X 1080 is not possible as the camera is not capable of handling the massive amounts of data written to the card, and output an HD signal via the HDMI port at the same time. This is why Live View is limited to 640 X 480 resolution.

The firmware update you are referred to in your letter, is intended to be released sometime during the first half of 2010. There was no release scheduled for January. When the update is released, we will see what frame rates the firmware offers.

As for the other features you mentioned as being absent from the EOS 5D MK II, they may be considered for a future product.

I hope this information is helpful to you and once again appreciate your interest in Canon.

Miichael Schimmel
Customer Relations.

This is what happens when one sits down and actually writes a letter  to a company. this is how companies do business via written letters. what with all this tweeting, emails and blogging just communicating the old fashion ways still works.

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

February 20, 2010

This group is performing ‘ TAKE ROOT’  tonight saturday Feb.20,2010 at Greenspace at 8:30.

Greenspace is located at 37-24 24 Street, Long Island City, Queens, NY, 718 956 3037, second floor room 301, yea i know save your self a flight of stairs.

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

leader of the pack

We  KineticArchitecture and I, met via Craigslist when they were looking to redo some publicity photos and these pictures come from a tech dress rehearsal done last night.

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

one of the pieces

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

another section

one of the descriptions of this performance is if

‘Butoh & Burlesque had a baby.’

This is my first time working with this group as our other section was posted earlier on fuzzypictures .  I had no say in the lighting of these pictures as the space has a stage manager / lighting designer who did the lighting. I felt lucky to get what I did out of this session.

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

duo

Greenspace is an interesting performance space  with wonderful western exposure windows overlooking the Queensboro Bridge.

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

three women

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

lone woman

kineticArchitecture butoh/burlesque company

dancers

wedding cake

all brides are beautiful

so if you have time tonight go see this wonderful troupe of performers, make your way to LIC or look around for their next performances. Something to keep your eyes open for.

Jene Youtt

http://www.jeneyoutt.com

C4FAP ‘Motion’ selection

January 29, 2010

well i’ve had one of my images selected for a c4fap Motion shows coming up this spring. i also have a cold as does mary, these things happen when we are out and about in the world.

nude female leaping upward

Ascending

i’ve made a package for the image and have downloaded the forms needing to accompany the framed print. one really should never have to read instructions and understand them when one doesn’t feel good. it’s just too much to understand nor wanting to comply with. i’d rather lay down on the couch, turn on tv and see what’s going on in soap opera world and put my head gently down on a pillow waiting for oprah to come along and lull me to sleep.

i’ve time to think about all this and since it’s 23 degrees outside i don’t need to trudge off to UPS and send the package. besides they want an artist statement. do you think they accept a note saying i’d rather take a nap?

i’ve plenty of time as the show isn’t until march 19 thru april 17 2010.

busy week as i am going over to meet the people who run the 52nd Street Project tonight and see one of their shows. the project is about helping the neighborhood kids expresses themselves using theater and since we are living in the theater district capital of the world, arrogant statement for sure but this is broadway. i think it’s nice to give back to the community who supported me and i know that one person can make a difference in another’s life.

i’ll always be grateful for Joe coming into my life, a newark policeman who read my families dynamic and offered me friendship instead of telling me what i should do. me being a teenage i wasn’t too open for advice as i knew everything but he was there with a friendly place for me to go when i needed another perspective.

i think everyone needs places like that in their lives.

so i’ll just not do too much thinking today and maybe take a nap. we can all benefit from my doggie’s suggestion on this cold winter day.

dog sleeping on couch

but with the snap of a shutter and living with a photographer one can never relax completely

smiling dog on the couch

you want to do what on the couch?

jene youtt, nyc