LA visual artist: Steven Lopez - After Midnight Series

This guy not only paints the most amazing, bright, and bold portraits of some of the most recognisable soul sisters - but he video-tapes the whole thing, speeds it up, adds a funky remix of one of the artist's tunes, and makes it available to all y'all!!

My favourites so far include this one of Tina Turner (who, fyi, is the only celebrity I ever sent a fan letter to - back in my youngin' days. Perhaps I am making myself sound cooler than was the reality. No doubt. If my 14 year old self's journal at the time is anything to go by... my cringe-o-meter just exploded...); anyway, there is an Erykah Badu piece that is THE SHIT! Other portraits in this particular series include - Aretha Franklin, India Arie, Minnie Ripperton, Jill Scott, and Chaka Khan.

Another nugget of sweetness is that you can purchase your own little slice of artistic diva goodness, by way of a print of the artwork of your choice, for under AU$40! Hit up the link way back at the top of this blog...

Check out the video of Tina Turner 'Bold Soul Sister.

fun with boozey bottles...

So, I recently had a party-shindig-soiree at my humble abode. This signals for me an IDEAL time to take the ol' Canon out for a spin. However, my dilemma has always been thus: I don't have any fancy flash diffusers, or anything of that nature. So my heart cries a little when I have to take night photos with an ordinary flash and watch in hopelessness as the colour/ambiance/mood of the scene being photographed is washed away in a flash (pun SO intended). Now, I know you can put it on a kind of 'night portrait' setting, which gives novices like me a helping hand. The result is as follows...



Which I like the look of, mainly because of the deep orange/red of the overall image. But I didn't want EVERY photo to look like this. Then Martin told me of a technique he had heard about of placing a spoon in front of the flash. This would disperse the light and create a more realistic-looking image. So we did this for a while and it certainly got the wheels in motion for some creative flash-play! He also told me of people putting cellophane in front of the flash for different colour effects. Well now, I didn't have cellophane -

but I had a light blue Gin bottle...

A green beer bottle...

A brown beer bottle...




And a clear glass bottle...

Something so simple - yet outrageously fun, with great results!! Now I look forward to taking night photos, yeah! I win, flash!!