Maya Violet Varga

My sister had a baby, I am an Aunt! See photos i took this weekend here.

Day 151

okay that was for june 1 and i thought i was behind. i guess iwasnt?

another one on the way.

quickly posting a thing before bed. too lazy to figure out what day its supposed to be. ive missed anyway..ill fix it later.



reedit...i was a day behind. time for makeup.

Day 150

And that concludes Kevin and Juanita week. We here at Cary Mills appreciate your support.


If all is going as planned, I should be on my way to Japan now. This will be the last electric lion until I find a way to make it happen, which, in theory, could be when I get back.

Camera / Nerd info about my trip--I am taking the following cameras and stuff:

5D (and some sort of lens)
Lomo
8mm camera (Nicole is picking up a couple more cartridges at B&H)
Crappy digital camera
various readers and hard drives and stuff
lil superstar (thats the name of my tiny, tiny hackintosh)



I really debated bring my 4x5 but I just can't seem to do it.

Day 149

So this is one of my favorites. I decided to leave it for Friday to end the week on a positive note.

Tomorrow is the end of this glorious week. Stay tuned for the final photo of Juanita tomorrow.

Day 148

This is about the only serious photo i took the whole day with Kevin and his dog. The rest were intentionally awful in some way.

Day 147

This is just painful.

Seattle Photos!

Prius Commercial - Landscapes made of people

Day 146

It is Kevin and Juanita week here at Electric Lion and it is Juanita's time to shine.


(I always have more to say when I think about posting a blog thing, but when it comes time to do it I have no words to type. Oh well)

Day 145

This sweet, glorious week of Kevin Wilder awesomeness continues with this beast of a photo. Come on, let him in...he wants to talk to you about cookies, magazine subscriptions, and/or possibly a cult. Are you telling me you can't trust that smile?

















[give him your money. go on, do it.]

Day 144

So today, Sunday, May 24th, starts the beginning of Kevin and Juanita week. All week long you get hot, man and dog action, one cheesy portrait at a time.


We lead off with Kevin and his Boston Terrier, Juanita. Classic floating head goodness here. And just for your notes I made sure to get him a wallet-sized print of this gloriousness.



Also, in light of this, I decided to update the wall with recent fun stuffs. Look closely and you'll see some previews of what this week has to offer.

Day 143

Nastique rockin the headphones again.



Watch out for next week. It is going to be all Kevin and Jaunita, all week long.

Then I am in Japan and there likely won't be updates while I'm gone.


Seriously, this Kevin/Jaunita stuff is going to be awesome. Get ready.

Day 142

Alan Barton's mustache wishes you a good weekend.





So in a week I leave for Japan and go on the longest flight of my life so far.

Day 141

Alan with post-ride coffee at Primavera, kickin' it shoes off.

Shock and awe

I am in complete shock because I was walking around new Orleans shooting buildings for work, and we walked by a free concert called 'Wednesday in the square.' I heard very familiar music playing, and I quickly realized it was letters to cleo. One of my all time favorite bands!!!

And then I thought it wasn't possible. Maybe its a cover band. We got closer, asked to confirm. It was them! And Kay hanley!

My life is complete. And I am still amazed that this ironically happened.
.. The concert is tonight and I'm glad that my boss is interested in coming back to see it. Its a free concert. And what we saw earlier was just the sound check.

Amazing!!!


See photos here

Day 140

Alan Barton, circa 1978.

Day 139

So the rest of the week will be "Alan Barton in bike gear donning a badass mustache." First up is from today (they are all from today) is him in some weird light with his bike.

This shot gave me some trouble in developing but it managed to come out 98% fine. The light is really weird. I swear I didn't dodge his head to death. It's just weird light.

Also in the scan I got freaking newton rings. Who wants to donate a drum scanner to a good cause? Eh? Anyone?

So....three more of Alan to come. Gonna be a good week for nonsense.

Enjoy.

ThinkFamily commercial

Day 138

Another straggler of Damien.

Day 137

Day 136

I truly think this gave Caleb as much joy as the image seems to imply (to me at least).


Also, this is a SUPER dirty scan of an overexposed polaroid. i left it dirty. maybe its more interesting this way. who knows.

Day 135

So, today I ate lunch with Caleb and we chatted about a portrait idea I have for the authors of Some New Trend that in some way involves either borrowing Alan's 4x5 (which has a PC Sync built into the shutter) OR figuring out a way to make my old Speed Graphic sync with...well..anything. I have an old Pacemaker Speed Graphic which is only equipped with a Bipost sync for old school flash bulbs and such. See below:



So, if you are even vaguely familiar with flashes or strobes and how to hook them up you'll realize this is a connector you may never have seen. This is even older than the household plug style (I think?). Anyway...the bottom line is I have connector that could realistically connect to the Bipost. I did some digging online (shocker) and found some info (a while back) and (just now today) decided to try to cobble together my old cord (instead of buying a custom cord). I had an extra, short PC Sync > 3.5mm cord hanging around so I clipped and stripped it to see if i could manually wrap the wires around the posts and get the shutter trip to close the circuit. Well...straight away that worked. I hooked the wires to the posts and plugged in the 3.5mm jack thing into the Pocket Wizard which trigged my flash perfectly.

The next step is to find a better way to make the cords stay on the Bipost so I rummaged through my box of cords and found an old hard drive closure power supply that had a cord (it was one of those cords that are in two pieces. One piece from wall to transformer, another fixed cord that goes from transformer to the device) looked like the cord you'd plug into your old school electric razor...the two little hole things. Perfect. Only, it was larger than the electric razor ones (which people had said work) so I had to hack the shit out of it do some surgery on it so I could make it pinch together and cram on the posts.

IT FREAKING WORKED.





So now I have a custom cord made from crap I had lying around anyway. I set up the camera, ghetto-cord, pocket wizard, and then a flash with umbrella and another PW. Busted out the 4x5 polaroid (gotta have instant gratification on this one) and made Kevin stand in, as he was in the studio writing (see Some New Trend link above) for a test shot. (Anyone sick of my parentheses yet?)

Focus. Close shutter. Pull polaroid thingy. Click. Close and remove polaroid. Wait. Pull polaroid.

Well, shit. It didn't look like it fired.

The tests looked fine. I.e. it seemed the flash was firing during the exposure. It apparently wasn't.

I have read about a small capacitor that may need to be shorted out in the bipost BUT the F-X setting for the bipost (as seen above) is SUPPOSED to be 0ms and thus should fire the flash when I ask it to. For now it doesn't. Or it may have. The above photo of Kevin is the second shot I took of him and I had the umbrella on the other side and it LOOKS like it filled his right side even with the ambient. But then, I can't really tell. There seems to be a small catch in his eye (our right, his left) but who knows.

So my next test will be to create ANOTHER cord to serve as the sync cord and go straight from the Bipost to a strobe pack. Too lazy to bust them out tonight. If that doesn't work...I'll have to dig more. And if I can't make it work I'll just borrow a more modern 4x5 to shoot SNT stuff. I'd hate to just shoot it digital. Gross.

Okay thats the end of the nerd out.


And just a note of goodness. I've been listening to Damien Jurado a ton today. I suggest him for what ails you. He posted a couple of new random tracks on his space. Solid, of course.

Day 134

Day 133

Dj Nastique, a couple of days ago.

[intentionally strange look]

Gender in Art

Design For Mankind - Dialogue Episode 9 from Design For Mankind on Vimeo.

I don't know if this answers any questions for us, but it was entertaining to watch, and Will is a hoot

Day 132

Caleb + water + ukulele = whaaaa?






[not really edited. sorry]

Day 131

So, today I managed to grab Caleb to go on a tiny pointless road trip. We ended up in Good Hope, which is about 45 minutes north of Birmingham and not an area I know well, or really at all. It was mostly driving around with the windows down looking at nice green land and ended with Caleb playing ukulele in Smith Lake and me taking a couple of 4x5s of it.

Later this evening I took a couple of frames of Kevin Wilder of Some New Trend fame. Here is one of those....Caleb to come tomorrow.

Ben Folds - Cologne

I'll be seeing him at the end of this week in Seattle!

This song is beautiful, and i kind of love the video, looks like something out of the 60's or 70's

Day 130

Today has been just next to worthless so I am pulling out a shot from a while back that makes me laugh.

So so bad. Love it. She took one of me too (and what a shot to be her first 4x5 right?)

Day 129

Day 128

I want to make a joke about this but I am tired. And bored.

Day 127

I was playing around a bit in the studio this afternoon goofing off with Kevin and Rob shooting with lights (!) which is so very rare. I recently added a DIY grid spot to my ghetto arsenal and managed to tag team it with my DIY beauty dish and came out with this shot of Rob.


I'd also like to mention that I launched a new section on my website thats all about the work I did in Uganda. I am still very thankful for the chance to go and more than that the ability to use my work to help people.

Please, CHECK IT OUT. Feel free to leave positive or negative feedback or questions here.

Day 126

So a while back Bryan and I shot a story for Portico sort of on a whim and here is one of the shots I took I like.

This guy was a consultant on this building project, if I am not mistaken.

Day 125

Man I'm tired.


HERE IS A COW. OH MY GOD.

Day 124

[ed]


makeup image two




im still sick. back off.

okay dont really.

Day 123

[ed]


I'm feeling better. Here are a couple of make up images from me playing around with Africa stuff, soon to post to my website.




ive been in bed all day with fever. photo tomorrow

Magic City Art Connection

I am just now getting around to loading photos on my computer, and organizing things from a week ago. Last weekend I went to the Magic City Art Connection, in Birmingham, AL. I grew up in Hoover, but have never been to this event. I was so happy to be there, and see everything! I know that artists that showed there are from all over the place, but there was so much inspiring work, it made me proud of Birmingham. I'm glad to know that the art scene there is great, and still growing.

I want to mention a few good artists I saw there. And I hope they don't hate me for it, but I took photos of their art, so that I could remember them, and remember their work, and also blog about it here if I wanted to. I'm going to post some of my eye-catchers here over time.


Possibly the most memorable was John Lytle Wilson.

This guy should do character designs for a movie, and write it. (or tv show) I expect that the storyline would be amazing, because what's actually going on in these paintings, I do not know, but you have to have an original imagination for this kind of content.

Day 122

I'm tired and fighting off a bit of a cough.

Here is a trifecta of cute. Stephanie: cute. Sadie: cute. E.T.: creepy.

Shit..okay..this is two parts cute and one part fucked-up-weird-bodied-plastic-model-of-a-fictitious-alien.

Day 121

Few things...

I was digging through my Africa film while working on edits for it. I found this one of photographer and documentary film maker Ansley West with whom I worked while in Uganda. She was not only shooting (still and motion), but also volunteering for DIG.

Also, it was the Bici Coop grand opening tonight. I shot the goings on of part of the night. Perhaps one or two of those will surface.


I feel like I had something else but, per usual, I forgot.

May = travel month

I hope this trend continues for a long time..

Last weekend I was in Birmingham.

I just got back from a 4 day shoot in Dallas and Houston. (I know, all that was in April technically, but it's so close)

I'll possibly be going to Covington, LA in a couple of weeks for a shoot..

And then straight to Seattle for 4 days. straight pleasure vacation.

A short week back in Jackson.

Possibly I'll be in New Orleans for a couple of days for a shoot, and then stay down there for Melissa and Jody's wedding for a few days.

Then straight to Birmingham to see my sister's baby!
All so exciting! I LOVE it!