Tag Archives: Aloyse Blair

Ex-Hacienda San Gabriel de Barrera

On a sunny September day, I climbed onto a Primera Plus bus and traveled to the small city of Guanajuato.  A four-hundred-year-old Spanish mining town, Guanajuato was the center of the Mexican war of independence.  Built into a steep valley, colorful houses are terraced along tiny staircases that thread down to the valley floor.  The city is generally known for two things, its tunnels and its mummies.  The tunnels came about after the main river flooded in 1907, and almost wiped out the town.  The locals decided to divert the river, leaving empty subterranean tunnels that had funneled water under the city.  The tunnels were re-appropriated for transportation and expanded through out the area, minimizing traffic and leaving a lovely walking street that winds through downtown.  The mummies are due to the hot dry climate and the practice of interring the dead in mausoleums.  When the families of the dead could no longer afford to pay a yearly fee in order keep their dead loved ones in graves, the bodies were pulled out and kept in a museum adjacent to the graveyard.  The museum is open today, but no longer practices disinterment.

Another remarkable historical site in Guanajuato is the Ex-Hacienda San Gabriel de Barrera.  Built in the late 1600’s it was home to Captain Gabriel de Barrera who’s family were descendants of the Conde de Rul of the local Valenciana mine.  This mine, though still active, was once one of the largest silver producing mines in the world.  The old hacienda still stands, although it was heavily damaged in the war of independence. The hacienda grounds used to be a working refinery for silver oar extracted from the Valenciana mine, but now have been converted into seventeen incredible gardens.  A week before, I came to Guanajuato on a scouting mission to see whether this place was appropriate for photography.  What I found was a huge space that I would love to return to again and again, day or night, to create images.

I arrived midday at the bus station and was greeted by my old friend Nico.  Nico and I met about three years back when he was working as a barista in a coffee shop and I used to ask him for help with my Spanish homework.  Nico kindly volunteered to help me for the day as a photo assistant.  Thank goodness he did, because I could not have done it with out him.  We spent the day goofing around in the gardens taking all kinds of photographs.  Having done the image on the Brooklyn Bridge as a Shiva, I though it would be fun to take some photos as Mary and the Virgin Guadalupe.  I brought several yards of blue and red fabric with me and draped it over myself like a shroud.  The imagery is probably too kitschy and obvious to actually work, but I had fun doing it.

This location screams for my sometimes photography collaborator Aloyse Blair, as it is full of beautiful fountains and I am not nearly as capable as she at imitating Greek goddess statues.  I did my best, and looking at the images I would like to do some research on Greek goddess art and try again.  At this point, I am finally starting to get the hang of my neutral density filter, and taking images with it is getting much more predictable.  Ideally, I show up best in full sunlight with a dark shadowy background.  Knowing this, I think making daylight images will start to become far more successful.  Next time, I would really love to see if I can come back and shoot at night.

Ghost Horses

Sometimes good ideas really do come like bolts of lightning.  In early June, I went to my best friend and co-collaborator, Aloyse Blair’s, bachelorette party.  We all flew out to Colorado for the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where her sister Cecie, had rented a mansion on the ski hill serviced by private cars and a gondola.  Aloyse and I had gone to Bluegrass several times when we were in our late teens and this was such a wonderful opportunity to go back.

We spent four days dancing, drinking, and having an incredible time with thirteen of the most wonderful girls on the planet.  One day, while getting beers at the festival, it suddenly, with no warning, dawned on me that I should take photos with our horses.  Although it might seem obvious, given that my family lives on a horse ranch, it had actually never even crossed my mind.  Long exposure horses: “ghost horses.”  When I got home from the festival, I told my mom who just laughed and said that she had been wondering when I would figure it out.

A few weeks later, after getting back from Montana, while I was taking my workshop at Anderson Ranch, I decided to start experimenting.  I took my mom on a moonless night, and headed out into the field to meet my two elected models, George and Stoli.  I had to have help with this shoot because the horses were really excited to have company and would have clearly knocked the tripod over.  We used a few small lights to illuminate the horses from the front while I did my best not to get trampled.

As per my workshop, I tried to stay close to the camera and tell a story, to bring on the theater.  One of the other exercises from the workshop was to choose the title for the image before it was made.  The title of the first image below (and my favorite) is, “This Time She Came Prepared,” or as Arno nicknamed it, “George the Fire Eating Horse.”  I am really happy with this work and I can’t wait to keep experimenting with horses in the future.

The Episcopal Chapel at the General Theological Seminary

Well, It has been almost a week since we did this, and I now know why I always try to write these things the next day.  Alas, here I sit in a train station in Salamanca, Spain on my way to Madrid, I have a few hours to kill (I totally missed my train), and I need to get our final New York shoot on the web.

So, after the Times Square debacle, we shot on campus at the General Theological Seminary.  This was one of our favorite evenings, and we really wanted to come back and shoot in the chapel.  I was hesitant to just go in there and start shooting, because in general we make the places we use sacred by the act of being there.  This is a spot that is already sacred to many and I wanted to give it the respect it deserves.  So we had our good friend and student at the school, Mac Brown, send a note to the higher ups asking permission to use the chapel.  We were warmly welcomed.

The chapel is Episcopalian and was built in the late 1800’s.  It is warm, inviting, and smells of old books.  It is really wonderful place for contemplation and a very special place to make art.  Aloyse has been working for the Episcopal Church for a few years now, and has been following her own path with their guidance.  I think for her, getting the chance to make art in a personally sacred place was really important.  We had a lot of fun working with Mac Brown.  As I have almost never attended church services and did not know any of the traditions, he helped us with a lot of the staging.

We started buy creating several images of our own design, the most successful being the act of bowing to each other and ourselves with respect and devotion.   Next, we approached the altar as if receiving communion, and then did a version of the lector reading to the seminarians.  The final image was Mac’s idea and involves the Orante.  This is an ancient position of prayer, the Orante referring specifically to the female with her arms out stretched and palms raised to the heavens.

This was such a nice shoot to wrap up three weeks of hard work.  I am now on my own without a partner in crime.  I am planning on working a lot, but there is nothing like the act of collaboration to inspire great work.  If I am not traveled out, I might stop in NYC on my way home for another two weeks and a few more chances to make art with my bestie.  We shall see… “God willing,” as they say.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For some reason this project seems like an endless series of follies. Last time it was the tripod, this time I had to race across NYC in a pouring rainstorm because I forgot the extra battery, and in the next post I will forget part of our costumes, forcing us to be kind of naked in an Episcopal Chapel (more on that in the next post).  I wonder what that brings to the project?  Obviously it creates a bit of tension and forces us to have even greater time constraints.  Yet why are we always running into these kinds of issues?  Its not like we are rookies at this, and yet we never seem to have it completely together.

Somewhere deep inside, I know that this is who we are, Aloyse and I.  We are spontaneous, and creative, and always on the edge of not having it completely together.  This is not necessarily a negative trait, because it forces us to be resourceful.  In turn, I believe this allows us to create beautiful images in often less than optimal conditions, and gives the project a more human feel.  We are not setting out to create over perfect advertizing-esque images.  There is something so much more authentic about two friends coming together, night after night, to create art.  It is not a perfect process, but is an honest process.

On this day, we met at New York’s famous Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This museum is such a treasure.  Everything about it is just brilliant, from the staging to the actual works of art.  With a little help from our wonderful friend Jennette Mullaney, we were able to bring in a tripod and photograph at will around the museum.  What a treat!  Even with the battery shenanigans, we were able to get a lot of work done.

We brought some white dresses and some draping fabric because our intension was to shoot with the marble sculptures.  We quickly found that the museum is very popular on a summer Friday and hard to shoot without getting other people in the images.  In fact, one of our biggest problems is drawing crowds.  In every public shoot, others have surrounded us, taking photos and asking quesions.  This unnerves me a bit, but Aloyse seems right at home.   This shoot was no exception.  I mean who can resist taking photos of girls doing fake ballet in the Met?

The Highline

I’m not really sure what my problem was last night.  Maybe it was the full moon, maybe it was the fact that I have not slept in my own bed in weeks, or maybe I was just being crabby.  Nonetheless, when we got to our shooting sight last night and I realized that Alyose’s tripod’s quick plate was practically welded onto my camera, and would not work with my new tripod, I started cursing like a sailor, and tried to give up on the shoot.  Aloyse would have none of it!  She made me rig up the camera with books, Luna bars, eyeglass cases, and we actually got a few really nice shots, despite my lack luster attitude.

Last night we shot out on the new Highline Park, an elevated abandoned train trestle, turned walking park, through the Chelsea neighborhood.  This beautiful new addition to the city makes for great views, and a lovely shooting backdrop.  The full moon behind herringbone clouds in the background was not too shabby either.  I really want to return to this space for a re-shoot, as I feel like we could greatly expand what we started (especially with a tripod). Unfortunately, I am leaving NYC in 4 days, to head to Spain for a month, and we have a pretty full schedule until then that does not include re-dos.  It is possible that I will be returning here for an extra two weeks when I get back from Spain, we shall see.

We ended the night with some white wine at the Drunken Horse and continued the theme of ‘drinking with friends is the greatest art of all.’  Taking over the back of the bar, and generally irritating our polish bartender, Aloyse, Mark and I did a bit of musical chairs for the camera. A special thanks goes out to all of our collaborators last night, Mark Schultze, JP Magenis, and Justine Evans.

The General Theological Seminary or the Times Square Debacle

We met at Times Square for the second time, to no avail.  That place is damn hard to shoot.  Noisy, crowded, bright lights and dark spots, enough neon to simulate true daylight at night, working there is an effort in futility.  We are tiny, just another attraction, as tourists take our photos we become part of the madness.  We walk away feeling defeated.  We got no good images from the shoot, nothing even worth putting up here.  It feels so depressing.  We insist that we will return, that we will get the shot, but I wonder.  Maybe sparkly dresses will help.

Then at 11:30pm we decide to head across the street to the campus of the General Theological Seminary.  We have the keys.  We let the dogs off their leashes to play on the lush green grass, a magical oasis on this gritty island.  The school once owned most of the area, I think 140 acres, or what is all of Chelsea.  Now it is just an enclosed city block, with dorms in the surrounding area.  We needed a re-do, a confidence builder, a reminder that yes we can make beautiful, meaningful images, that Times Square had not sucked out or souls.

We donned our new matching dresses, and carried candles on to the close.  This felt so safe, so natural, so relaxed, and so easy.  We effortlessly, began our process of creating, of using light and location.  Obviously, it is easier to create in such a beautiful quiet environment, but shooting there versus Times Square made us think about the nature of the work we were creating.  What we do has such an inherent spiritual quality, for us and for the resulting images.  I think shooting in Times Square, the epicenter of consumer culture, really drains that spirituality away from us.  Where as shooing on a theological campus inherently fills us up with that mysticism.

Does this mean we should abandon Times Square?  That we should shoot in only sacred spaces?  I am not sure, but I really don’t think so.  I think that Times Square, like any trial by fire, pushes us to our limits, to the nature of our faith.  It has not happened yet, but I think if we can make strong and meaningful images there, it will be a great accomplishment.  We must now think of the ritual, the dance that can protect us from the overwhelming nature of Times Square.

Meanwhile, we have this…which basically rocks:

Documented Binge Drinking at the Mafia Mansion

There really isn’t much to say…  this was shot in my old apartment in Brooklyn, a four-story brownstone just off the Gowanus canal.   There are many stories and myths about this house, mostly regarding the Italian mafia.  From the looks of the interior this is possibly true.  The place is decked out in gold lame wallpaper, orange diner booths, wainscoting, mirrors everywhere, and an equal bar to bath ratio.  The owners are said to now reside in New Jersey, and occasionally show up to sign leases in tracksuits and gold chains.  There are even rumors of Frank Sinatra himself partying in this house.  Many of these stories were recounted at Anthony’s, a 100-year-old Italian restaurant across the street.

At the turn of the century, a huge flywheel did come apart from a nearby factory, flying thousands of feet through the air and crushing the top floor of the house.  That I know happened, as I saw the microfiche myself.  When I lived there it was a real co-op, we shared food, cooking responsibilities and many other chores, it was a total pain in the ass, but I loved it.  Now my wonderful friend Marela Zacarias lives there… the chain of friends never ends at the Mansion.

On this evening, it was far to wet to shoot outside and Marela invited us over for happy-beer drinking-playtime.  We set up a rigorous schedule that included shot gunning a beer, changing costume, and getting ready to take the next photo every 30 minutes.  Needless to say things got sloppy, and after a while we didn’t really follow the shooting schedule too closely.  These are the images of debauchery at the Mafia Mansion.

Brooklyn Bridge

Sometimes after a night of shooting, I wake up with a photography hangover.  Today is such a day.  I think back, things are fuzzy; I wonder what happened the night before.  Did I get the shot?  What that the right exposure?  And then I look at the work.  Like a long night of drinking, moments I thought were brilliant were total flops, and moments of blah, turn out to be the most meaningful.  Part of me craves a re-do, but like any great party there will be another one soon, so I try not to worry. Second chances abound.

Not that I was truly disappointed with the work last night, it is just that I can see how much better we can do.  Along with seeing how much better we can do, I am also starting to recognize the art of collaboration.  My natural instinct, for some reason is to stand square to the camera, like we are facing off, a duel per say.  Aloyse, has a natural propensity to dancing in front of the camera.  It must be the obsessive compulsive in me that desires such rigid symmetry and fears messy images.  In last night’s work, you can really see when Aly was directing, and when I was directing.  Not that either style is better than the other, and actually it might be why we work so well together.  Ultimately, I feel that one of the final images we did, a dance image, was the strongest.

Finally, a word on clichés: I am still struggling with subject.  I know this work is about spirituality, spirit, ritual, the goddess, dance, religion, and more, but how to bring that to the image?  Well, sometimes there is the need to explore clichés.  Possibly to just get them out of the way.  If you do it once, then at least you don’t have to do it again unless it is really working.  Last night for some odd reason, there was a lot of Hindu and Buddhist symbolism in the work.  Chakras and many armed goddesses.  I have no idea why the Brooklyn Bridge brought that out in the work but there it is.  Ok, sorry I am a little rambly today heat does that to me.  So with out further adieu…

Second night at the farm


After a rough early morning, the work we did last night was far more successful.  First we shot at dusk out in the field, while the light was falling, and it seemed like we just did more of the same.  I was staring to worry.  There are not too many successful images from that shoot and the storytelling aspects are really not there.  Not to mention that when I looked at the photos this morning I saw that we had irreparably bad exposures.  When shooting this type of image you have to push your iso a bit and then you risk a serious degradation of the images when you try to fix them up in post.  The blacks block up and there really isn’t much information there.  It’s a tough balance between iso and f-stop, either you get blocky blacks or you loose depth of field and focus.

We started by playing on a large grassy earthen mound on the edge of the field, women in white lined up on top.  I was having issues with my remote properly triggering my timer, so while the light was good we really were not able to get the best images.  Once I finally gave up and hand triggered the timer we had basically lost our light.  We tried a few dancing poses in the field, but the sky was still too bright and we could not seem to coordinate our movements.  It looked really stiff and uninspired, again with bad exposures.  I was beginning to worry, that we were really not going to get anything out of this trip.

Finally, after a few mishaps, we acquired two kerosene lanterns and were able to use those as our light source.  This was the inspiration we needed.  We headed out to the field and were able to shoot three different scenes.  The first is a goddess dance around a fire, the second is a bringing of the light, and the third takes place at the edge of the forest, a mysterious encounter.  I am quite happy with this work.  I only wish we had more nights to work out here.

Old Green Farm

Last night Aloyse Blair and I headed out to the forest on her fathers beautiful farm in New Jersey.  Sunrise was at 5:30am, so we had a 4am wake up call and were out in the forest by 4:20.  We had scoped out the forest the day before and found a few sights that we thought would make good locations. Finding them in the dark was actually easier than we thought, avoiding the poison ivy as we went.

We ran into a few problems right off.  First, I need to get an actual tripod for this work, using my Gorilla Pod just does not give me the flexibility I need to get the shots I want.  Some of our locations really didn’t look very good without the elevation a tripod would have provided.  Second, there is currently no moon and the forest was so devoid of ambient light that it was almost impossible to get anything done with out using alternate light sources.  Tonight we are going to take some old kerosene lanterns out into the forest with us, which should provide an interesting light source and potential creative aspect to the images.  Third, as usual, I really need to figure out the best ways to deal with focus issues, between focusing in the dark and being able to stop down the camera.  I feel some of these shots might have been quite successful if they had been in focus.  As the sun came up we were eventually able to use the dawn light, but it felt rushed, and to be honest, a bit uninspired. Aloyse and I have been doing this type of work for years now and it is easy to fall back on what we know.  I am hoping over the next few weeks we will be able to really push things to the next level.

Given the absolute darkness, I felt very rusty out there and unsure of what I wanted to accomplish.  I am working on exploring the aspects of location and self, but I am still having a tough time deciding what this means.  I feel pretty confident in my ability to create strong images technically, but establishing solid content is proving to be more difficult.  I need to spend more time on the ‘who, what, where, why, when,’ aspect of this project.  Part of the beauty of these images lies in the spontaneity, but I also really need to get out there and be able to direct the scenes.  Thankfully, Aloyse has a great natural feel for this type of performance work and we were able to get something accomplished before the sun rose.

After all was said and done these were the strongest images from last night.   I personally feel the last image works best, but I include all so that you can compare and see how the project comes along over the next few months.