Positive Ape Index

La Carrera Panamericana 2009

2009-10-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again... Wednesday morning, I hit the road with my copiloto, Gerie "Th' Perfesser" Bledsoe, race car in tow, on our way to La Carrera Panamerica 2009.

Follow the updates at the new, free-of-censorship Positive Ape Index!

Awesome And Destroy: Japan, August 2009

2009-10-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

More at the NEW Positive Ape!.

Hatesville 2.0

2009-10-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

Read about it at the new blog!

Positive Ape Has Moved!

2009-10-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Long time no bloggy... Blogger decided to censor my blog and screw up my google links, so I'm moving over to wordpress. The new blog is here. If you do that new-fangled RSS thing, the feed is here.

COOP Art Show, May 29th

2009-05-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Hope to see you there (if I don't drop dead first!)

Apology

2009-04-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been around these parts for a while. I'll try to get back to it now that I've wrapped up work on my upcoming art show (May 29th, Corey Helford Gallery.) In the meantime, here's a nice photo of the lovely Adrianna Nicole.

Finished

2009-02-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

One more down, two more to go.

Can't Blog, Painting

2009-02-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that it has been more than a month since I updated the blog, sorry. I've been busy finishing up paintings for my show in May '09 at the Corey Helford Gallery in L.A.

I finished the big two-panel piece I've been working on, and started on a new one, a portrait of one of my favorite models, Miss Skye Shelly. It's a little further along since I took the photos of the muse basking in the strobe glow of the underpainting.

I just finished adding stencil elements to it yesterday, but I dropped my camera and broke it, so photos will have to wait for now.

Skye Box

2008-12-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

I had a lovely wooden crate, built to ship artwork, taking up space in my studio. Instead of tossing such a well-constructed crate in the dumpster, I decided to put a naked girl in it instead.

Because I care about the environment.

Skye's blog here.

Buxotic Beauty!

2008-12-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

Dahlia Dark came by my studio recently for a shoot. I think you will agree that she is built as if I drew up the blueprints myself. We will be shooting together again soon, needless to say.

More photos here.

More Film Snobbery

2008-12-02T16:10:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite models, Skye Shelly, has started a new blog, perhaps it is something you would enjoy.

More photos of Skye can be found here.

While I Was Away

2008-11-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

So, I guess I've been neglecting my fabulous blog lately, like for a couple of months or so. Let's spend a little time getting to know one another, shall we? First, La Carrera Panamericana 2008:

It was a wonderful experience as always, despite the fact that our race car spun a bearing in qualification, and knocked us out of the rest of the race. Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes. The rest of the race was spent in the company of various service crews, as I honed my photography skills instead of my navigating skills (although I had to do quite a bit of that, too.)

The highlight for me was briefly replacing Ron Lee's ill navigator for a late-night post-repair run from Tehuacan to Mexico City, in Ron's beautiful '55 Kurtis Coupe. One of two examples, this car was built by Mickey Thompson, using fiberglass body over a Kurtis roadster chassis. Both cars were built to run in the 1955 La Carrera, which was cancelled due to the many fatalities in the '54 race. It is a beautiful sexy beast, powered by a Lincoln V8. Driving at almost 11,000 feet above sea level, over the mountains that encircle Mexico City, in a driving rainstorm no less, is one of those experiences that you remember the rest of your miserable life.

All the La Carrera photos can be viewed here.

After I returned, I started in on the painting I left unfinished. I'm still working on it even now, but I am a little closer to completion.

That's about it, apart from some more photo shoots with a few beautiful young ladies of my acquaintance, but I will save that for a subsequent post...

New Painting Underway (And Other Stuff)

2008-09-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Lest you think I'm spending all my time taking photos of naked women, I have been making paintings, too. I'm trying to get this one done before I leave for La Carrera Panamericana 2008. I will once again be raciing with Gerie, this time in a fine Chevrolet automobile:

My name's painted on the door, so they have to let me race. It's the law.

But don't worry, fans of feminine pulchritude, I haven't given up in my pursuit of photography. Why, just today, the lovely Alejandra Guerrero brought the also-lovely April Flores over to the studio for a shoot. I took a few photos myself, as you might guess.

Big Skye

2008-09-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

Full set here.

Polaroids Are More Naughty Than Other Photos By An Entire Order Of Magnitude

2008-09-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

Why is that? Maybe it is the privacy factor. Because there is no visit to the Fotomat (do they even have Fotomats anymore?) you can take polaroids of whatever illicit act your filthy heart desires, with no worry of discovery. Digital cameras have the same advantage of course, except that it seems everyone taking digital dirty photos today immediately uploads them to the internets to share with their fellow perverts/enthusiasts. So maybe that isn't it.

Perhaps it is in the aesthetic nature of the photos themselves. The black & white print, the harshness of the flash, the softness and selective focus of the cheap lens, all these things lend an air of nostalgia, a hint of a time when folks did all the dirty things they do today, but without knowing that anyone else did too.

Maybe it is just the sense of capturing something in the dark, an act that is perhaps just too filthy to perform in the bright light of day. Maybe that's it.

More naughtiness here.

Making Art With Analog Technology

2008-09-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

Film snobs. If you know any photographers, (and I know a few) you probably know some film snobs. They're kinda like vinyl snobs, those guys who rail against CDs and iPods, and insist the only proper way to listen to Dark Side Of The Moon is on vinyl, played on some crazy Bang & Olufsen turntable running through a tube amp, blah, blah blah.

When I was a teenager, I visited the original Motown records studios, in a little house in Detroit. In the control room, I saw a tiny, crappy speaker mounted next to the mixing console, the kind of speaker that would be attached to an AM radio in any car from the 60's. Berry Gordy mixed all that classic soul through that shitty little speaker, because he knew that was how all his music would be heard for the first time.

Ever since then, I haven't have much use for vinyl snobs.

Since I started getting back into photography a few years ago, I had the same chip on my shoulder about film snobs. When I was a young'un, my father was a photographer, and he tried his best to teach me the discipline of photography. I had a nice Pentax 35mm camera, but due to my general lack of patience, I pretty much sucked. Between that, and the constant expense of film, I gave it up, pretty much the same way I gave up learning to play the guitar after I failed to master Louie Louie.

Fast forward twenty years or so. After feeling like I was getting what I wanted from digital photography, I decided to give film another go. My pal Chris Haston offered to trade a beautiful Leica M6 camera for some artwork. Oh baby.

What a a lovely camera to shoot with. I'm a Leica fan anyway, but the M6 is just such a beautiful little hunk of machinery... I love the way it feels, the noise the shutter makes, the weight of the camera.

At first I was just having fun shooting with the M6, and being forced to think through everything, but I wasn't really in "love" with it until I got the first batch of film back. There is a certain quality to the light that, I must admit, you just cannot get with digital.

Digital cameras are incredibly sophisticated pieces of technology that do amazing things, but the Leica M6 is such a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering, like an old Porsche roadster or a vintage Rolex Submariner wristwatch, that it becomes the pinnacle of its type, the perfect object that all others aspire to be.

Using the Leica is a unique pleasure all its own, independent of the results... but oh, what results! (when used properly of course. Still working on that!) It really is something magical.

I'm afraid I might be turning into a film snob.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2008-09-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

We started coopstuff.com in 1998, which in internet years, is just slightly before dinosaurs roamed the earth. After ten years, we finally got around to rebuilding and updating our site! Go check it out, and maybe you should buy something?

Madonna And Child

2008-09-08T18:22:00.000-07:00

More photos of Ori here.

It's A Dirty Job, But Somebody's Gotta Do It

2008-09-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

More photos of lovely Ori in my filthy studio bathroom here.

In Praise Of Obsolete-But-Still-Aesthetically-Pleasing Technology

2008-08-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

I think I have a fetish for obsolete technology. As an artist, my job description has not changed much in the last 500 years, apart from a slightly different client list. I drive an 80-year-old car, and I'm building another one. I have a new car, too; it's only 43 years old. I spend stupid money on old wristwatches that aren't as accurate as a cheap Swatch watch. I have a room full of vinyl LPs that I've been collecting since I was 13 or so. If it's old, rare, and hard to find replacement parts for, I probably own one. Or several.

Then there's Polaroid cameras. Now considered obsolete in the digital age, I didn't even get interested in them again until Polaroid announced they were no longer manufacturing film for their cameras. Luckily, Fujifilm still makes the pack-style instant film, for now at least.

I already had a Polaroid Pro Pack with flash in the closet, purchased about 12 years ago, mainly to take period-correct photos of my old cars. After I started spending more time shooting photos again, I found the Pro Pack, and started bringing it along whenever I was going to do a shoot.

I fell in love with this obsolete technology all over again. The photos just have something about them, an instant nostalgia, that is incredibly compelling to me.

Using this big clunky old camera creates an interesting relationship with the subject, too. It makes the whole thing seem more official somehow.

Shooting naked and mostly-naked girls with this old camera makes the resulting photos somehow more dirty, like a secret stash found in an uncle's sock drawer.

After I scan every photo, I put them in an old cigar box. Eventually the box will be full. At that point, I will put it in a closet somewhere in the house and forget about it.

Maybe someday in the future I will find it again.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

2008-08-01T16:21:00.000-07:00

I got to do another shoot with two of my favorite models, Adrianna Nicole and Skye Shelly, AKA Flirty Feet.

I rented a ring flash from Samy's, and told the ladies that i wanted a full-on Eighties vibe. Pumps and ankle socks were a must.

I also bought some colored cling film at the 99-cent store.

The girls did the rest.

The ring flash is neat. It makes even a mediocre photographer (such as myself) look like a pro.

Enthusiasm on the part of the subjects doesn't hurt either.

NOT A FINGAH!!!

2008-07-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

Photography As Work Avoidance

2008-07-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

I visited the set of "Sugar Town," the latest Vivid Alt Film from Dave Naz.

Dave is doing a 70's-period piece, and asked to use the Grocery Getter in a (non-sex, I was assured) scene. (those are the original dealer-installed seat covers, after all.)

The shoot was in this beautiful, slightly-run-down Art Deco building south of downtown.

The interiors were amazing, you could shoot a perfect film noir in those dark hallways.

Black and white is a must in these situations, of course.

Dave girlfriend, the lovely Ori, was there, and I talked her into doing a little shoot in the empty rooms upstairs.

The less-than-Martha-Stewart atmosphere made a nice contrast to Ori's natural beauty.

She has such a classic, timeless look. I understand why Dave shoots her nonstop, and I'm envious!

I recently dug out my old Polaroid Pro Pack camera, and I've been dragging it along whenever I shoot. The B&W (Fujifilm, sorry Polaroid!) also creates instantly nostalgic photographs.

All in all, a lovely way to avoid painting for a day.

Sexiest Female Blogger?

2008-07-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

I know this is just dumb timewasting bullshit, but that's why the internet was invented!

Please go vote for the lovely Xeni, sex symbol and friend to Positive Apes everywhere.

Celebrate The Birth Of the U.S.A. By Looking At Naughty Photos!!

2008-07-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

God Bless America!!

Full set here.