Portrait of an Artist

Tear sheet from this month's 360 Magazine, featuring my portrait of Los Angeles painter Robert Vargas. I also did the digital fine art copy work of Vargas' paintings featured in the article. 

And here's the original portrait, shot with available light in Robert's apartment studio in downtown Los Angeles.

Down by the River

This is Alex. He lives with his companion Shauna in a lean-to that they made out of cast-off lumber, pieces of artificial grass and cardboard, built on a ledge below a bridge that crosses a tributary of the Los Angeles River.

A couple of days ago he found some golf balls and a club. And while you certainly couldn't call his swing classic, he's definitely got the enthusiasm.

Sana Smirnoff Portrait

Portrait of interior designer and performance artist Sana Smirnoff at Red Zebra. 

I had been asked by local artist and entrepreneur Robert Vargas to do some publicity shots for his monthly Red Zebra event, which is a kind of modern-day mashup of an artists' ball, dance club and  fashion show. The event used to be held in the basement of the Crocker Club in downtown LA, with a former bank vault as the backdrop. A couple of months ago Robert felt he needed more creative space, so he rented an empty storefront as a pop-up space and invited Sana to do the window dressing.

I had dragged some strobes and gels and whatnot along to try some offbeat lighting techniques of the event , but when I saw Sana doing her thing in the storefront window it was obvious that the natural lighting would be more than perfect.

Sana obliged for a series of poses and the results, I think, came out great.

Shot with available light, ISO 800, Nikon D70s w/Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED,  f/5.6 @ 1/15 sec.

Portraits of LA project

A sample of my progress on my Portraits of LA project.

Went to see the parade

Went to see the parade today. There were lots of nice people there. LA's not such a bad town as it's often made out to be.