Art glass and wedding favors..... sort of.

I discovered art glass many years ago, but at the time it never occurred to me that I could learn to do it myself. So about 3 years ago I took a glass blowing class at Santa Monica College, one of the very few public institutions left that still offer it. I have not blown much in the past year as I have been to busy shooting or working on my classes at UMass to devote the time and energy to it that is really necessary to get good at it.
It's incredibly demanding, and also very expensive and time consuming--kind of like photography, but more dangerous :-). The glass is over 2,000 degrees, and when you work with it, sometimes the only thing between you and a large glob of molten glass is some wet newspaper. Cuts, nicks, dehydration, and of course burns, are quite common. Glass can also explode (literally) if it cools too fast, so when you are in a hot shop, frequently one can hear cracks and pops above the roar of the furnace. I've been cut by flying glass on at least two occasions that I can remember.
I made one pic as a self portrait--look carefully and you will see my reflection. The deep red is because thats just what this glass looks like when it gets "thin" at the bottom of a piece.
The other pic is of the same glass bowl with no added light or photoshop tricks. The patterns and colors are from the metals (gold in this case) in some of the glass I used. It is a process called reduction. It is called reducing because you bring out the metals to the surface by reducing the amount of oxygen in the gas/oxygen mix when you re-heat the glass.
Anyway..... so, um, Dude, what's the wedding connection, huh? I'm so glad you asked! At Rob and Amy's wedding, they gave away succulents as wedding favors. My mom hauled some of them home. The TSA cops at the airport looked at her funny, but let her through with them. I just transplanted them in a larger terra cotta pot, and I put some colored bits of purple/blue and yellow glass shards in the pot also. I think it looks really cool! Do you do any crafty kinds of things, dangerous or otherwise?

Day of The Dead pictures

I had the afternoon free yesterday, so I went to shoot a local Dia de los Meurtos festival (Day of The Dead festival in English for us gringos). And that tiny bride and groom in the foreground of the vertical shot? Yes, that is indeed a cake topper! That dude in the car--yeah, I'd be worried too if I saw him at the wheel :-)

Why photojournalists kick butt

Unless you have been on another planet (have you??), you have seen coverage of the wildfires in Southern California. There have been a LOT of amazing pictures, but sometimes there is one picture that rises to the level of an icon. NPR did a great piece on this photograph, taken by Karen Tapia-Anderson of the Los Angeles Times. Click on the link to see the picture and hear the story behind it. Photojournalists do whatever it takes to make great storytelling pictures that matter--that's why you should hire one to shoot your wedding :-)