[Deviant Nation] CJW's Journal

Where's everybody going?

CJW — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:52:04 GMT

I'm not close friends with toooo many people on the site, but I'm still suprised when people go missing with no goodbye or anything. Kinda bums me out. Of late, I've noticed MissD, BriarRose and Nao seem to have vanished.

Of note, I've sold three trial memberships this month, so hopefully the new recruits will fill their spots. Hah.

Stock market

CJW — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:28:47 GMT

I just opened an account for Adrienne and noticed that the market is sitting at under 8000 today. Having given up on watching my daily net worth plummet, I decided to check in, only to find that today was another bad day for me. I think I'm looking at about $160,000 in paper losses this year, in addition to $25,000 in real losses. It's insane.

Fortunately, I just picked up some Road Warrior action figures on eBay for cheap, and I'm expecting them to sustain me in my old age. A few of them were already open, so at least I don't have to deal with THAT dilemma.

Self Portrait

CJW — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:24:15 GMT

Photobooth Shenanigans

CJW — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:07:52 GMT

It's fun to wiggle things around in the scanner while it's trying to look at them.

purchases.

CJW — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:42:53 GMT

Whenever it comes time to buy new supplies for a printer, I always check the price of a complete replacement, and generally, the price differential is negligible. Such was the case with my trip to Office Depot last night. I had the choice of spending $45 on ink, or $60 on a new printer. My old one has no OSX 10.5 divers for the scanner, the new one does. Essentially, I paid $15 for totally new hardware. Also, the ink it uses is a lot cheaper than the cartridges for the old one.

I also needed a silver sharpie, but they only sell them in a 4-pack. I guess I'm set for life now.

I picked up some medium format film from the lab and found some cool shots from a car show and a few extra shots from SInclair's set. For you people shooting Holga, Diana or other 120 based cameras, take the film to Wal-Mart/Sam's Club. It's only about $1.25 at Sam's to get processing and printing done. Don't use black and white though, even the C-41 monochrome is pricey because they print it on monochrome paper and the price shoots up to $9. I'm digging the Fuji 400H right now. Slides cost about $5. No matter what you drop off, they send it out to a lab elsewhere and it takes about 2 weeks to get it back. You only get 3" prints and no CD. It's cheap as hell though, and the quality is fine. I just use the prints as proofs until I get around to scanning the negs anyway.

Megan and I had a rather large discussion last night. Things could be better.

The VW New Beetle

CJW — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:28:29 GMT

This car's been around for over 10 years now. When it was first introduced in 1998, I thought it would be funny to mock up a version with a spike out of the roof and swastika shaped rims, and put a tag line of "New engineering, traditional values" or something silly like that. Hustler Magazine did some kind of sendup, but it lacked the punch of my idea, I think. Theirs was just a naked nazi dom girl and a stock beetle.

Alas, I never became a photoshop guru, but I wanted to purge the idea from my head, at least in some pathetic form, so here it is:

Behind The Scenes - Sinclair At Home

CJW — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:19:03 GMT

Intro:
Last July, I went out to Chicago and just like my Portland trip, I wanted to try and be productive, or at least see some boobs for free. I emailed several models in the area at Gwindylyn's suggestion, but only Sinclair wound up panning out. She lives in Indianapolis, which is a healthy hump from Chicago, but I happened to be heading down that way anyhow, because my X and her family were headed that way. Sinclair picked me up, took me to Taco Bell (and maybe even paid for me?) and then drove me out to her adorable post-war pre-fab steel house. I was really psyched about the house, having just read about them in Dwell. Her closet and furnishings were equally vintage and amazing.

Theme:
Sometimes, I'll work with a model beforehand to outline a theme and concept for the shoot. It can help keep the shoot on track and generally make things move along faster. In this case, we just sort of winged it. Fortunately, Sinclair had the perfect wardrobe and set. What originally started out as a simple "in bed" idea organically morphed into an Elmer Batters vintage leg/foot fetish homage theme as soon as she pulled out the Cuban heel stockings.

Lighting:
I did the lighting a bit different for this than I've done for anything else I've shot, but the gear is all the same: hotshoe flashes. I wanted to capture the vintage feel of hotlights and simple lighting, so I used just two lights on Sinclair. One into a 32" umbrella for key, and another light into a wall or ceiling for fill. I didn't want to kill the shadows, just soften 'em up a bit. I used two other lights as "kickers". One went into the table lamp and the other went into various background locations to kill shadows.

Conclusion:
I wound up with about 200 images, and I've got a really nice collection of throwaways that either didn't work or were too similar to previous shots to use. This is fairly standard for me and one day I'll have to figure out something really creative and useful to do with my archives ;)

The Broadway Tunnel

CJW — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:00:20 GMT

North Baker Beach

CJW — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:23:08 GMT

Right after I took this, some naked dude tried to cruise me. Still, nice beach.

Sinclair

CJW — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:00:51 GMT

The set I shot at Sinclair's house back in July is up. Go show some love.

Chinatown vs. The Tenderloin

CJW — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:44:04 GMT

Fedora "Overpass" - Behind the scenes

CJW — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:37:35 GMT

Intro - I was heading to Portland last June and like I always do on trips these days, I fished around for DN models to shoot with. I wound up getting Fedora excited enough to trek down the rails from Seattle to meet with me. I'd spent a few days getting a feel for the city and I'd stumbled upon Steel Bridge, a big double-decker, vertical-lift bridge built to accommodate trains and traffic. I was in love with the industrial decay and filth of the imposing structure, so I obviously wanted to shoot there. It was in public, but not a popular place for people to congregate. It also happened to be closed to car traffic while a new tram line was installed. Fedora met me near the location and we dealt with wardrobe and setup on the spot. We only had a couple of passers-by and no creepy lurkers watching us. It was a Saturday, so the office building next to the bridge was totally empty. Because there was a huge naked bike ride in town recently, I felt pretty secure that we wouldn't get arrested for public nudity.

Setup - I've pretty much given up on using studio lights at this point, except for when I'm at home, in a studio, or have a car to haul all that shit around with. For this, I used 3 hotshoe flashes, some radio triggers, 3 stands, a 32" shoot into umbrella and a couple of cardboard flags that I made the night before. This particular lighting pattern puts one light into the 32" umbrella as the key light and the other two flashes are used bare behind the model to give a nice rim light. This adds a crisp seperation from the background. These are about a stop brighter than key. We were shooting on an overcast day, which allowed me to overpower the ambient sunlight by about a stop to further seperate subject from background. The sun did wind up getting a bit brighter during the set, but not until we were almost done, so it worked out ok.

Model - Fedora is awesome, intelligent, funny, professional and punctual. In fact, I think I was late to the meetup by a few minutes because I needed to stop by a camera shop to replace a faulty part they'd sold me the day before. She's a trooper for getting naked in broad daylight in the downtown of a major city.

Yeah!

CJW — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:10:36 GMT

I was robbed. The costume contest belonged to me. Maybe if I'd spent more time pandering to the crowd and less time raping the other contestants, I'd have had a better shot. I feel like John McCain.

Cindy Frey - Live_Evil

CJW — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:11:30 GMT

An old friend of mine joined the site yesterday, please welcome Live_Evil to the site if you haven't already. Since her profile is a little sparse at the moment, let me give you an introduction. Cindy Frey is one of the premier Rock photographers in Belgium. She's shot nearly everyone, and has had tons of covers of rock and tattoo mags. She's published two books to date.

She's also super amazingly beautiful and friendly. She's got a ton of awesome ink, and a lot of talent and is almost as cool as I am, but don't take my word for it:

http://www.cindyfrey.com/
http://www.myspace.com/cindyfrey
http://www.pbase.com/cindyphotography

No Subject

CJW — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:26:09 GMT

Election Erection.

More Dildo Mayhem

CJW — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:35:16 GMT

New stuff

CJW — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:16:22 GMT

I've gotten a few new things lately, so I thought I'd tell ya about 'em.

First up is a Casio PX-700 Digital Piano. It's a no-frills piano. It only does 12 realistic instruments. There's no wah-wah knob, no effects, nothing that would impress David Bowie. It does, however have realistically weighted keys and I think that's a critical factor for learning/practicing to play a real piano, which is a goal for me and maybe Adrienne if she gets interested. I found it on eBay for about $320 and my sister picked it up in Arizona for me.

Next up is the Black iPhone 3G 16gb. Despite locking me into an additional $1000 in cost over the next 2 years, I feel good about the purchase. I've been yearning for one for a while now. The ability to get online at any time to check directions, email and transit times is something that I'll use when I'm traveling. It's also replacing my poor beloved Treo 650, which is on its last legs.

A friend of mine had a spare Lomo Fisheye lying around. In essence, it is a shitty camera with a nifty lens attached. I've avoided buying anything from Lomography because they kind of suck as a company in my experience. Build quality is horrible, but they market that as charm and quirkyness. You may have seen them at Urban Outfitters, or as I call it "Hipster Topic." I'm still working on my first roll, so I don't know how well it's going to wind up working. I'm excited to have it though, and $FREE is an agreeable price :)

Not wanting to fly out to SF with a knife, I picked up a new one in Chinatown for $8. It's a little bigger, but just as solid and nice as the little brother one I got in Chicago. I think I prefer holding, carrying the little one, but carrying two is pretty awesome too :)

I picked up some new boots on Halloween after voting. They were $75, which is what I paid for my combat boots that are pushing 17 years old now. I hope these last as long, but I won't hold my breath. I think the word "Skechers" translates to "Lasts about a year" in some language. They're comfy and rad looking. It's been a long time since I found shoes in a store that really grabbed me as "perfect". Plus, they'll probably go well with underwear and a cowboy hat if my male stripper career ever takes off.

I wrote about this ring a while back, but I didn't think I'd ever actually own it. I helped a jewelry hobbyist named Marving Lee Billings fine tune a concept for a ring. The theme is Al Capone/St. Valentine's Day Massacre. One side has a 14k .45, the other has a 14k heart with three diamond bullet holes in it. The skull is mother of pearl and he used the stone's matrix to create a combover. He let me buy it for cost after he used it to enter a contest. If you're interested, he's got a lot of cool, unique items at his Etsy shop.

The DN Event.

CJW — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:49:33 GMT

So, my photos are up. All of 'em this time, not just the cherries for Fleshbot. I actually sent them 50 pics, so I dunno why more didn't show up in the gallery, but whatever. The important thing is that all 250 or so of the best ones are on my Flickr now. Here's a few that I deem Must See:

Jane Jett getting her ass ate by Aradia!:
Sadie, my goggle, suspender twin:
Muh junk:
Stitch's sexy fishnet legs:
Bane's mixtape:
AppleJax and RPG:
Rocket probably gave me the best pic of the night:
Plenty more HERE

It begins....

CJW — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:27:23 GMT

Members Only Journal

Exotic Erotic Ball 2008

CJW — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:51:54 GMT

I went to the event with Omni and Kasara, and ran into fellow DN'ers Lithium_Picnic and Lalo. I tried some long exposures to get some weird effects from multiple flash pops and smearing of ambient light. I'm pretty happy with the results. Some are more abstracted than others, but for me, they work. Here's a few. For more go HERE.

Mayhem gets bigblackcockulous on the fire escape

CJW — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:17:13 GMT

Coaxing a girl who looks about 15 out onto a fire escape in plain view at 2am wearing nothing but a strapon and some fishnets is one of my secret talents. She's a trooper for humoring me and facing her fear of heights. There's more to come, eventually, but I really wanted to get something up.

Back in Vegas

CJW — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:07:30 GMT

Monday's conversations tended to start like this:
Me: Hi
Girl: Uh, hi?
Me: It's me, Curtis
Girl: ...
Me: The underpants guy.
Girl: Oh HEY!

Previously, I introduced myself as the photographer to get some recognition, but now I'm the underpants guy with the camera.

I'm still working on photos and sorting out the weekend. I'm only on Saturday right now. It was good to meet all the people I met, Especially Kasara, Sadie, Sylvia, JaneJett, Mayhem, ExoticViv, Bane and all the other people who went out of their way to be especially nice to someone without any pants on. I was kinda nervous about the costume until Stitch gave it her seal of approval and Cerah gave me a slice of sticky sea-roach pizza.

I think I'd like to do a month long event some time. Like in Greece or Paris or something. There were too many people I wanted to shoot that I didn't get to and too many people I didn't get to hang out with enough.

Saturday

CJW — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:51:12 GMT

I got a pretty early start on the day considering I'd been out 'til 2 on Friday. I'm sharing my room with 4 people, so once one person gets up, it sort of sets the morning off for everyone. I managed to get a shower before heading over to shoot with Ruby and Mercedes at Valentine's room in a cool old hotel wth some tarnished class to it.

The shoot went pretty well and wrapped up early, so I hit the Army Surplus on Market St. to get a small bag to carry a few things in at the Erotic Exotic Ball and the DN event on Sunday. The camera bag I brought with me is just too freakin big to take to a party. I managed to find a really awesome messenger bag with cam lock buckle and reflector strips for like $12. I also picked up all of the accessory items I needed for my costume tonight, but more on that after the party. Don't wanna blow the surprise. It'll either be hugely embarassing or hugely cool. I'm hoping for both.

I grabbed some lunch and came back to the room to work on Assgasm, which launched HUGE on Friday thanks to a forum post by Matt on TribalWar and a link from Induenudes. It's nice to see traffic go from 8 to 5000 in a day :)

Omni and Kasara came to pick me up a big later and we went to some skanky hotel on the other side of town to shoot in. It wasn't quite the perfect location, but there's some great shots, and I think it'll be well recieved.

After the shoot we headed to his place on Treasure Island, (which isn't anything at all like the Casino made me think it would be) to get ready. At the EE Ball, there were a lot of things to see. Plenty of nudity, and maybe too much in fact. Ever see 6 guys jerking off in a room full of 5000 people? I have. You're not missing anything. We ran into LP and Lalo and pestered them for a bit before heading to Skwirl's party. No DN people were there by the time we got there, and fatigue had me intoxicated to the point where I was no longer being charming on any level so we left after an hour or so.

I don't even know where to start with all the photos I need to get over to Fleshbot and DN. Fortunately, tonight's party starts after my nap, so I don't have to worry about that today. Haha.

DeviantNation Party

CJW — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:46:24 GMT

Yesterday, I shot with Fedora. We took a moment to grab a promo shot for the event:

Afterwards, I met up with Baunfire, Valentine, Mayhem, PoppaBear and Ruby whom I unceremoniously ditched as soon as Satan, Stitch and Pilasco pulled up to the curb randomly. We all wound up at a bar called Butter where I met: JaneJett, Corporate_Punk, Arin, Sadie, Cerah, RPG, Applejax, BirarRose, Sylvia, Lithium_Picnic, Omniphiliac, Suzie, Cooter, Kasara, TattooedGeek, some guy who doesn't have a beard anymore and RazorFist. I've certainly forgotten someone, but you get the point. The DN crew rolls pretty deep. Sunday is gonna be awesome.

The Good Hotel

CJW — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:19:14 GMT

I'm all checked into my new digs. Already ran into MissD. It's so exciting to see DN folks in person.

Room 518, if you want to leave me a message that I won't get.

-CJW