Happy hump day hyper realistic oil painting inspiration

Check out these gorgeous realistic paintings from artist Damian Loeb!

“Damian Loeb (born 1970) is a self taught American painter. Growing up in Connecticut, he moved to New York City in 1989. Let the art speak for itself. His wiki entry tells us a bit more, though. Among other interesting tidbits that he is self-taught.”

See more here.

Thanks, Ryno!

 

 

Saying goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013

Twenty twelve was a great year.

It was great for Tina and me, both personally and business-wise.

It was a year when we finally relinquished the urge to have children, even though it hurts the hell out of us to think we won’t have biological children.

We haven’t ruled out fostering and adoption. It’s just not something we want at this time.

We started the year in Bali celebrating her birthday and experienced some major firsts and landmark events within our business.

We had our first major commercial photo shoot.

I started shooting concerts and shot Lollapalooza for the first time.

Other events include:

We shot Luis V.’s and Beck F’s wedding.

We shot runways in New York and monkeys in Indonesia.

We traveled to several states. We saw way more clients than I ever imagined we would.

This blog increased hit counts year over year by 200,000 hits. That was more than double.

What attracts people to this site is often the content that doesn’t include discussions of religion or non-belief. Photography has become a major draw. I know a lot of you enjoy the stories I tell about daily life in Chicago.

I love that kind of feedback, and I hope to get it more.

Over the year, I found myself censoring my views as the family that reads this blog have reverse-incented such behavior. There has been a decline in readership from active disbelieving readers. I imagine my self-restraint is a part of that.

Perhaps that is a bit egocentric, but whatever.

One fact that stopped me in my tracks was on the Le Café Witteveen year in review generated by WordPress. It said,

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2012. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

I refuse to write about the Cure for Tourettes T-shirt … thank you very much.

The most pleasing part of keeping this blog was forcing an existing restaurant in the Netherlands called Le Café Witteveen to rename itself to Brasserie Witteveen, as we were getting their hits when folks googled their name.

Not kidding.

I’ve felt a Death Star gravitational pull toward bettering my business blog, its web site and content. If I could make this blog a 377,000 hit blog, why not make that same effort to make my photography blog that successful.

Twenty thirteen may be a year where we let this blog be that field. You know, the field that the farmer doesn’t plant too many crops in paying attention to another one more for a while.

Don’t rush off. I’ll continue to post here. Just not as frequently. Maybe 10 times a day rather than 50. 

I’ll still post photography and personal stories. But my efforts to keep the blog filled with jokes and videos will take a back seat.

If that’s why you visit, well, I can give you all the sites I go to to find that stuff and you’re welcome to frequent them.

I already started making this transition during 2012. I’ve been spending more time learning the craft of photography, improving my photoshop skills and spending much more time networking within the industry.

I don’t imagine this place dying so much as I imagine it becoming my drafting board for my company. It’s what I started to do last year. I wrote posts here that I altered and edited for my professional blog.

This isn’t so much of a goodbye as it is a redistribution of resources. Plainly put, I’m going to spend more time pushing my company’s brand, and less time letting this blog be a distraction.

You can update its status to somewhere between back burner and red-headed stepchild.

Honk.

If you liked the photography and stories, please consider subscribing if you aren’t already. If you liked the jokes, go see my favorite spots: I have seen the whole of the Internet and Tastefully Offensive Tumblr.

If you’re interested in other aspects of my blog roll, please feel free to contact me.

Bring on 2013, bitches.

Sandy brings us three steps closer to the apocalypse!

The above photo was taken at Avenue C on the lower East side in Manhattan. Wow, right?

See the original on Instagram here.

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the Internets with great curiosity as Sandy unfolded its powerful arms and unleashed the giant storm onto the northeast.

As she used her fire-hose powered water cannons protruding from her mile-wide nipples and sprayed water and winds over the northeast.

I’m no bible scholar, but I get the feeling — from an ignorant reading of biblical text — that the apocalyptic end of the world is coming soon.

Every second. Every minute. Every hour. Every week. 

Every month.

Every year.

Every two years.

Every decade.

Every … shit … what comes between decade and millennia?

Centurion ski boats?

All I know is, the more time that passes between Jesus’s promise and a cataclysmic storm like Sandy … excuse me … a providentially-predicted storm like Sandy … we get closer to the almighty return.

We don’t know the hour. We don’t know the place.

But we do know that “this generation” — this one right now! — will not pass before Jesus returns.

Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it^[d] is near, right at the door. ³⁰ Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ³¹ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Keep in mind, it might be the next generation, just in case this one passes and the next one starts.

But be ready!

It’s coming. And perfectly natural disasters are ushering us closer and closer to the pending apocalypse.

By the way, I am not relieved that Cindy Jacob’s prayers were unanswered.

That means only one thing.

We are alone.

While Jesus is trying to beat Ba’al’s Angry Birds score.

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.

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Image via JMG

Thanks for standing by

As most of you know, Tina and I have been busy as hell.

We have a full-day shoot tomorrow photographing sexy, sexy architecture. It’s five or six distribution plants and one church. It’s a Lutheran church, so it’s not as bad.

I’ve turned down four concerts over the past few weeks including Morrissey, Norah Jones, R. Kelly and Regina Spektor. And somehow I’m sad I had to say no to each one.

I mean, R. Kelly. How crazy is that.

One story I wanted to tell you about was that on Saturday (the 13th) that we were scheduled to be in NYC (a week and a half ago), we had inadvertently bought plane tickets for P.M. arrival and not A.M. We got to the airport before figuring out our mistake.

Fortunately, we landed a standby seat on an earlier flight.

No problem.

Phew.

Once we arrived in NYC, we had lunch with Becky F. and Luis V. that day. We talked about all the ways October the 13th was wreaking havoc on our lives. Becky had suffered an injury while running that morning. And there were a few other (super) significant trials we all had to deal with.

That evening, Tina and I wanted to take it easy. We checked into our hotel and ordered food from what we thought was a restaurant about a block or so away on 10th Ave. We were on 11th.

When I arrived, they didn’t have my order and said, you must have called restaurant number 2. They called number 2, but they didn’t have my order either. “You must have called number 1.”

Sure enough, it was number one.

I called Tina, and she called them to cancel. But the guy on the line gave Tina a load of October the 13th hell, so off I went to pick up our order another four or more blocks away in the other direction.

So much for saving my feet for a long day on Sunday.

Be wary of October the 13th, no matter what day it falls on.

You never know what kind of luck is going to wreak havoc on your sweet little day.

 

Phew, they’re gone … now we can run around in our underpants again!

Our visit with Luis V. and Becky F. over the weekend came to a close on Sunday. We had an excellent time, and despite the heat, we were able to pack in some solid sightseeing.

You can read about the first couple days here.

On Saturday, Becky asked if we wouldn’t mind driving out to Oak Park to hunt for some rascally Frank Lloyd Wright homes. It ended up being easier and more fun than I thought.

Wright homes are gorgeous and inspiring to look at. Becky found a sweet iPhone app that helped map and identify the homes. It also gave similar descriptions to ones you might hear if you paid for the tour.

On our way to Oak Park, we drove through some of the roughest looking neighborhoods I’ve seen.

At one point I said, “I’ll let everyone know when you have to duck from gun fire.”

It was shadyland.

Becky’s and Luis’s hanging meal — if you will — was dining at a restaurant called The Pump Room located in the Public hotel of Chicago’s uppity Gold Coast. The restaurant and hotel were recently renovated under the creative eye of Interior Designer Ian Schrager, whom Tina and I recently heard speak at one of our jobs.

Schrager is known for many accomplishments, but Studio 54 is one of the most impressive.

Note: hanging meals are what Tina and I call the meal before leaving each other for a while. While other people believe heaven is supernatural, we believe heaven is together. So while we’re apart, it’s hell. Time apart is a metaphor for an execution of sorts. So the hanging meal is the last major meal before temporary separation. It also applies to good friends.

After dinner, we unbuttoned our top pants buttons or loosened our dress straps, drove back to our place, leashed up Talulah and walked to the lake front, where Talulah desperately wanted to go for a dip in the water.

Should she have escaped my white-knuckled grip on the leash, I would have gladly pushed Luis in after her.

Honk.

We got back to the house, talked till the Great Yawn Coup d’état of July 7, 2012 and called it a night.

Sunday, we sent the New Yorkers packing, said our adieus and cried the rest of the day.

Not really.

Great visit and memories made. Now that’s a way to spend a weekend.

 

 

Betty Bowers explains the Biblical stand on abortion … accurately

Stumbling around in NYC

Tina and I arrived in beautiful NYC yesterday. While waiting to check into our hotel, we grabbed a bit at one of our favorite diners, met a self-described clairvoyant medium who also works as a life coach.

We walked around a bit, and I snapped some photos.

We met friends Becky and Luis for dinner last night at an excellent Cuban restaurant called Calle Ocho. I had a skirt steak that the chef is so cocky about, he serves it with a butter knife.

But I didn’t need that either.

Tina and I will be shooting today and nursing our feet tonight from walking around. Here are some shot that I took around the neighborhood yesterday.

Swing a cat, hit a photographer

Bill Whitmire and I met with a magazine publisher recently, and one of the things he said was, “Swing a cat, hit a photographer.” That’s to say, there’s a shit ton of us out there, so what makes you different? What makes you better? What makes you (or me) different and hirable?

Lately, I’ve been buckling down — attempting to anyway — on how we position and market ourselves as photographers.

It’s weird for me, because my business has always been multifaceted.

Multifacification (real word) confuses people. But I don’t mind.

One of my clients always refers to me as a photographer, despite that she hires me for video. That’s the way it can be, and probably should be.

There’s a great crossover with photography and video. You have to consider frame and to figure out lighting with both. Only, with video, you often add sound, which — in case you weren’t aware — makes up for more than half of a video’s success or failure. But I also have a long background in graphic design, and when editing, it helps me compose text on screen which moves around.

For me, it feels natural to offer many services. And it makes it easier to offer those services with Tina as my full-time partner. Now with the partnership with Bill, I feel that we can kick even more ass and pickup even better jobs.

This weekend, Tina and I are off to New York City to photograph NY Bridal Week events.

We’ll also get to see the lovely newlyweds, Becky F. and Luis V.

I might even try to locate another occasional reader named Tambobambo. She’s an aussie living there, who started following the blog around the same time as Luis.

Happy Friday the 13th.

Did you know that if you swing a black cat, you’ll hit a photographer and give everyone else bad luck?

“Divorce expos: A sign of the times?”

From The Week:

Forget the tiered cakes and floral arrangements that pack the halls of wedding expos. Divorce showcases are brimming with life coaches and dating experts

POSTED ON APRIL 3, 2012, AT 2:20 PM

Women comprised roughly 70 percent of attendees at New York City’s first-ever divorce expo. Photo: Courtesy ShutterstockSEE ALL 87 PHOTOS

The expo has become a staple of the insatiable wedding industry, with stalls upon stalls helping the newly engaged make the myriad decisions that go into their special day. But blushing brides-to-be were in short order at a related expo in New York City this weekend. Titled “Start Over Smart,” it was the city’s first-ever expo for divorcees, many of whom are wrestling with some pretty serious decisions of their own. And while “Start Over Smart’ doesn’t dwell on the happiest of events, the hundreds of attendees weren’t engaged in long harangues or bitter fist-shaking. Instead, the expo tried to put a positive spin on what roughly half of married Americans will one day experience. Here, a guide to this “sign of the times”:

What is a divorce expo?
Instead of vendors selling wedding dresses and bouquets, “life coaches, financial planners, family counselors, and even hairstylists” are on hand to help “new divorcees field the brave, new life of singledom,” says Erica Ho atTIME. Attendees can also get tips on dating and sex, which could be especially valuable “if you’ve been with the same person for five, 10, or 20 years,” says Cindy Perman at CNBC. “Your waistline is different now, your hairline is different, your dating pool is different — and dating is different.”

Read on

inspirational photographer: Bill Cunningham

Last night, Tina and I watched a documentary on Bill Cunningham, a street photographer who works for the NY Times. He’s an 80+ year old workaholic, who puts me to shame.

He’s an amazing talent, and validates the idea that I try to carry my camera everywhere I go. It made me feel guilty for not carrying it more often.

Sometimes I doubt bringing it. People might think I’m weird. I seriously don’t want to miss an opportunity for a photograph.

Cunningham eats, sleeps and drinks photography. He doesn’t want a kitchen in his apartment so he can have more room for his file cabinets.

I highly recommend this documentary.