Tag Archives: street art

Graffiti session with Slow & Deps

I am preparing for a museum show in May. I met up with graffiti artists Slow and Deps to get some video and stills for the show.

Shoots with graffiti artist is very different that shooting models. I interact a great deal with models. With a model I would instruct them were to stand, how to pose. When shooting a street artist I stand in the shadows and let them work. We speak very little, they slip into their zone and I try to show them working.

Cynic photo shoot

This is a shoot I did while watching Cynic paint a piece. He invited me to participate with his crew in a museum show that will be in May. This series is in preparation for that show.

I wanted to approach the shoot with the idea of showing the painter in the urban element.  Simply snapping a few pictures of someone in front of a wall has been done. I want to show relation of the painter, wall and enviroment. The first shots I was just not feeling, there where at best I would call bland. As the sun began to set the light was fading and decided to drag out my portable strobes (Hensel Porty) to throw some more light on the wall.

With the strobes set up I started to get closer to the look I wanted, I placed the strobes close to the wall to “skip” the light off the texture of the wall. I placed a small second strobe on the ground behind the paint can crate. The allowed me to control the light and focus it on the area of interest. There is no photoshoping in the light, there is some minor tweaking done in Apple Aperture.

Graffiti writing…

I have been tagging along with a local crew of graffiti artist. I accompanied Cynic to a local secret location. He was working on a quick piece and I was along to shoot the painting process.  This was an interesting shoot for me. At first the images I was getting was just not hitting the mark for me. I was just not feeling I was really capturing the feeling of the moment. I wanted to capture the lone artist quickly working in this environment. When I shoot an artist I do very little interaction as to setting up a shot. I try to remove myself from their space to allow them to work naturally. I want my presences to minimally effect there work.

Cynic painting at dusk, John Sluder Photography