Vulcan Death Grip In The Woods

Well, not really. Not even close; but when you have a bike with a model name like Vulcan, you just kind of go with whatever catchy, nerdy phrase you that comes to mind.

Anyway, down to the picure details:

A friend of mine has this bike that I always hear about yet never see because he never takes it out when I see him and whenever I'm over at his place his garage is always closed. So I started working on this Automotive project for myself, trying to build a portfolio to create a brochure from. I shoot him an email and he's up for letting me take some photos of the bike.

We head out early on a Sunday morning, get all the way to our destination, and I realized I broke the cardinal rule of portable flash. CHECK THE BATTERIES BEFORE YOU LEAVE! - No problem, I have spare AAs in my bag right? Wrong! Oh man... The entire purpose of this was to test mixing available light with flash in broad daylight. So I do what anyone in this situation would do: I switch gears into shooting nothing but available light and I save what little juice the batteries have (they weren't totally dead, just not recycling fast enough to beat out the power save mode on the flash) for when it realy counts.

We put the bike in a cleared area surrounded by woods and let the sunlight do it's 'thang while I did my 'thang. Came away with some nice shots like the one above and this one here:



You can see more photos of the bike as well as other automotive work I've done in the Automotive Gallery on DIGImmortalPhoto.com

I also did some shots of the owner on the bike. This is where I brought out the flash again and hoped for the best. I knew with failing batteries I would only get off a limited number of shots before I risked doing some kind of damage to either the batteries or the flash itself. So I worked quickly, or at least as quickly as the recycle time would allow, and got some nice photos for my friend to add to his photo albums.

Here's what a little mixing of available light and flash can do:


And here's a little HDR that I did:


I'm about to go from one extreme to another with my next entry. This one was motorcycles, the next will be fluffy things.

More soon!
-Rob

Vote for me in Billboard's Ultimate Music Moment Contest

Just a quick request to anyone reading this blog. I recently entered a few of my shots of Cradle of Filth guitarist Paul Allender into the Billboard Magazine "Ultimate Music Moment" Contest.

While the main categories are awarded by a panel of judges, there is a Fan Favorite section where the public can vote. The winner will be published in Billboard Magazine and the Photo District News publication when the contest is over. I'd really appreciate it if everyone could take a minute and sign up with your email address to vote.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE IMAGE.

I need lots more votes to beat out the leader right now. Every little bit helps. If you have a Facebook or Twitter, or any other networking site, please urge your friends and family to vote as well.

You can only vote once per email address.

Thanks!

More soon!

No More Pins In Me

Sometimes we just gotta put what we feel down on paper. I prefer to put it down on pixels.

The above image is the result of a few things. One of them being some personal struggles that started to manifest themselves into large mountains of frustration. Another being procrastination.

When I originally got the idea in my head for the above photo, it looked very different in my mind. In fact the only thing that remained the same was the little wooden man and the green backdrop. But since I put it off, little by little things started happening in my life that made me change the idea around. It evolved slowly into what you see up top there.

Everyone struggles with things from time to time, and we all have our own ways of coping. I'm very thankful for the abilities I've got when it comes to photography. Sometimes it's the only way I really know how to express myself and what's going on in this crazy head of mine.

I'm posting this here because I think it's something we all can relate to in one way or another. It means a few different things to me, and I'm sure everyone will have their own interpretation of it and how it relates to them personally.

Some basic symbolic elements for me (and this is the thought process of how the shot was built):

1. The green background and the very tight spotlight on the subject: It was meant to show how people's jealousy and greed (both represented by the color green) can hold you or other people down. Jealousy can be crippling, while greed can cripple other people.
2. The chains: Obviously the feeling of restraint. The chain slowly disappears into the background to show that the restraint goes on indefinitely. The idea that the subject here, or the viewer, may never completely feel free. It's a depressing thought, but I'm not Disney, I'm realistic. It symbolizes being held back, something that the previous themes of jealousy and greed also contribute to.
3. The pins: Some of us have many things going on at once that we wish we could just tear off like a band-aid. We begin to feel helpless, like a voodoo doll, just waiting around for another pin to be plunged into us. The red pin is going right into the heart and I specifically chose that one to go there, to make it stand out. Heartache is always the most standout pain, there's no medication to make that go away; no way to numb it out of your mind.
   

Every time we get used to a situation or a struggle we're stuck with another pin, while feeling helpless and held down, under the heat and pressure of outside forces which sometimes we can't stop ourselves. Even optimistic people know deep down that this happens to them.

This was just my way of summing up the way people can sometimes feel when they have more going on than they are able to cope with. Hopefully through this piece of art I can help someone understand they are not alone, and that people out there do understand what they are going through, even if we've all got our own experiences and our own levels of pain. We're all in this together, we're all blades of grass in one large field, and the field only looks good if all the blades are standing tall and bright.

More soon.
-Rob

Unrequited

Last weekend I had a great group of guys come over for some band portraits. They're Unrequited and they play pretty frequently in the Northern NJ (Bergen County) area.

They're still in High School but they've got the professional chops and attitude that is needed these days. I see too many bands strive to be something but lack the discipline (and the thick skin) needed to make it in the music business.



It's such a breath of fresh air to meet a band with no attitude problems, no egos, no bullshit. Just a bunch of friends who enjoy making music together.

I was introduced to them by my good friend Steve Bello, another local area musician who makes some amazing Instrumental Metal geared towards total guitar-heads and fans of musical styles that range from Prince to Steve Vai to Pantera.

It's very cool to be surrounded with genuine hard working musicians. Unrequited just played a show last weekend but I'm sure they'll have more lined up soon. They also mentioned they've been writing a lot of new material, so we might be able to expect a full-length album from them in the near future.

I have a feeling these guys are going to really take off in the local scene, so here's to them making it as big as they push themselves to be.

You can visit them on Myspace and Facebook

You can also see all the photos from the session HERE

Heaven and Hell in NYC

So after all these years of being a huge Black Sabbath fan, I finally get my chance to photograph them live. Well, technically it's not Black Sabbath, but technically it is. It's actually Heaven and Hell, the name that they go by when they tour with Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice. 

It doesn't matter to me what you call them, if it's got Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi, it's Black Sabbath one way or another. They could be calling themselves the Purple Polka Dot Butt Plugs for all I care, I'd still be as excited as ever to see them live and shoot them.

We got the usual 3 songs that all concert photogs get, but the great part about it is that their songs are all slightly longer than most bands, so I was able to snap over 500 images in just 3 songs time. 

I know they opened the show with E5150 going right into The Mob Rules. From there though, I was so wrapped up in shooting that I didn't even really get to pay attention to the other 2 songs. Unfortunately for me I could not stay for the whole show, but I did get to catch about the first quarter of "Bible Black" from the bands latest release The Devil You Know and it sounded even better live, as if it were possible for that song to sound any better.

Faced a few problems while shooting, like the fact that the stage was so deep they rarely came to the front very often, so there was a lot of missed focus opportunities and blurred images from composition difficulties. Also, there had to be at least 15-20 other photographers there that night, which makes it hard to move around. Not having a long enough lens for the depth of the stage was also hard, but that falls into the composition problem. All in all, though, the shots came out great and I'm more than proud to show them off.

To view the entire gallery, just follow THIS LINK

And remember to visit me on Twitter

More soon!

-Rob

Follow me on Twitter

Yeah, I know, anyone who has seen my writing over the years knows I hate "social networking sites" like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc...

But like I've said already on those sites, you can't fight proven marketing techniques. You eventually should at least try them and see how they might help. This is true when you're not getting much attention or just want more than you've got.

So I caved, again, and got a Twitter account for DIGImmortal Photo. You can click here to follow me

I'm slowly integrating all these different kinds of updates to form some sort of marketing plan. How it'll pan out, I have no idea, I'm just kind of shooting from the hip here. But if you're a reader of any of my sites or my work at Paragon, or a fan of my photography, don't be shy, come on board and follow me, leave me a tweet, join our Myspace and Facebook friends. Just reach out and let us know you're there.

That's all for now but I've got some great photos to share later today.

More soon!