Liminal spaces!

What’s up, Hive? It’s 9:00p.m and before I get to compiling invoices of billable hours for freelance clients, I decided I’m going to crack my knuckles with a quick blog. I’m going to make a more formal blog post about this milestone but August has been ten years on Hive for me! I was first told about it by @mada in 2016 right here at @caffetto where I’m currently writing this! Full circle moment. It’s been a journey. Lately, I’ve been considering what a Hive documentary would look like. So much in my life has changed over the last decade; I’m doing a lot less photography but so much more film making. I heard from a friend that one was made. Is there a link where I could watch it?

So, I am coming in hot with some new photography. I made a friend at @caffetto. Every time I see him, he’s got between three and six giant camera lenses on his table. One day I finally said, “So, are you a photographer?”, clearly as a joke. He didn’t get the joke and launched into all his gear and equipment. He’s a great guy and a really creative/technical and nerdy visual artist. Far more linear and geometric than I am, but I deeply appreciate work that differs from my own. He told me that he has access to this massive Wells Fargo campus that’s been abandoned since COVID and said I can shoot there any time. That was too good of an offer to pass up and I began thinking of a collaboration.

Years ago I used to work with a super talented hair and make-up artist named Sandy Xiong. We were a team back in the day and I decided to reach out to her to see if she’d be interested in getting the band back together. I was pleasantly surprised to hear back that she was interested and from there, the two of us and the model began coming up with a concept. We’d all recently seen Backrooms and utilizing liminal spaces in this building was too good to pass up. The photos I’m sharing here don’t capture that exactly, but the model has a degree in fashion so we wanted to lean heavy into these avant-garde dresses for some of the shoot.

It was good to do a shoot just for fun for a change. A lot of my work these days are weddings, nikkahs, graduations and events. This was something I set time aside for just for the sake of art. Glimpses of life before COVID where I could find time or make collaborations with zero financial incentive a priority. I have a post coming up soon on some of the 3D sculpting I’ve been doing lately, and it’s the same thing. AI platforms like Meshy are doing incredible mesh models in seconds, so why would I spend months learning ZBrush on the iPad and sculpting something from scratch? Because use I want to; because it’s fun.