Felipe Valentini

Professional Training Program at Cary Ballet Conservatory – 5 June 2021

When a Dancer asks, my answer is always, yes!

Dancer Isabelle Burke

Cary Ballet Conservatory – 5 June 2021

Refreshing my Portfolio site, I let go and reached back in the memory bank for moments when you just know. My hunch is, it happens to dancers and musicians too. It’s practice and planning and work and sometimes it all becomes something more. Alchemy.

I’ve put maybe 700 or 800 K shutter actuation’s on 11 DSLR’s since 2007. My Lighting Class students make jokes about all the light gear I haul into class. The Sales Manager at Mole Richardson in Hollywood emails engineering drawings of obsolete accessories. There are replacement reflectors heading my way for the ones I used to modify theater ellipsoids. Also in transit is a 10″ Top Hat from eBay and some Gobos for the Mole Focal Spot. And there’s a triple riser wheeled Junior in the upstairs hall next to my old tripod with a new quick release assembly that came via Royal Mail (wore out the casting). “The Bird”, Charley Parker understood it: “You’ve got to learn your instrument.”

And I took some more of Bird’s advice: “Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”

My work has changed in the 3 years since I made this but it was five years after my Epiphany. This is a fresh edit from the Digital Negative from the part of the session that was all improv, real jazz. Portraits are always a collaboration and when there is mutual trust, man, you can wail.

Studio Session with Ms Olivia Vessillo

Professional Training Program at Cary Ballet Conservatory – 26 Dec 2017

In 1979, MoMA in NYC presented “Ansel Adams and the West” [MoMA Exh. #1273, September 5–October 28, 1979]

It was a retrospective that included versions of prints he made from the same negative, over 20 years.

Like Eric Clapton sang, trying to “get the music right”

This only took me 3 years

Her patience and trust allowed the slower pace and uncertain outcome of film

I’ve been very lucky – when I needed a Muse, the Muse was there

Studio Session with Mikayla McKean – Cary Ballet Conservatory, 20 May 2018