Being a Vintage/Pin Up/ Art Photographer is hard

So I dig shooting pinups and I love creating a vintage look and feel in what i shoot. What makes me nuts is the fly by trend photogs who call something a pin up or a vintage image when its not. Loads of those in Orange County. I mean loads of them. I hear people talking and then when they see an actual vintage image, they look shocked..what a oddball world.

So now i find myself trying to figure out a few how to this and thats

How market what I do. How to reach people who like what I do.

I gotta read more and gotta crack the magic trick that helps make it work. I think it's do-able.  Elsewhere on the web, I was chit chatting with another shooter about work flow and how and why etc. Out of that came a before and after....

Suddenly I'm feeling like the little engine that could... now to reach people and get some paying clients...

Hey, the title of the blog has mildly amusing- not uproariously hilarious but i'm still getting my groove going..i dunno, if antyone does read this, leave a note cause, you know, just cause.

Insomnia is killing me. That plus, you know being unemployed blows.

Gunna try and see if making pretty pictures has a life in it...all things are possible right...

So I'm a geek

I design alot of stuff, I do alot of nonsense outside my photography for fun. I decided so go on and make a little online shop and if people dig the stuff i make, well, they can buy it. Simple..well prolly not simple but what the hell, why not give it a go. I love designing thing, I really love graphic design and its a fun creative outlet that keeps me sane.

The Karma Shop

Give it a looksie, I dunno, I thought it was kinda cool

Random Stuff. Did you know...

 The world is such a random place. From people to nature, you can always find something to stop and marvel at. Sometimes of course it's the other way around and you can't help but ask how some people get through the day..no.. through life without a helmet and safety pads.

Sometimes the things people choose to care about amaze me. Really, I can't imagine how or why but everyday you can find one or the other.

I just finished reading Seven Years in Tibet by  Heinrich Harrer. Its amazing. This is one of those stories not really summed up in the movie, but the film does a pretty good job of telling the story. I digress.

I was feeling all random today and lets be honest, this isnt going to be much fun to read if all I do is yammer on about photography. So I have decided to just write. Tada!



Did you know that..

The word “pornography” comes from the Greek meaning the “writings of prostitutes.”

A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.


The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day.

Bookkeeper" is the only word in English language with three consecutive Double letters

All polar bears are left handed.


Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Photo credit:  Heinrich Harrer

Working backwards and why

Its funny, we live in the digital age and yet I find myself more fascinated with the photography of the early 20th century than i do the latest greatest of today. In a nutshell, I work backwards.

I shoot on Digital with my very reliable Canon Rebel XT DSLR and i shoot on film with various rigs that are older than our collective grandparents. I have many cameras that i love. getting film for them is a whole other adventure, but places do sell it. 620 film is the hardest to get. Then, suddenly one day medium format became the new low fi rage and 120 was available almost everywhere.

I digress. Taking a digital raw image and working it through my various post process methods can be difficult in ways you can't imagine. Film, and especially back in the early days of photography, had very specific things going on. Weird lens wobbles, grain, texture, tone, uneven focus the list goes on and on.

My simple example:

Thats about 5 hours of work. Getting it right, down to the oddball errors an old camera would make. I love it. I love the unique look and feel of old photos. I love the way they make me wonder...I just figure in a past life, I was some guy with a giant box camera shooting everything I could..because i can't paint.

Its funny, about 3 minutes after the camera was invented, somebody somewhere had taken the first nude images. I guess thats when 'porn" started driving technology..ha!

The first one of these dates pre 1920s and other 2nd is definitely early 20's. I love how they look. I dig the uniqueness of them. I mean, back then, cameras were a novelty at best and not everyone had them. So these are the work of an artist, who in previous centuries would have been painting a subject to get this same image.

The photographic muse was born. This is what inspires me, to photograph what I can't paint. While I'll struggle with the term Artist, I do feel its an artistic endeavor..its just something I love.

Its strange to think I may have enjoyed photography in its early days more than i do in the modern age. Go figure. But here I am..working backwards.

Credits: From my images, the models are Lillian Raven and London Andrews.

When Hollywood was truly glamorous..

Sometime way back when, when a dame, a doll, a goddess in lipstick was the mysterious presence in the back of the room during the big swinging fat cat party thrown by some nameless studio with hundreds of contract players, the ones that all felt like trouble..but  the one in the back of the room, you know, the one with the great get-away sticks and a smile that would melt the ice in your bourbon. Back then these are the kinda pictures they took. I like what i do.


From Sunday. The model is Jessica Mion and the make up artist was Debra Johnson

In the beginning.. there was..confusion

Here I am, after years of not thinking I would be. Doing this now is a lot like saying "Fine, I'll check out this band you guys keep talking about, U2 I think is the name"

Yeah,I consider this fashionably late.

So I am the guy behind Cinema-Photography.net. Its my website. Its the place all my insane photographic ideas go to live. Thats all. it's nothing as awesome as Zombo.com, but its mine and so far, I'm happy I have it. I feel much better knowing its there. My stuff is just..out there in the world. Spooky.

This is what I do:

Art and photography are funny things. I can't paint so i shoot. I have been called an artist, but for me, I feel like if I was an artist, I'd have a beret and a handle bar mustache of epic proportions. I'd dine at cafes and drink obscure teas from other places.

I don't really do that. I like the  that when I meet a model for the first time, she has imagined a Tim Burton type, but instead I show up. Just some regular dopey guy.

Tada!



Tomorrow I have a giant complicated shoot, been getting ready for it for a very long time. Weeks. For me, its the night before Christmas.

So there you go. I'm years late to the "Blog' thing. neat eh?