Vince Penman is a commercial and advertising photographer, director/producer and interactive art director who lives in Austin Texas, with his wife Rachael Penman and children.
This blog is a mixture of professional, personal and everything in between. Life is more than just about work.
You are looking at the final picture that was edited for the coffee table book. Yes, that means the photo editing is now finished! All 100 portraits. I feel like this woman above right now. Giddy beyond all. If it were not 4:00 AM, I would be jumping around the house. No, I’d be running down the street Doc Brown style, with my arms held high. What does this mean? It means Tiffany needs to get her buns down to Austin, so we can shoot the cover photo and plop the text in, and get this book printed. Then make it a New York Times best-seller in the Coolest Photography Coffee Table Book category. That category exists, really .
In reality, we want this book to be a huge success, not only because we put so much time, time, energy and time into this book, but because we believe in the message. This book is about destroying negative Alaska Native stereotypes. There is still so much intolerance and ignorance in the world today. Even with the culture shift of becoming “more acceptive,” the pendulum swings just as easily in the other direction. I think this message can be applied to any culture. Ignorance begets intolerance. So buy the book and get educated.
OK. I’m now off of my soapbox. I really am excited to have these done. It took me too long. Sometimes I would spend an hour on one image. NOT, I must quickly add because they needed to be fixed. I just want everything to be perfect. In reality the images are hardly touched up. We want honest faces. No liquify tool. No magazine-style-have-no-pores skin. Just honest to goodness portraits.
So there you have it. Now it’s time to run down the street… if only I had a Delorean.
I am starting to breath the fresh air at the end of the tunnel. The images for the coffee table book are a few days away from being completed. What is interesting is that near the end were some of the first pictures that we took for the project. This picture, was in fact the very first. It has been a long work in progress, but the book is going to be so worth the wait.
This is one of the latest shots that I have touched up for the Coffee Table Book. I love this shot. To me, it is an updated Mona Lisa, but with a man. I am almost finished with touching up the 100 photos for the book. I never imagined my OCD would kick in so much when touching up these pictures. I suppose it’s because I really want them to be, well, awesome. I really want this book to be a complete success, not because I have done the photography, but because the message is so important. Especially today where people are still fighting stereotypes.
It seems the pendulum swings far in both directions sometimes. The mainstream seems to be more accepting of everyone, but then becomes less accepting of others with less popular beliefs. This book is about Alaska Natives, but it is also more than just that. It is about the fact that we are all people. Individuals with own own beliefs, standards, morals and ideals. If we do not respect that about others, then we are bound to make the same mistakes as the past, which has been largely based on ignorance and fear. I hope this book can help educate, teach and inspire others about individuals who may come from another culture. I hope that it helps them realize that we are all just human beings, but with amazing potential.
Work on the book has come to a screeching halt, as my monitor is broken, and the one I am using is no good for color correcting. But I’ll be back up again this weekend. I wish I could show all of the images, but I don’t want to spoil anything.
Fist let me apologize for the huge lapse on the blog. Things are going great in Austin and are VERY, VERY busy. Since I have been working from home, it seems that I actually work longer hours. It is too easy to just go upstairs to my office and start working on a project. A lot has happened that I have wanted to blog about but just haven’t had the time. Here are some bits:
I have been working on finishing the pictures for my coffee table book. The photo retouching should be finished by the end of the month and Tiffany (the writer) should be done soon after. It’s quite possible to have a book by the end of SPRING! Hooray. The picture up at the top is actually of all the pictures. I made it small and blurred it for s little suspense. We don’t want to spoil it.
Rachael and I are going to start SOMETHING. It is an idea that we have tossed around before but never got around to it. Let’s just say that I love to share my knowledge with others. Keep an eye out for the end of the summer.
I have lost 14 pounds since I left Alaska a little more than a month ago. I tried to start a biggest loser competition at work and no one joined, so I’m competing against myself. I have 40 more pounds to go.
We really, really love Texas (even though we really miss our family).
So they did a story on the coffee table book that I have been working on the last two years with writer Tiffany Tutiakof. You get a quick shot of my bearded mug taking pictures. (they filmed this like 6 months ago) The lame thing is they never mention my name. That hurts a little.
I am sorry, I HAD to post this picture from this weekends shoot in Fairbanks. We went to Alaska Federation of Natives for the last couple of days to get a bunch of pictures for our coffee table book. I know I am trying to save the pictures for when the book is released, but I L-O-V-E this picture and had to share it.
I was up in Fairbanks Alaska again over the weekend. I was shooting for the coffee table book I have been working on for the last year. I am going to have to post at least one picture. The shots were fantastic. I was lucky enough to have my assistant Caleb with me. He totally rocks. One thing about the trip that we thought would be bad, was the fact that we lost our space in the convention center and we would have to shoot in our hotel room. It actually worked out great. We had to high tale it out of there Saturday morning so naturally I thought a stop motion video was in order.
From Vince:
For those of you who know about this project, it is going awesomely well. I can’t talk about it too much now, but will be able to get into some more details soon. I’ll give yo a hint: Kramer tried to make one. The images are turning out brilliant! I want to post every one of them on my site, but I need to exert some self control and keep most of them for the release of the final project.
Here is some cool music from madeskimo to listen too while thinking of the project:
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From Vince: