I've been spending the last couple hours flicking through this goregeous set on Flickr. It's been uploaded by the Library of Congress and is comprised of about 2000 images from the 1940's- in color. They're beautiful and entrancing- they range in subject from urban sprawl to wild west; from farmer to rosie-the-riveter types. Most of them are Kodachrome proccess, giving the colors that special detailed saturation that only that proccess could acheive. I can't get enough of it. Best: no copyright. Worst: idiots putting 10 million comment boxes on everything.

Just as an interesting side note: there is only one place in the US still proccessing kodachrome.

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LIBBY BULLOFF
March 1-29, 2009
Today! Thursday, March 5, 6-11 pm
Pioneer Square Art Walk
Utilikilts Flagship Store
620 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98104

Libby Bulloff is the Annie Leibowitz of Steampunk! I've followed her work for some time now and I really love her composition and use of color - there is a calm joyfulness in her images that makes me happy.

Libby writes:

I have a solo art show coming up at the Utilikilts flagship store in Seattle! I will present work from 2007-2009, including new portraits from three studio shoots at Starfish. Prints will be available, as will complimentary snacks (read: custom Naftali chocolates) and dance beats. Please come on out and say hello (and feel free to grope the manskirts whilst you’re at it)!

I’ve also recently booked a small group photography show at Zero Zero (also in Seattle), but this won’t occur until August, which gives me plenty of time to shoot new, brightly-colored work.

Blanket Magazine has a short piece of Steampunk on the web this month, but that is mainly just the excuse I used to post.  Blanket magazine is:

. . . is a free PDF online magazine that is aimed at uncovering art + design + photography from the talented people who create it.

The name blanket came from the simple idea that we wanted to ‘cover’ all the areas of art, design and photography and bring them together in one magazine.

I've only skimmed the rest of the content so far but the images and graphics are absolutely gorgeous!  Download the PDF by clicking on the image above.  (Found via Mechanis)

Produced by Chicago Tribal Bellydance Troupe Read my Hips, this show looks like it was a lot of fun! 

I'm really excited that the fashions are not purely neo-Victorian, there is some definite punk in there as well as some middle Eastern influence.

Have a look at pictures from the event here and please note that some are NSFW.  XD

The past two Sundays were very different Sundays. A few weeks ago Sharon Steel of the Boston Phoenix came out to The Workshop to interview me.  The interview went really well, Sharon was thoughtful and really interested in my particular take on Steampunk and the broader Steampunk community.  We spent several hours together and much of the interview was recorded on video.  You'll find the article in this week's Boston Phoenix as well as online along with the video here.

Making nice photographs when all you have for lighting is a bunch of tungsten shop lamps can be a real challenge.  It is particularly hard to photograph polished brass under these conditions.  So this weekend I set out to build a flash diffuser to improve the quality of the photography on this site.