Red Bull Flugtag DC, 2013

Last Saturday Washington DC hosted its first Red Bull Flugtag (German: flight day) in the National Harbor,  in a cloudy and rainy day. For the ones who don’t know what is Flugtag, this is a good definition taken from Wikipedia:

Red Bull Flugtag (German: flight day, airshow) is an event organized by Red Bull in which competitors attempt to fly home-made, size- and weight-limited, human-powered flying machines (max 10m/30 ft, 150 kg/330 lbs). The flying machines are usually launched off a pier about 30 feet (9.1 m) high into the sea (or suitably sized reservoir of water). Most competitors enter for the entertainment value, and the flying machines rarely fly at all.

Indeed, most of those flying machines didn’t fly at all, but there where others with weird shapes that made you think they were not going to fly but actually did an impressive performance. And that is what makes this event so great, you never know what’s going to happen.

The Opening

The event was opened by two skydivers who jumped from a plane, and glided with their parachutes to land in the flugtag platform with great precision.

Red Bull Flugtag opening Continue reading “Red Bull Flugtag DC, 2013”

Silicon Corpses – Digital Photomanipulation

Probably 10 years ago I started experimenting with digital painting and photo manipulation. At that time, I attended a short drawing course of Manga comics and discovered a great Japanese manga artists – Tsutomu Nihei, and his collection of manga books titled Blame! which became a great influence in a photo montage project I titled Silicon Corpses.

Based on Blame! and NOiSE books, I created a some sort of garments with wire and surgical fabric. I asked few friends to pose with those garments, I took some photographs using as reference some drawings from the books and then finished the work in the computer.

Hace 10 años comencé a experimentar con pintura digital y manipulación de fotografías. En esa época realicé un curso de Manga y descubrí a un gran dibujante japonés llamado Tsutomu Nihei, autor de libros como Blame! y NOiSE, quien me influenció bastante y me animó a realizar una serie de foto manipulaciones llamada Cadáveres de Silicio.

Con base en viñetas e ilustraciones de libros Blame y NOiSE, realicé trajes hechos de alambre dulce y tela quirúrgica (muy barata). Unas amigas posaron con estos trajes para las fotos base y posteriormente terminé el trabajo en el computador.

This is the result of my work:

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

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KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Depeche Mode, Delta Machine Tour, DC

Depeche Mode, Delta Machine, DC

I went last Tuesday to see Depeche Mode in concert. What a great experience, I had no idea how was their performance, specially David Gahan’s who never stopped moving and dancing during the whole presentation. Martin Gore was great too, and generated a lot of emotions in the public with his songs accompanied with classical piano sounds.

One of the awesome surprises for me was to hear them performing their old songs, specially several from their album Violator.

These are some photos I took with my (shitty but reliable) point-and-shoot camera. Since this type of cameras calculate the exposure automatically depending on the average lighting, I set the exposure compensation to -2, to take photos darker and allow the artists not to look washed out or too overexposed  due to the light falling over them which is usually more intense than the screens and videos projected behind them.

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