Mikuni Madness!

Mikuni's hosted an enormous charity event at The Empire tonight, which included feasting for all the senses. Paula Barkely and daughter Tabatha went to work creating a painted Geisha. It took several hours to create the amazing living art piece out of Joanna, their patient model. The hair and upper body make up was done in the dressing room but the final touches were done onstage for the whole club to witness. The colors and details were so beautiful and delicate.

Vau de Vire performed amazing acrobatics above the crowd and riveted everyone. They are from San Francisco and call themselves "A sub-culture community of beautiful circus performers". Quite accurate! I was dazzled and delighted!

taro
Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Taro, the man of the hour! He just beamed all night. The Empire was filled with people all munching an abundance of sushi and appetizers carried by servers who had to carefully wind their way through, no small feat. It was wall to wall people!

lantern
Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

The decor was colorful and abundant, with these gorgeous lanterns outside, glitttering ice sculptures inside and dozens of paper lanterns. We could barely walk through the place but sometimes that just makes life fun. There were limos arriving every five minutes, I swear I saw at least one Sacramento Kings player, and as many times as I have been at The Empire i don't think I ever saw it so beautifully done up. Whoever did the party planniing on this one deserves a big round of applause!

Portrait of Tom Zutaut

Tom Zutaut was a gifted child tuba player. Years later he would be come a gifted muse for creative people, inspiring musicicans to take their talents to the next level, then leading them to the global level. Today he put himself in my hands to do what I do. One thing that has been coming up again and again for me lately... "the experience". Not the kind of experience of being good at what you do. The kind that you have in the moment. Are you having fun? Do you feel joy, happiness, calm, release, contentment, do you feel safe, cheerful, appreciated? What I do is so much about the experience. And as I stepped back and watched Tom during out shoot it wasn't just his experience I realized, it was mine too. Sometimes you forget that!

Dotties, Kellies, it's all so fun!

EYE STREET CHRONICLES, DOTTIES NOMINEE!


Look out world, here comes Kellie!

Kellie is a country singer working on her first three-song demo and of course the necessary publicity photos are in order. What a fun day.

Thought we might cause an accident as she danced on the corner outside this bar. You know, a pretty girl can get away with most anything in this world! But she's talented too so I can't wait to hear the demo!

Excedrine headache #3, working title

Artists know this. You go into a hypnotic trance on occasion and when you come out there is a piece of art in front of you. Creatively I'm in what I like to call "What if" mode-- just trying everything, learning, seeing what will happen if...
The original assignment was a simple head shot. We got that and then some. Something about the mood of the raw image I liked. Never imagined it would turn into this.

Community Center Theatre, Showing some love

Yes it's true. I shot a wedding, a real rarity. This one was at the Sacramento Community Center Theatre-- THE FIRST WEDDING EVER AT THAT VENUE! How cool is that?

The Fleeting Intangibles

miav
Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

For me the art of portraiture lives in such abstract thought. I can tell you things I look for-- movement, expression, the fleeting detail of who a person is. I can tell you technical basics and guidelines I use. But how do you explain seeing beyond the obvious. How to you explain taking an image but having some other vision simultaneously that can't be described but it's there swimming around in your head.
I do loads of portraiture, probably my very favorite thing. But with photo shoots like this-- a Christmas present for her man- I'm just thankful she let me do what I do, mostly post-shoot. Because I could never have been able to tell her where any of these images were going artistically with any clarity.

We did two set ups. These images were part of the second set up. All hail my wonderful smoke machine and this beautiful woman who herself had a vision to immortalize herself, letting me do the honors.

Twisted Xmas

gnarls_barkley
Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

KWOD's Twisted Xmas show at Arco Arena is always a lot of fun because of the diversity of the artists that you get to see.
Larger than life Gnarls Barkley struts out onto the stage in his pj's, or something that looked very much like that and you can feel the energy in the arena step up a notch. I like this guy and that song Crazy off his St. Elsewhere album just stops me in my tracks everytime I hear it. He even had a foursome of violinists in flannel pj's, robes and furry slippers off to the side.


My Chemical Romance was a stunner too. Seen them several times before but it was clearly apparent what a year can do to the musical maturity of a band. The frontman, Gerard Way, was exciting and he owned the stage.

Sacramento's own, The Secretions-- "We Secrete, You Suck"-- were in rare form on the side stage bathed in white light and joined by two girls in flouncy skirts dancing up a storm. Loads of fun!

Jingle Ball

Jingle Ball at Arco Arena was a real girl fest and quite wonderful overall. One of the highlights for me was Nelly Furtado who came out in this honey colored sheer and filmy dress with crystal sparkles all over. Long gone is the cute girl seen on MTV videos, Furtado now has elegance and more than a bit of vamp. Don't know why I was surprised. She's always been a great singer but she was a delicious surprise nonetheless and delivered a polished performance with confidence and flair.

As always The Pussycat Dolls pack an in your face sexual punch with their choreographed writhing and burlesque style dance moves, which frankly are incredibly entertaining. Gotta love these girls. Despite the near constant aerobic workout they are getting it genuinely looks like they are having fun!
Check out the gallery of images at www.emusiconnect.com.