The missing shoot and the current goings on.

Ola folks,

Updates have been a bit sparse of late but we assure you we are hard at work and plan to continue to update the blog more and more as time permits. What's all the fuss? Well, we're still negotiating a deal relating to EBEJEEBIES and it appears we might be nearing the end of talks hopefully we can get cracking soon. We're not holding out on posting, we've just had nothing to report... yet.

Clearly we've been shooting a lot of photos of Detroit. This 2042 Detroit project is turning out to be an important project and we've had nothing but fun developing it so far. The photo shoots have been a complete blast as we've been exploring our city with an attention to detail we never considered before. I thought with this current update I'd talk about one of the past shoots that failed ot get some well deserved attention in the posts here, because it was crazy.

April 11th 2005, the fifth Detroit shoot and the most wacky and surreal by far. This shoot started out innocent enough, beginning in JLA, the tunnel, the spiral tube (now a fav location), and then moving out to the exit near the freeway (see photos below) and then the silliness and strangeness began. The first incident was while we were shooting near the highway, some guy in a van see's Gina and catcalls to her out his window (hey, we don't blame him really). Ok, fine nothing all that odd really except this clown nearly drove his van into the wall, now that would have been a wee little problem trying to explain that one to police. We all had a good laugh, especially Gina, and moved on.

As we progressed deeper into the city we continued to joke, act a tad silly, and just have fun. Walking down the sidewalk we shot the city as we went. As I was just about to shoot a building, I thought was pretty interesting, some guy comes up and says "NO photos, this is government property." I hadn't taken any shots of the building so all good, I didn't realize it was a court building. Gina knew it was and was going to tell me but the court guy intercepted us first, can't remember if he was armed or not which leads me to this...

A ribbed door, with this little window next to it sporting a neon CAUTION sign caught my attention and I began to line up a shot and just then this door opens and out comes a bunch of SWAT guys with bloody machine guns! As soon as they saw my camera they put their hands up in the "No, no you don't. No pictures for you or we'll shoot your ass" gesture. Needless to say I lowered the camera instantly. The idea of getting vented with an M-16 didn't appeal to any of us so we sheepishly walked on in a state of shock and demented amusement. These guys looked intense as the took up stations on either side of the building. What were they doing? Security for large money transfer, pretty simple but unnerving to see. As much as it was intimidating Jeff and I wanted to get some shots of the Penobscot from the corner so Jeff went up to one of the SWAT guys and asked him if it was cool we took some pics so long as we didn't photograph him, he gave us permission, all was well in the world, cepting the heavy artillery out in the open. After some photos we moved on only to walk past the Detroit office of Homeland Security, uhh yeah... we didn't take any pictures, enough guns for the day. It was pretty wild to say the least but we still had fun and it makes for an amusing story I guess. I only wish I'd posted this sooner as my recollection would have been sharper, still it happened pretty much as I described. After all the crazy we rode the People Mover, visited the Guardain, ate some Quiznos with little incident. All in all it was a pretty short shoot but quite a lot of fun and harrowing, well something like that.

Quite a lot of rambling there, all this for an animated TV series development project and finally, after all this time, I'm posting a peek at some artwork for the project (there's now a good deal of art in process soon to be revealed), an image of Vox Kali, based on the apparently dangerous, in the near vacinity of any highway, automotive hazard Miss Stevens. Man that was a crazy day O_O

Below are are a few images taken by me of the April 11th shoot and several great photos taken by Gina, on her camera phone, during some of her trips with us to the city, for a camera phone I think she got some really nice shots. Jeff and I also had another shoot at Comerica Park yesterday but I'd like to compile some of that before I post it. More to come for sure folks. Take care everyone.