Tolkien Elves and Cosplay at Denver Comic Con (2014)

Comic Con is essentially this: a sprawling exhibit hall filled with a gaggle of fantasy and sci-fi celebrities, cool comic book artists showing their skills, and wily merchants selling comic books and scraps of pop culture. While downstairs a bunch of nifty discussion panels are held (let's talk about zombies!). But what's best about Comic Con is watching the attendees, especially those who dress like their favorite comic book characters. Like these guys:

Hey you on the lower right: a t-shirt is not a costume!

Or how about these X-Men and Women:


I always seem to find one of my favorite Neil Gaiman characters from the Sandman series. This year I found two:

Death...


...and, uh, Death, presumably checking on the living dead.

And it wouldn't be a proper Comic Con without an appearance by the groovy Cumberbatch...

Benedict welcoming you to the PosterParty booth.

Or a visit from R2-D2...


But I was really hoping to find someone dressed as Gandalf. I mean the wondrous Weta people came all the way to Denver and set up a magical Middle-earth display. So you'd think there would have been costumed Orcs and Hobbitses everywhere.

Gandalf atop the Weta display searching for people dressed like him.

Gollum, who set off a wave of selfies -- it seems everyone wants their picture taken with Gollum.

But I didn't see a single Tolkien costume. Then, just as I was about leave, two magical elves appeared and graciously allowed me to photograph them. (As you probably know elves don't usually like having their picture taken.) And so this year's Denver Comic Con was saved.

Legolas and Thranduil

Yes, there are far too many Batmen (okay, Adam West was in the house) and not enough Hobbits. But Comic Con is still a fun way to spend some time watching people get lost in their favorite fictional characters for a weekend.

And you might as well take some pictures...

Photos by Joe Beine. Feel free to share them on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest or elsewhere with proper attribution and a link back here. Camera: Nikon D7100. Lens: Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX.

DC Art: Alexander Calder's Mobile in the National Gallery of Art

Untitled detail of mobile (1976) by Alexander Calder, National Gallery of Art East Building, Washington, DC

These photos show just a small portion of a much larger mobile that can be viewed at the National Gallery's east building from two floors. It moves seemingly on its own in the building's small air currents. But I was fascinated by the way the pieces of the mobile captured the surrounding light and cast shadows on the walls.

DC Art: Angels in the Architecture

"Figures of Genius" by Philip Martiny from the Ceiling of the Library of Congress, Jefferson Building, Washington, DC

DC Art: Mark Rothko

Green and Maroon detail (1953) by Mark Rothko, The Phillips Collection

One of my favorite places in Washington, DC is the Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. The room is small and simple, just a single bench surrounded by four Rothko paintings. If you sit in the room facing one of the paintings you might experience a range of feelings that Rothko's art can evoke. The energy in the room is light and airy. The paintings seem to hum with an inner radiance. It's just right for meditation.

The National Gallery of Art has a large collection of Rothko paintings. Three were on display when I visited, including this one...


These two photographs are details from No. 14 (White and Greens in Blue) (1957) by Mark Rothko, National Gallery of Art, East Building, Washington, DC



In 2013 the Denver Art Museum had a show of Rothko's paintings from the 1940s, many on loan from the National Gallery's collection. As I walked through the exhibit I could almost see his early abstract shapes slowly moving into place, eventually becoming the later work he is best known for. Aside from the natural glow Rothko's paintings seem to have, I also like his diffuse shapes and the way his colors softly reach into each other. I tried to capture a bit of that with these photographs.

Here's a link to my favorite painting in the Denver Art Museum's show: Mark Rothko - Untitled 1947.

Camera: Nikon D7100 with AF Nikkor 50mm f1.4D lens; the Rothko Room photo was taken with an iPod Touch. Flash was turned off.

Tegan and Sara at Twist & Shout

There is nothing cooler than a Tegan and Sara show in an intimate space.



Tegan and Sara played a short set and signed autographs at Denver's Twist & Shout record store on August 22, 2013. They played later that night at Red Rocks with Fun. Camera: Nikon D7100; Lens: Nikon 85mm f1.4.

DC Art: Recreation by Charles Sprague Pearce in the Library of Congress

If you spend some time in the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress you might find some hidden surprises tucked away in a lunette like this one.


Recreation by Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914) in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC

DC Art: Multiverse and the Concourse that Connects the National Gallery Buildings

Multiverse (2008) by Leo Villareal in the Concourse between the East and West Buildings of the National Gallery of Art

If you want to walk from one of Washington, DC's National Gallery of Art Buildings to the other, you can either simply go outside or you can wander through the underground tunnel that connects them. There you will find a light display called Multiverse by Leo Villareal. You can watch it change as you go by and be surprised by its enigmatic glow. Then you will come upon another surprise, a large glass window in front of a waterfall.

Cascade Waterfall, National Gallery of Art Concourse, Washington, DC

DC Art: Little Dancer of Fourteen Years by Degas

French Impressionist Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is known for his paintings of ballet dancers. He also made many sculptures, but only exhibited this one, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, in his lifetime. It was shown at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1881. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC has the original of this sculpture. Degas used yellow wax, hair, ribbon, a linen bodice, satin shoes, a muslin tutu and a wood base to create the sculpture. The photo on the top right is of the original wax sculpture. The other two photos are of a plaster copy, also in the National Gallery. Ballet student Marie van Goethem was the model for the sculpture.

A Trumpeter Swan Grows Up

In the summer of 2008 I photographed a cygnet (baby swan) as it was growing up. Here are some of the photographs I took.

About a week old...

About a month old...

Two-and-a-half months old...

Tegan and Sara at Twist and Shout, Denver

Tegan Quin

Sara Quin

Tegan and Sara played a very cool set at Denver's Twist and Shout record store on Sept. 13, 2010. I managed to take a few photographs while peeking through all the people, record racks, amps and microphone stands. They played later that night with Paramore at Red Rocks. Camera: Nikon D80; Lens: Nikon 85mm f1.4.

Also see: Tegan and Sara in Aspen

Lavec Plastic Camera from Time Magazine circa 1981

In the early 1980s I received a plastic 35mm camera as a promotional gift for subscribing to Time magazine. The camera was made by a company called Lavec in Taiwan. It came with a strap, lens cap and case. Unlike the Holga and Diana cameras, the Lavec doesn't seem to have much of a following. But I enjoyed playing around with it. Here are three pictures I took with the Lavec camera around the time I got it. For the Broadway photograph, I set the camera on the sidewalk and pushed the shutter.


Winter Trees, Ketring Park, Littleton, Colorado


Three Charred Guitars, Orchard Road, Littleton, Colorado


Broadway at Night, Littleton, Colorado

Swan Dance in Australia - Lumix Life

My "Swan Dance" gallery was shown in a photography gallery in Sydney, Australia as part of Panasonic's Lumix Life exhibition. Here are some screen shots from a webcam set up in the gallery, along with the original photos.







You can see art works made from my swan photos at: Swan Art

Twins in Light: Wooden Tops

These wooden tops were made by Alan Gray, a mechanical engineer, who enjoys making toys that balance. The package they came in arrived on a sunny spring day. When I opened the box the sunlight from outside my front door and window made a nice glow on the red tissue paper and the colored top. So I took a picture.

The top maker's website is at: Wood Tops

Norman Petty Documentary featuring Buddy Holly

Five photographs I took inside the Norman Petty recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico were used in a documentary called "New Mexico Legends - The Norman Petty Studios." The documentary was produced by the New Mexico Music Commission and you & me productions. It first aired on New Mexico PBS stations on June 4, 2009. It features Buddy Holly, the Fireballs, LeAnn Rimes and others.


Here are the photographs of mine that were used:

• Ampex Tape Recorder - Maybe Baby


• Celeste Used by Vi Petty on Buddy Holly's "Everyday"


• Nor-Va-Jak Microphone


• Acetate Cutter


• Baldwin Piano

Thanks to Steve Palmisano of you & me productions

Fujifilm Instax 200 Camera Photographs

Instax is instant film like Polaroid used to make. I recently bought a Fujifilm Instax 200 camera. It's a large plastic camera about 7" long and 5" high. It has three exposure settings (lighten, normal and darken) and two lens settings (0.9 to 3 meters and 3 meters to infinity). I'm having fun playing around with it. Here are two of the first photographs I took with my Instax camera.

Wheat Sky

Snowless Winter

Tegan's Fingers and the Art of Cropping

When taking pictures I usually try to get the shot I want without thinking about later adjustments or cropping. In the digital world we live in it's easy to take a photograph and possibly improve on it with Photoshop and other programs. But I live in the natural world too and I prefer to just leave things alone. Of course my Nikon D80 is a digital thing, but really all it does it capture light on a sensor according to the way I set the camera. I would prefer that it capture the light as naturally as possible. And this approach also includes the composition of the picture. This feels natural to me, whether it really is or not.

At the Tegan and Sara show I saw in Aspen in April, I wasn't able to get close enough to the stage to get the shots I really wanted. And there were a lot of people between me and the band. So I later spent some time cropping the photographs to get better views. This has helped me to see into the pictures more and I found some interesting details.

I cropped one to show this close-up of Tegan's guitar. It's not really a great picture -- it's a bit too blurry maybe -- but I like the way the guitar strings seem to vibrate under Tegan's fingers. This is something you really don't notice when looking at the entire photograph.

Here is the original photograph before cropping. You can click on either one to see a larger view.

Another crop from the same original is at Flickr here: Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara on Flickr.

Recently I watched the Beatles 1965 movie Help, which has a number of scenes showing the Beatles miming to various songs. These sequences influenced later music promo films, especially MTV video clips. Some of them include close-up shots of the Beatles playing their instruments, showing fingers on strings. I guess this could be called "finger syncing." As a non-musician I've often been fascinated watching musicians play their instruments, especially with the way their fingers touch guitar strings or the keys of a saxophone or piano, or hold drumsticks. I tried to capture that idea here. In a natural yet digital kind of way...