Tonight while I was dressed up, I did a new self-portrait of myself. Some of my contacts for speaking gigs have asked for an updated photo, and I can also use a new image of myself on the professional photography forums that I’m a contributer for.
I specifically did a photo of me smiling this time. On a couple occasions people have told me after meeting me, that they were suprised to see that I’m a happy guy. Somehow they thought that my serious self-portraits meant that I was a dark and brooding type of person. That’s so funny to me.
Yes I do smile a lot, but tend to photograph myself serious. So this time I made myself laugh for a real genuine smile, and this photo turned out to be my favorite.
As far as the blog goes, I’ve got a lot to tell you all, and will get some of the highlights up this week.
I was interviewed recently on LDS Radio which is KSL’s HD 2 station, and is also an internet radio station found at radio.lds.org with podcasts and mp3 downloads. That interview just aired today at 1:oo pm. I got an email from someone that I was on the radio and turned it on to hear the last half of the show. It was really fun!
LDS Radio - On Air
I didn’t have a lot of information about the show, but just knew that the subject was ‘Creativity.’ This is a good subject for me because aside from working creatively as an artist, I’ve really had to analyze my creative approach over the years so that I could better teach creativity at the photographic workshops that I do all over the US and Canada (and now China). I was glad that it was a subject that I felt prepared for.
When I arrived, I was happy that I knew the host already, Nancy Hanson, a local musician. I’ve done design and portrait work for her over the years and have gotten to know her well from that as well as having mutual musician friends. Here’s one of my favorite images I did of her a while back.
BryCox - Nancy Hanson
Also being interviewed was Vaughn Armstrong, who recently created a new LDS trivia board game. I also know Vaughn personally because we were in the same singles ward a few years ago. There was one other person being interviewed whose name I don’t remember now. (I’m sorry!) She has a blog and podcast about playing the ukulele all over the world. The idea was to get us together and discuss and compare creative approaches in our different fields.
Me at LDS Radio (1)Me at LDS Radio (2)Me at LDS Radio (3)
Thanks again to LDS Radio and Tamilisa for inviting me over and having me on. It was a great experience and a real honor. I hope to find the MP3 and link over to it when it is available for everyone to listen to.
Early the next morning I set out to photograph and document the convention center before people started to arrive, because this is the first PPA convention in China, and the very first PhotoAsia — four years in the making!
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 1
Here is the place all ready for people to arrive!
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 2
I walked out to the main gate to photograph the guard…
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 3
…as well as various landmarks that surrounded the convention center like this pavilion in the distance (above) in one direction and this statute (below) in another direction.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 4
By that time people started arriving and as I tried to get this image of me in front of the convention center.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 5
I had only a short 3 minute walk back to the hotel, but I got stuck in this location for about 45 minutes because someone recognized me and wanted a photo with me. That got other people’s attention and within moments I was mobbed by people on all sides wanting to photograph me and wanting me to sign their shirts. I have to admit, this really made me feel awesome! This is just one quick shot of the crowd at the end as I was trying to leave and get to the opening ceremonies. There were still people wanting photos with me, but I didn’t want to be late to the ceremony of which I was apart!
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 6Cox – PPA Photo Asia 7
We had a quick welcome meeting with the VIP’s in a smaller room where flowers were pinned on us by Chinese women in traditional dress. These women then escorted us to the main hall, the location of the opening ceremonies. This photo is coming down the escalator towards the main hall. The women in the red traditional dresses are our escorts.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 8
As we approached, everyone began to take our picture. So fun!
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 9
And here is PPA President, Ron Nichols up on the stage welcoming everyone to PPA Photo Asia.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 10
Here’s me backstage with my flower pinned on, and wearing half of my second custom made Chinese suit. That is also one of the custom made dress shirts too.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 11
The opening ceremonies opened up the print exhibit. This is just half of the exhibit, and only the accepted prints. If I remember right, there were entries from over 25,000 photographers from around the world, and I won a Gold Medal! I’ll talk more on this when I talk about the awards ceremony in a later post.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 12
As you can see, all of us got mobbed for autographs and photos. Here is Ron Nichols getting tons of attention.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 13
And here is one of my photographs in the exhibit.
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 14
And I loved it when these women came up and asked to pose for a photo with me, so I made sure I got one with my camera too. 🙂
Cox – PPA Photo Asia 15
And I loved this moment when the beautiful editor of PhotoWorld Magazine came up and asked for a photo with me. She later did a one-on-one interview too for her magazine. That was one of the highlights of the trip. She gave me a copy of a past issue and the cover photo was incredible! It is a fabulous and beautiful magazine and I felt honored to be asked to be in it.
After the opening ceremonies, I had time for a quick and fast lunch before going off to speak — the first speaker at the first PhotoAsia. I’ll have more on that in the next post!
Yes, I am here in China! I was the first speaker here at PPA Photo Asia, and someone pointed out that I am the first speaker at the first ever PPA Photo Asia! I feel it a great honor to be here and do such a great work.
I have many amazing photographs and info to post, but access to my blog is limited here for some reason — it seems to be blocked along with many other websites. In fact, I’m only able to add some text here using a URL cloaking site (many of which are blocked as well). Using a cloaking site has taken away the functionality of the blog and I am not as of yet able to upload photographs.
However, I speak again all day today and start in a just a little bit. So I will try and post some photos very soon.
It was really fun to photograph a good friend of mine, Laura recently. She is so beautiful and fun to photograph. Here are a couple of my favorites from the session!
Bry Cox - Laura 1
This first one above really shows off her eyes and smile. It is gorgeous. And this second image below is just fun and sassy.
Bry Cox - Laura 2
She hasn’t seen these yet, but I think she’ll love them! She looks great and I think her inner spirit really shows through in these images.
Well I’ve been out of town a lot lately, and have gotten behind on the blog posts, but I have a lot to put and am not sure if I can get it all up before more cool shoots come along to blog about.
But for now I have to tell you how excited I am about these images from Stephanie’s engagement session. This first image is a painting that I’ve been working on. It uses a new technique I’ve been working on and utilizes some of my brand new brushes that I’ve developed for photographers.
Bry Cox - Painting for Stephanie
I love the feeling of the entire image, how great the couple looks, the vibrant surreal colors, the abstract shapes in the trees and grass…. I’m very excited to get this finished and on canvas!
This next series is a nine-image composite of the couple. I love how in love they are and am excited for their wedding!
Bry Cox - Stephanie's Composite
Composites are great for couples I think to show motion, and emotion. I designed up two for them, this one above and this treo below.
Bry Cox - Stephanie's Treo
Well that’s it for now. I’ll get some more of my projects up quickly! I’ve got a lot of new things to show.
A few weeks ago I posted a very unique image of the Salt Lake Temple which has caused a lot of excitement. Many people asked it was available for purchase. Well I have it now, ready for purchase as a custom 20×36 inch stretched canvas gallery wrap. It looks absolutely gorgeous.
To kick it off, I’m offering the first 10 for $300 off, and am also including free local delivery or FedEx Ground shipment to the lower 48 states.
I know that by offering the first few at a big discount that many of your friends and families will see it displayed your homes and want one for themselves.
Bry Cox – Mountain Tops
This image is called “Mountain Tops” due to the composition and as a reference to the Old Testament use of mountains as a symbol of the temple. Here’s how it looks from the side.
Bry Cox – side view of Mountain Tops
In getting “Mountain Tops” ready to release, I also decided to release and offer another image that has only been seen at my studio but has always created a big buzz — “The Sacred Grove!” It’s amazing how great this looks close up! It’s also been fun to have a religious piece of artwork that only certain people recognize as well. Some have simply thought it was a beautiful scenic, but those who know, appreciate it on many levels and are stunned by it.
Bry Cox – Sacred Grove
This is available as a 24×36 stretched Canvas Gallery Wrap and I’m doing the same thing with this: offering the first 10 for $300 off! This too also includes free local delivery or FedEx Ground shipment to the lower 48 states.
Both are available at my online store which is BryCoxART.com, or can be ordered by phone by giving me a call at 801-728-3317.
Last week when I was teaching at the photographic workshop in New England (see my last blog entry), I had the honor of meeting painter Jeremy Sutton (JeremySutton.com). He too was there to teach a course at the workshop, but his was on painting.
As both of us were instructors, we arrived a day early to get set up and have dinner together and with the other instructors and the NEIPP staff. I had never met him before, but knew his name and had seen some of his DVDs years ago. I was excited to finally meet him.
As we talked, we were both excited about the fact that we both had the same fresh approach and philosophies to creativity. Though we use different mediums and have different terminology to explain it, it was fun to find that they were so similar.
I’ve dubbed my creative philosophy and style, “Jazz Photography,” based on me being a jazz musician before becoming a photographer, and using the same approaches from playing jazz to creating photographs — that is having a high technical background but being able to block the technical thinking, allowing that part to function perfunctorily in the background in order to really be able to improv and be creative.
Jeremy, being a painter with a strong technical background, uses a similar approach, pulling on his love of jazz music and his background of swing dancing, relating it all to his individual brushstrokes. He even listens to jazz and talks about dancing as he paints.
BryCox - Sutton painting 1
Jeremy had an idea of combining our groups one night for about 30 minutes in order to talk about the similarities of our creative processes despite the differences in mediums. He decided that doing a live portrait would work best for this, and I was honored to have him chose me to paint. This image above is Jeremy painting me live.
BryCox - Sutton painting 2
It was quite an experience to be painted live. As you can see from this image above, he lit me with some consistent and directional light (the lamp) and is working digitally with a digital pad and pen (called a Cintique’, $2000) that is pressure and directionally sensitive. His work can be seen on the projector behind us.
BryCox - Sutton painting 3
He worked very abstractly, laying down colors and shapes that didn’t look like me or a person at all, but instead were swirls of color and shape, both positive and negative. The entire process only took 20 minutes, and near the end it began to come together where we could all see the face emerge from the abstract.
I am extremely pleased with the painting. Here is the final result:
BryCox - Sutton final canvas
I absolutely love this! As an artist, I find it incredibly interesting and very artistic. I love the use of color, the shapes, and the loose feeling of the brushstrokes as well. This was not created from a photo reference, but live, right in front of me. It was an incredible gift!
Being a musician, I love to write and record in my free time. This to me looks like an album cover for a future CD! I think I have a new project on my hands. 🙂
As my current clients know, I’ve offered painted portraits on canvas for many years using a portrait I create as a reference. Some of these can be seen in past entries on this blog (here is one example, or type “painting” into the search bar near the top of my blog to see more examples from the past).
However, I am hoping to learn and incorporate more of Jeremy’s style and techniques into my work to be an even better painter artist. I’m excited for what that will bring to my work.
This Saturday, I’ll be at the Gateway Wedding Show, located in the Grand Ballroom next to The Depot at the Gateway. The show goes from 10 am to 4 pm and it should be a lot of fun. I’ll be bringing some new albums and some new beautiful samples to show.
Bridal shows are a great way to see and compare different photographers and other wedding vendors very quickly, and I’m excited for you to come and see me and what I do, and to compare the quality and value against anyone else.
If you’re getting married, stop by and say hi. It’d be fun to see you.
Well, my Portland job is finished. It went really well. I fly home today and should have flown out a while ago, but I got bumped and am waiting now at the Portland airport for my next flight.
One thing I’ve always liked about the PDX airport is that it is one of the few airports that has free and working WiFi. That is a nice service for sure, so today I’m taking advantage of that and thought I’d put up a few more images from my coastal road trip I took earlier this week.
Bry Cox - Heceta at a distance
This image above I created on my long walk up to the Heceta lighthouse (on Day 2). It was such a serene moment to come around the path and have it open up to this scene!
Bry Cox - Looking off Heceta
This image was taken from the lighthouse looking down. The mountain in the distance is where I photographed the lighthouse during the day time on Day 3 from a distance along with the image of myself.
Bry Cox - Heceta Panorama
Here is a pano of the lighthouse before the sun set that night.
And earlier that day I photographed an entirely different lighthouse on the way to Heceta. This lighthouse is called Yaquina and I used my friend Bryan Welsh’s long lens to get this from a distant beach.
Bry Cox - Yaquina Lighthouse
Well I’m getting tired of sitting here in the airport and need to walk around, stretch and maybe get some food. I hope you all like these images. I know I had a great time creating them and am very excited to see them printed.
Yesterday was day three of my Oregon Coast Photo Safari. When I’m on a photo safari, for some strange reason I think it’s fun find and stay in some classic motels…that are clean of course. This is the motel where I stayed between day 2 and 3 on the safari. It was in a small coastal town right across the street from the place where I ate dinner. And yes, it was clean and cheap and the biggest thing that impressed me was the fact that they still used real keys instead of swipe cards.
Coastal Motel
So after checking out, I headed back north, taking the slow and scenic way to Portland, and found a little meandering road called Mercer on the way. That’s where I got this panorama.
Bry Cox - Mercer
Because only locals drive the road and they all know each other, I had a few local people stop and watch me to make sure I didn’t need any help or to see what I was up to. I loved this scene. The trees are fantastic!
From there I continued more north passing the lighhouse again and this time stop and created some images from a distance rather than up close.
Bry Cox - Heceta Head
I like this angle because it shows the cliffs below the lighthouse. Such a great location. This was right off the road and didn’t require any hiking, so other cars were pulling off too to look. After setting up my equipment, I found someone to take a photo with me in it. I never get any photos of me when I’m on a trip, so this is a real treat!
Bry Cox - Bry at Heceta
I got into Portland by early evening yesterday and began working all day today. I work again most of the day tomorrow too, and then I’m done here.
Here in Portland, because I’m working, I was put up in a very nice hotel. I’ve stayed in a lot of nice hotels, but this has to be one of the biggest rooms I’ve ever had. It is the size of a three room apartment and I love it. It’s so nice to stay in a nice place after staying in a cheap place the night before. The contrast really makes me appreciate companies like this that put time and effort into creating an atmosphere of good taste, and style, that is beautiful and comfortable to live in.
Ok, well I’ve got to go prepare for tomorrow. I’ll get more images up when I get a minute. Until next time, America!
— Bry
I made it just as planned to my favorite lighthouse at exactly when I wanted to arrive, just as the sun was beginning to set. This is one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world and I’ve won some great awards myself with images of this lighthouse that I created some years ago. It is called Heceta Head, and pretty much every art book on lighthouses has Haceta Head on the cover.
Aside from the lighthouse itself, the location is absolutely gorgeous and serene. It puts me in an introspective and creative mood just being there. The air was perfect and fresh and I loved the sound of the very large waves crashing into the rocks below us.
I created a lot of images here tonight, but here are just two for now.
Bry Cox - Oregon Photo Safari 4
The lighthouse is about a 1/2 mile hike from the parking area. Once reaching the lighthouse, I hurried to make this image just before the sun dropped below some clouds on the horizon.
Bry Cox - Oregon Photo Safari 5
Once the sun had dropped out completely, I created this image with the help of a photographer friend of mine, Bryan Welsh (MIT Studio) who came along with me. He helped me paint the side of the building with a flash during a long 30 second exposure, a technique called “painting with flash.” It came about once the sun had dropped out and in trying to figure out how to get the twilight image I wanted, found out that he had two hand-held flashes in his bag.
Painting with flash means that while the camera is on a tripod and open, we run around in the frame flashing the areas we want lit. The flashes have to be in the right locations and at the right settings, and you have to constantly run to avoid ending up in the photograph yourself. A very fun way to make a photograph! 🙂 I think we were laughing after every 30 second exposure.
There are more images from this location, and hopefully soon I’ll get some more up on the blog.
Today was such a fun day. I loved driving down the coast, seeing small towns, eating in fun little diners, hanging out with my friend Bryan, and photographing this lighthouse. This particular lighthouse was the main reason I wanted to come back out to the coast on this trip and I think I got some great images.
Well that’s it for tonight. I should get to bed now. Until next time, America!
— Bry
