mbarrick | Entries tagged with sin city

There was more to this weekend that just throwing my back out. There were moments of sublime absurdity, like a girl in the group of people I was chatting with outside the club at the "7 Deadly Sins" party going to pitch a can of Red Bull over her shoulder and over the construction hoarding behind her and not succeeding. The can hit the wood just shy of the top and ricocheted back to bounce off the top of the top-hat of my greed costume. Also in the realm of the sublimely absurd was being approached by someone in the film industry about making some fake money for a TV show because they were impressed with the quality of the fake money on my costume. I'm waiting to hear back about the price I quoted, which may be more than they were expecting, but designing a realistic series of fake banknotes is going to be a fair bit of work (albeit bizarrely fun). Just being asked is fun enough considering the only reason I made my own fake money was I didn't want to use money that looked American like most play money does.

And in other weird news, I was contacted this weekend by a technology columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald doing an article on steampunk. He asked me about my keyboard mod and requested some good high-res photos. I'm not sure when the article is going to run, but hey, I'm getting press in Australia!

While working my photo-booth at the last Sin City I was asked about shooting for Suicide Girls. Being aware of Lithiumpicnic's legal troubles with SG, and just plain being a stickler for knowing what I am getting into (just last week, for example, I found myself in a room with four people staring at me impatiently while I read every word of a contract, twice, before signing it) I was reading the photographers release contract for SG.

The Jesus-Fuck-I-Wouldn't-Touch-That-With-A-3.048m-Pole clause, similar to what has Lithiumpicnic in trouble from his contract, is the non-competition clause.

8. Non-Competition. Photographer agrees that for two (2) years after the full execution of this Assignment, Photographer will not directly or indirectly: (i) sell or otherwise provide Internet, photographic, video, film, audio, text, design, artistic or other creative content to any “SG Competitor”; or (ii) own, manage, operate, join, control, finance or participate in the ownership, management, operation, control or financing of, or be connected as an officer, director, employee, partner, member, principal, agent, representative, consultant or otherwise, to any “SG Competitor”. “SG Competitor” means any person, entity or organization other than SG that competes with SG, including but not limited to any person, entity or organization that creates, develops, manufactures, produces, distributes, markets, licenses or sells events, products or services that compete with SG.

Should, for example, at some point in the next two years Gothic BC or any of my other sites be deemed an "SG Competitor" I'd be screwed. If I shot for any other site I'd be screwed. If I so much as provided my professional services as a photographer, artist, programmer or consultant (how I make my living!) to any entity that happens produce any kind of material that competes with SG, even if my work is not directly related to the competing products, I'd be liable.

And for what? SG pays $500 USD (now worth only $471.97 CAD) per set. Split with the model I'd have about $235 taxable dollars in my pocket. In return they have me by the short-hairs for two years. How not worth it is that?

With this non-competition clause, no sane professional photographer would have anything to do with SG.

( Michael Barrick, Sin City's official photographer, noted that... )

Ganked from

mermaid23. The idea here is list the first sentence of the first post for each month of 2006.

January: January: Started the year out getting stupid-drunk at Sin City and making an ass of myself*
*note: The "January: January:" is not a typo. My first post of 2006 was a review of 2005.

February: I meant to post these ages ago.

March: Well, that's one return done.

April: Turns out the only other city bidding for C13 other than Portland is Seattle.

May: Tomorrow should be interesting.

June: It occurred to me today that in the six months I have been here, in addition to the valuable services I provide, I have quantifiably saved my employer more money than the gross total of my salary in the same period.

July: The new catalogue application I wrote for valerian's store is live today.

August: Seriously, enough with the fugly fibreglass fauna already.

September: I've just had four tickets to Great Big Sea tonight at the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park at 6:00 p.m. tonight magically conferred upon me.

October: It's time once again for my new-shoe posting ritual.

November: View Across a Terraformed Huygens Crater (Mars)

December: My ADSL has been up and down like a yo-yo since about 5:00 this evening (I'm posting via my Blackberry).

In other news, last night was utter madness at the photo-booth again. I expected to be busy, but not busy in a way that made Hallowe'en pale by comparison. I was still being asked for photographs after the ugly-lights had come on! My poor little printer was noticeably hot when I was packing up. Along with

cheekydevil, I keep thinking it can't get any crazier, and then it does.

The only thing that kept you from getting my tripod up the side of your head and the opportunity to examine the soles of my new boots up close for the "nice skirt" comment while I was walking home in the snow in a kilt with thirty pounds of camera gear over my shoulder was

valerian needing to get home to pee.

On a tangential note: before we "invite the world" to our colonial, backwater, arse-hole of the Empire "world class" city for the goddamned Olympics we might want to get a few more fucking taxis.

Other than that I enjoyed myself. It was a slow night sales-wise, but I got several good pictures nonetheless.

For the first couple hours I was set up at Sin City at Richard's on Richards last night I thought the night was going to be a bust. I sold all of one picture and certainly wasn't keeping pace with my bar tab, then blam, I got super busy. I ended up selling over twice what I usually do at 23 West. From ten o'clock to midnight it was utterly dead, then from midnight to two it was utter madness. I was still printing pictures after the ugly-lights had come on.

Now, I'm certainly not going to get rich selling 4" x 6" prints in a nightclub, but I'm pleased to have not only covered expenses and drinks for

valerian and I (which is my baseline for a "successful" night), but made enough extra to cover my new, awesome, rabbit-fur sporran by

freaklegion. I'll have to get a good picture of the sporran next time we set up the light tent.

In other tangentially related nonsense: my model releases are covered in spots of cranberry juice.

I honestly don't understand the [lack of] thought process that exists for most people. Last night was soured for me by one of the red-shirted security monkeys with an utterly bizarre interpretation of the "no unauthorized cameras" rule at Sin City. I had my long lens on the DSLR for the sake of shooting the performers on the stage from the balcony. With that lens I need to be a minimum of three metres away from a person to photograph a portrait, and more like six metres if I want to get more than just their face in the photo - not going to happen in a crowded club - so for the sake of doing portraits I brought along my new compact digital (the underwater camera). I had just finished shooting the last burlesque performance of the evening and was about to make a portrait shot of Sisi and her beau and I am pounced on by the red-shirt. I showed him my staff card and told him I was the photographer. He responded with the most amazingly retarded reasoning. Pointing to the big, black camera he said it was OK for me to take pictures with it, but not the compact digital because "no personal cameras". He said I would have to "talk to the promoter" if I wanted to use my "personal camera" and I can't even imagine who he thought gave me the staff card if it wasn't the promoters. "They're both my cameras. I've been photographing this event since it started. That's my picture in the Sun today - I'm the fucking photographer!

Another red-shirt joined in the fun. Fortunately he had a couple of brain-cells to rub together and eventually produced a spark.

I didn't stay much after that. I had the pictures I wanted. The heat was getting to me (and Elaine), and with that much stupid flung at me like monkey-poo, I needed to cool off in more than one way so it was time to walk home.

All said and done, though, it does make a point about the perception of the camera in the mind of the ~~average idiot~~ layman.

Last Saturday

littlemissrisk of LittleMissRisk.com, Sweet Soul Burlesque, and the Voodoo Dollz was over to model some of

valerian's Art of Adornment jewelry and accessories. I have well over a hundred quality photos to go through and will start up a project file and gallery while I am working on the photos. Some of these will be added to the Red Chair Project, plus there will be some 3D animations as well, just for fun. In the mean time here's a behind-the-scenes shot and a couple of Polaroids for the sake of funky retro sassiliciousness.

I am seriously tempted to play hookey from the day job later this week to get some work done.

The Sin City anniversary party is coming up this weekend so it would be nice to get through these pictures before I have another pile to go through. I'm not really interested in being tethered to my photo booth when there will be stage acts (including

littlemissrisk), especially with Richard's on Richards being such a great place to shoot the stage because of the balcony - that's where I made the image of Collide that was used in Keyboard Magazine last June - I think I'll bring the big camera with my long lens and concentrate on the stage. As much as I like how many of the photo-booth photos have been coming out, it will be a good thing to change things up a bit. I still have to talk to

cheekydevil about this. I don't like to assume I'm guest-listed when I don't really have a defined rôle at the event.

I've already got the 31^st booked off so I can get out on Sunday and "celebrate" (i.e. get drunk enough to pretend I'm not ancient) my birthday at Skank. That will definitely be a night for the waterproof+shockproof=bar-proof wee camera so I can enjoy some unfettered stupidity without worrying about tending to a few grand worth of gear.