German cinema starlet, reincarnate!

Steemit! Good evening! A really eventful day in the technology sector. Hardfork is upon us, and I just watched SpaceX land the first ever recycled stage 1 rocket on a tiny autonomous drone in the middle of the ocean. I see the connection. My future crypto-fortunes will fund my relocations to a colonized Mars.

I spent the afternoon finished up edits for a client I photographed during my annual NOIR event last October. That sounds like a long time […and it is], but I’ve gotten so involved with my editing process, one photo can take me upwards of 90 minutes to complete. Each client receives 10 finished edits and I currently am getting photos back to almost 50 clients. The last couple years, I’ve given my clients realistic timelines of up to six months to receive their final edits.

One of my favorite things about this job is meeting cool, interesting people in the most unexpected of circumstances. One of my closest friends, Thomas Kuntz, I met because he allowed me to shoot in his workshop. As it turned out, Thomas is one of the last living creators of fully functional automata […there’s a big Steemit post coming about my friendship with this brilliant guy]. His work is collected my some of the most influential artists and directors in the world, including Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro, who currently has several of Thomas’ works featured in his “At Home With Monsters” exhibit.

Leading up to NOIR, one of our clients was coming from Palm Springs and had booked a Monroe package […the longest session]. Her name was Berrit. She arrived early morning, the second day of NOIR. She was awesome, right from the start!

Berrit is German, and my family is mostly German. We met outside of the beautiful Sunny Gables mansion in La Cresenta, and introduced ourselves. We talked about Germany and how she first came across my photos of Doris Mayday […see my last post “Steemit optimism, new blood and old photography”.] years ago. Incredibly, her husband is also a comic book illustrator! He even started a project inspired by one of our photos.

One of the most striking things about Berrit is her uncanny resemblance to Marelne Dietrich, and complimented with my available light approach, we made beautiful, classic noir photos the remainder of the afternoon.  

As we walked from room to room throughout the enormous estate, Berrit quietly commented “…this room reminds me of The Madonna Inn”. The Madonna Inn is a world renown hotel in San Luis Obispo that I’ve stayed and shot at once before. I told her how much I love The Madonna Inn and she replied “Oh. That’s my family’s hotel.” NO! SHIT! Amazing.

These photos of Berrit are some of my favorite from this trip to LA, and the past five years of the NOIR event. Berrit, Daniel and I have become friends, and I’m looking forward to shooting with her in Palm Springs mid-April, for an art collaboration between my photography and Daniel’s illustration that will later be presented in Germany at a gallery. Of course, I’ll be making a future Steemit post about that shoot as well.

Thanks for reading during this hard fork break. You now may returns to your regularly scheduled memes. Follow @kommienezuspadt for more art, photography and thoughts.