These were shot here in Austin with Stephanie and Janus at a cool winebar/restaurant called Imperia in downtown.

This was shot in the ultra-cool wine area of ultra-cool Imperia.

Here is Jessa again, meandering in the full spectrum… not that anyone gets tired of her. She looks mysterious while trapped in the Nexus, where she just might eat a carby breakfast with Kirk then go on a horse ride.

This was created after following the new video tutorial entitled “A World of Textures” that I recently put together. Included is also 100 textures, depending on the package you choose.

Motion capture…

Believe it or not, she spent the whole morning in church then at Bible study before meeting us for a photo shoot. I asked her if she wore that outfit to Bible study and she said, “Ummmmm, no.”

I am meeting a group of friends tomorrow to do some lighting work here in Austin… experimenting with some new styles for fun!

Anyone remember that show? I watched all of them… the red room… black forest… bob… what a great show. I wish Lynch would make another like that. Now we have Lost… which is kinda like it, but not nearly as trippy. What does all of that have to do with this picture? Oh yeah there was a gal named Josie on the show that reminded me of this girl.

Last year I was nominated for the bloggies and I lost to my worst enemy, the FlickrBlog. So, to the extent that people out there like to see pictures of models, and to the extent they like the occasional model that is of the Asian persuasion, then here you go!

I would appreciate your vote for the 2008 Bloggies! I hope you vote for www.stuckincustoms.com in the "best photography of a weblog" category!

This is Secret.

I found her walking with her hooded ilk around the back streets of Mumbai. Usually when I see a cadre of the enshrouded, they are accompanied by Muslim man that is glaring at almost everyone. This time there seemed to be no alpha around, so I asked her for her name. She looked at me and smiled (I think) and then looked furtively around to see if anyone was watching. I got the distinct impression that since I was a white oddity that actually spoke to her that she wanted to talk, but then thought better of it and made a slight bow before gliding away.

Azed Baba would not tell me much about himself except for what his name means. Azed means "freedom" and Baba means "spiritual man". We sat around and watched the sunset at the Taj together and I asked if I could take his picture.

After I while I rubbed my House-like stubble since it has been a few days since I shaved. I asked him if he liked my beard. He gave a grunt in response which was either a laugh or a grunt of general disgust at the state of my beard.

This is Ahira.

Ahira’s dream is to go to a university and be a computer scientist or doctor or whatever her parents want.

Ahira is currently at the Batu Caves in Malaysia, just outside of Kuala Lumpur, walking up the hundreds of steps. She and her family are making the traditional Hindu pilgrimage to the peak, where she will light incense to Lord Murugan and other Hindu deities whose shrines lay at the top inside the cave network. While she talks to me telling me about doing whatever her parents want, her parents look on and nod approvingly.

This comes from my Portraits Portfolio here that you can see here.

(note: I added this to my Portraits portfolio that you can see more of here)

This is Sokhoun.

Sokhoun’s dream is to leave his Buddhist order and go to a university in Siem Reap, Cambodia, but it costs $700 a year and he thinks this dream may be "too crazy" because of the expense. He wants to get a bachelor’s degree so perhaps he can become a tour guide and save enough money to someday visit USA.

Sokhoun is currently a Theravada Buddist monk in Angkor Wat. He saw me laying on my back inside the quincunx taking photos one day and he invited me over to talk.

He told me about his history and what happened after the US pulled out of Vietnam. Pol Pot enslaved all his people to work in rice fields and convert the Angkor Wat reservior and surrounding land to huge agrarian Communist food machines. In the process, Pol Pot killed many members of his family and another 2 million Cambodians (about 1/3 of the population). Even after Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime was defeated in 1979, Sokhoun’s family still spent most of their lives escaping and running through the jungle to escape the Killing Fields.

However, Sokhoun is peaceful, and he is very happy to meet me. We sat in the ruins of Angkor Wat for about four hours talking. He said he always wanted an American friend.

"Do you have any Buddhist Monk friends, and would you like one?" he asks excitedly and shyly.

We made plans the next day for him to travel around the countryside of Cambodia so we could visit various temples together. I could not have had a better or more relaxed time with Sokhoun. We had many more interesting and fun discussions that I will mention in future posts/pics from the ruins of Cambodia. Also, we have agreed that I will select some interesting books for him to read that I am mailing to him now. We’ll start with The Fountainhead. Sokhoun is a voracious reader and the previous Communist regime did not allow books like this in the country and many of these patterns persist.

He secretly confided in me that perhaps when he leaves the Wat in three years that he would very much like to marry an American woman because they seem open, nice, and understanding. But he said this is a foolish dream and no American woman would want to marry him. I told him that was silly and I will try to hook him up. So wussup ladies? Send me your vitals so I can pimp you out monk-style!

I thought I would post a few pics of the kiddos today I took in my studio at home. You can’t go wrong with cute kid portraits, right?

I’m over in Malaysia for about two weeks working with our game studio here and I get really bored on the weekends. Air Asia is sort of like Southwest Airlines and I can fly about anywhere for $200. I’ve always wanted to visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia, see the Killing Fields, and hopscotch around land mines, so I thought it would be a good opportunity. Besides, hotels and food and everything is so much cheaper there, why not?

People are always surprised that I travel so much, but it’s really not that big a deal or that hard… All you gotta do is get a couple cheapo tickets, do about an hour of focused planning, and then go off and have an adventure. I always think of that final Curb Your Enthusiasm show - the one with Larry David on HBO (the guy that created Seinfeld). Anyway, he is in the middle of this big death scene and he is on the bed in the hospital. He’s surrounded by his family, his wife, his best friend and agent, and a few other people. He gets very serious and he knows he is slipping away, so he decides to say something meaningful.

In his final life-moment, Larry says something like, “I guess I should have traveled more.” He struggles for breath and his voice is dry. “I would have liked to see more of Europe.” He looks off and, finally, his raspy voice says, “but I hate to pack.” And that is it.

I told my brother that I was going to the Ukraine. He warned me that the women there were not pretty - short, fat, and hairy were the three admonitions he passed along. I think Kyle learned everything he knows about East European women from the German swimming team in the 1976 Olympics.

I am in the Ukraine (it’s hard to tell from this picture) for work with a software partner there that has about 160 programmers, artists, animators, and other game-development disciplines. It just so happens that Oleg, CEO of this other company, is a famous photographer in the Ukraine. He has more photography equipment than Hefner and Flynt combined. He also has his own photography studio with enough lights to melt Chernobyl (strange segue to my story about Chernobyl).

Oleg and I talk a lot about photography. I’m more into landscapes and unique finds. He’s more into male/female models and having them do things with props and scenes and shaving cream. He invited me to his studio and Saturday and said, “We get models, zerefore we take some pictures.” I had never worked in a studio like his before, so I gave him a big thumbs up.

We showed up at his studio early and spent an eternity as he showed me every light, every strobe, every remote control, and another eternity looking at aperture and lighting and then having a 250-pound Ukrainian man sit in a chair to get the lighting right… Instead of posting a picture of the 250-pound Ukrainian man, I decided to put up this one of the model.

I only speak a few words of Russian, so I let Oleg do all the talking. We snapped away for a while and I got some interesting shots. I have a bunch more that I will post in coming weeks/months.

This is Amin.

Amin’s dream is to drive a Ferrari. He jokes, and then becomes suddenly serious with a haunting, dark Persian stare before uttering his real dream: that one day our race is “human being”, our religion is “humanity” and our nationality is “citizen of the world.” Amin thinks deeply, and then laughs and says, “Well maybe if I was driving a Ferrari now I would be thinking of this crap!”

Amin is currently working at John Galt Games after being recommended by his fellow Iranian programmer, Ali, who shares the flowing locks of Sayid from Lost and the comic stylings of Cicak Man himself. Amin has recently passed the killer gauntlet programmer test of Hafiz (our lead tech brain) with a score of 85. Nobody has ever scored this high, except for Hafiz himself, who resides with the demigods of C++ in his own heavenly sphere of programming and peace.

This comes from my Portrait Series here.

Here is another shot I took from nearby, of a few Islamic schoolchildren:

Aru’s dream is to provide a good life for his children.

Aru is currently selling hand-carved Teak wood sculptures in the floating market about two hours outside of Bangkok. He is alert and alive, gladly tracing the markings on his body, explaining to me what they mean.

This shot of Aru comes from my “Portraits Portfolio“, where I try to take the opportunity to get to know some of these interesting-looking people.

This was taken in the floating market, where things got just a touch crowded towards the middle of the day. It could have been hotter in that boat, but I don’t know how.