The Mammoth Book of Gorgeous Guys

It may be premature but I want to whet your appetite and mention "The Mammoth Book of Gorgeous Guys." It is a mammoth anthology of men, nude and semi-nude, published by Constable & Robinson in the UK and by Running Press in the US. Sales will be primarily through Ann Summers outlets in the UK but it will be available through Amazon as well. The book will feature around 50 photographers with 10 images from each artist, Eric Raptosh being one of them. Arthur Tress is one of my favorite fellow contributers. Great news, huh? The bad news is that it won't be available until September 2011 in the UK and November 2011 for the US. It will be worth the wait.

Anna Anka

It's happening in Sweden.  Anna's new show, "Getting Fit with Anna Anka," premiers today in her home country.  She takes Americans who are fattish and blasts them into shape with the help of Marcus Kowal, a Krav Maga trainer and MMA fighter.  It all takes place on the beaches of Santa Monica.

Brett Leonard

Venice is a cool neighboorhood. For instance, I had the opportunity to work with Brett Leonard, a Venice denizen. He is recognized as one of the entertainment industry's digital media visionaries. As director and co-writer of the hit movie "The Lawnmower Man", he is heralded as a maverick in science fiction, fantasy and adventure for creating films with a strong visual presence. He is up for an award for digital innovation and required a portrait for the write-up in Variety Magazine.

As down to earth as you can get, his skills as an actor made for a comfortable relaxed shoot. Add to that some interesting conversation and the result was pretty much a perfect shoot.

WIN-Initiative

Last October, on a scouting visit to New York City, I had the pleasure of meeting Hans Neleman, a famed photographer, who currently runs an agency called WIN-Initiative. The WIN-Initiative image collection brings fresh and unique rights-managed photos from diverse cultures and countries around the world.  At the time Hans invited me to contribute to the collection and, after 10 months of sorting through images the fruits of my labors have now come to fruition.

Graciously, Hans has edited my work and put together an narrative gallery aptly titled "Genuine"  to show work for sale through his boutique agency.  I am so appreciative to Hans and his friendly staff at WIN for this opportunity to market work that might not otherwise be available.  Please enjoy this creative colloboration between Eric Raptosh Photography and WIN-Initiative.  

   

Fourth of July Fun-Raiser

This past weekend marked the start of our ninth year here in Venice and our eighth Fourth of July party. For a change of pace, we experimented with a few new twists to add some purpose to all the vodka tonics and Coke and Malibu’s. Our summer intern, Keats, has been awarded a prestigious grant from the Kathryn Davis Project for Peace to travel to Cairo, Egypt, for six weeks to assist in the renovation and outfitting of a school that caters to the children of Egyptian rubbish-collectors. Before she departs on the fourteenth, we decided to have the party dual-serve as a fundraiser (later renamed “Fun-raiser” by our new roommate, Bill Watson) to help provide more needed supplies for the school (laptops, tables, school supplies, etc.).

The biggest hit of the night—besides our charming bartender, Jason—was a “presidential photobooth,” so named because it mimicked the scene of a presidential portrait--with powdered wigs, tricorner hats, a stretch of thick manila rope, a globe, and a sword. A friend commented that it would look like a poster for tea partiers except—oh wait!—there were books.

Guests could pose however somberly or scandalously they pleased in exchange for a $10 donation to the Cairo Recycling School. The snapping of the flash prompted some to expose their inner gangster, to unbutton shirts, and even to drop jeans. In total, the evening raised almost $300.

The progress of Keats’s project can be followed here: http://recyclingschoolpeace.blogspot.com/ and the entire collection of presidential photobooth photos may be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericraptosh.

A big thank you to all those who made the party such a success and to those who were generous enough to donate to the school.

Road Trip to Liberal Arts

This is Keats writing, Eric’s niece and intern for the summer. I had the pleasure of blogging on the Ireland trip also, so I may be a familiar narrator to those of you who followed our adventures there. Since we haven’t written in quite a while, I’ll do some “back-blogging” on our activities since our last post in May.

After returning from Ireland, Eric and JJ enjoyed a month interim period in Venice before road tripping to Idaho, my home state, in the silver studio minivan. What on earth would compel someone to travel to Idaho? Well, in its defense, Idaho is nowhere near as boring as it may sound, particularly for a photographer. The primary goal of the Idaho trip was to shoot at the College of Idaho, a private liberal arts college in rural Caldwell, 35 miles from the capital city Boise. The College was most gracious in granting us access to the campus, allowing us to shoot in any of its students in any of its buildings. We took full advantage of this and took stills and video footage of swimmers in the pools, basketball players in the gym, and “slackliners” balancing on a rope stretched taut between two trees. We also coordinated a mock movie theater shoot in the College’s Jewitt auditorium—so realistic it even included obnoxious cell phone users, boxes of “propcorn,” and a boy in the back row throwing his empty cup of soda at another boy’s head. Other unique features of Idaho, endearing in their quaintness, were the Roadway Inn and Lardo’s Restaurant in the quiet ski resort town of McCall.

After three weeks of continental breakfasts—conveyor belt muffins, carbon-footprint-costly bananas, and pancakes made from batter in Styrofoam cups—we repacked our gear into the minivan for the hundred and first time (now including my suitcase, laptop, and rollerblades for the Venice boardwalk) and set the GPS to track us back to So-Cal.

Because the drive between Boise and Venice is so long (675 miles to be exact), we made an overnight pitstop in Tahoe. There we stayed with our good friends Jeffery and Agustin, both experts at hosting travel-garbled, ravenous house guests. Jeffery cooked a fantastic dinner of grilled vegetables and chicken breast, and even made a special dinner for me, the obnoxious vegan: cashew egg noodle pasta. Turns out, though, that egg noodles have—go figure—eggs in them, so I had to be so rude as to turn that down, too. Instead, Jeffery was kind enough to candy a mixture of walnuts, cashews, cranberries, and tomatoes, spiced with rosemary and olive oil—a combination I recommend for any adventurous eaters. Despite the hospitality of Jeffery and Agustin, we left for Venice the following morning, another eight and a half hour drive. We dedicated a good eighth of that time paying our respects to Idaho—listening to the entire Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack.

Finn MacCool vs. Benandonner

One of the legendary connections between Ireland and Scotland is the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.  As the legend goes, the Irish giant Finn MacCool wanted to out-muscle his Scottish counterpart Benandonner.  The Causeway was used to cross the ocean but was torn up by Benandonner because, by one account, Finn's wife covered Finn in a blanket and told Benandonner that it was Finn's infant son.  Being a little intimidated that the infant was so big, Benandonner reckoned the infant's father must be gigantic so he ripped up the causeway to insure MacCool could never cross. 

You would think that instead of desiring only to beat each other up, the giants could enjoy each other's company.  I mean, how many giants were there hanging around?  It's not likely they had a high school or a recreation center.  Some company may have been nice.  All I could see that Finn might have found to eat, besides seafood, were the yellow wild gorse flowers.  It could be that Scotland provided some appreciated culinary diversity. Or not...  What do I know about what giants think about or need?

Well, besides the miracle of the 37,000 mostly-hexagonal natural basalt columns that exist here, I experienced a little personal miracle myself.  Unlike the giants, who apparentely just want to fight, as sunset approached I shared company with a companion I met on the Causeway, also named Eric.  During conversation he mentioned he had found a set of car rental keys in the Middle Causeway, which I was exploring about an hour earlier.  To my immediate astonishment and then relief I realized they were mine.  (I had taken my sweatshirt off and stuffed it in my backpack.  The keys must have fallen out of the pocket at that time.)  What if he hadn't found them?  Obviously, I would have been royally #$^&ed without transportation in the middle of nowhere with the temperature dropping quickly in the land of legendary giants. 

What makes for good legends makes for good reflection. Here on these rocks I had time to consider the passage of the 61 million years it took the Causeway to look as it did the day of my visit. Time to sit and observe a natural art installation in slow light and consider my place here at this spot on this planet at this moment.  If a giant thinks and feels anything like me, he must have been content here.  For Finn MacCool, it wasn't about company.  He didn't need Benandonner's companionship because he was happy about his own isolated giant-ness.

I read once that in order to overcome your beast within, you must first learn to love it.  In considering my own giant-ness, I first have to reflect on my insignificance.  Once this is done—and what better place to do it—I can step on the Causeway as a pseudo-giant headed to Scotland and consider what it might have been like for Finn or Benandonner, rivals linked by a road across an ocean eternally trying to out-giant each other. 

In the end, I would like my name to be "Finn MacCool" or "Benandonner" just to be more giant-like—and potentially more popular.  But that would be pretentious.  I suppose even presently we continue to try to out-giant each other, strutting our giant-ness, to feel and appear more important and less insignificant than we really are.  But unlike Finn and Benandonner, we might do better with each other's companionship and company, without our giant-ness, because as the population grows and grows, we all still have to get along.