We recently had the pleasure of meeting and photographing Mariana Garcia in her Downtown Eastside Studio for the cover of the British Columbia Edition of Canadian Immigrant Magazine April 2010 Issue. Mariana runs an arts studio where Women Artists in the Downtown Eastside can create their work and provides a venue to display and sell their artworks. Read the full article here.

Find the PDF version here.

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”


— Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words)

This is a series of vignettes on how I use my Photoshelter Personal Archive today.

A Tale of Two Cities

Whenever I upload photos from a shoot with Canadian Immigrant magazine, the decisions on which images to use are made by editorial teams based both in Vancouver and Toronto. Using Photoshelter’s invite-only gallery feature, I can give private access to the images from the shoot, which not only facilitates the final shot selection by Editors across two cities, but also gives them instant access to the full resolution images that can be downloaded directly into lay-out.

Canadian Immigrant – Images by Tommy Zablan

Family Ties

Momoko’s sister and grandmother visited from Japan. On the last day of their visit, her sister surprised with a very special Kimono, for the purpose of shooting her Seijin-shiki (成人式) ceremony photos. They booked us for a shoot on a morning ferry from Victoria to Vancouver and we did the shoot on that very same afternoon. Since her sister and grandmother were to go home to Japan on the very next day, they were worried that they would not be able to see all the images from our photo session. We promised that we would show them all the images through an on-line gallery. We uploading the images and sent invites for the gallery shortly after, and the decisions on which prints to order where made both by family members in Japan and Vancouver.

Seijin-Shiki – Images by Tommy Zablan

Virtual Visualization

I’m also a 3D Artist and Instructor, specializing in texturing, lighting, and rendering. At times, I get asked to make a presentation on various aspects of 3D production, and the classes that I teach. Sometimes, the presentations can be impromptu and the workstation that happens to be hooked up to the projector may not have the right software installed, or I may not have my flash drive with presentation data on hand. By keeping many of my rendered images in my Photoshelter Archive, I can quickly pull the images into a Gallery, and using the built-in gallery tools to sequence the slides, turn it into a professional presentation – with just about any workstation that has an internet connection and a Flash enabled browser.

CG Work – Models And Textures – Images by Tommy Zablan

Vancouver’s Got Talent…

…a mix of local and international talent that gives this city it’s unique flavor, and I want to play a part in promoting it. Because of the way Photoshelter’s core Archive to Gallery system is built, I can easily create mini-portfolios like the one I created for Make-up Artist Ayumi Komiyama, without having to create folders with duplicated data (which would be the case when creating web galleries from a program like Lightroom or Photoshop). Because the galleries can be e-mailed and embedded into blogs and web sites (by clicking on the e-mail or embed code links on the bottom of the navigation bar) – they can be like mini, self-contained portfolios that can be sent to whoever wants to see them. The Photoshelter – Graph Paper Press integration makes it efficient for me to publish artist profiles and interviews such as this one.

Ayumi Komiyama, Make-up & Hair Artist – Images by Tommy Zablan

Gallery In A Flash

On one of the rare occasions that I could actually follow the updates on my Twitter stream in real-time, I read that one of the people I’m following, an Editor in a major Canadian Fashion magazine, wanted to have some sushi in Vancouver. The time it took me to pull some recent shots of Sushi (from one of my favorite Vancouver Restaurants) from my archive, organize them into a gallery, post it on my Photoshelter – Wordpress integrated blog, and send her the link on Twitter? Around 3 minutes (and a lot of that was due to my Internet connection bandwidth more than anything else). She said the food shots made her drool. I’d say that’s a good thing.

Sushi – Images by Tommy Zablan

We are committed to providing the very best images to represent Immigrants and their businesses in the most professional manner possible.

Cornelia Jansen from Germany
Read Connie’s story in the full issue of Canadian Immigrant Vancouver Edition (November 2009) issue here.

Roberto Carlos Garcia Fajardo from Spain
Read Roberto’s story in the full issue of Canadian Immigrant Vancouver Edition (December 2009) issue here.

This is the Sashimi Tower, Crab Salad, Sashimi Salad, and Tiger Mayo, available at Kamei Royale on Burrard St.. One of the perks of being a food photographer is that you often get to eat what you shoot. I can sum up the experience in one word: Yummy.

Make-up and Hair by Ayumi Komiyama
Model Yuka Saito

Ayumi Komiyama is a Make-up & Hair Stylist whose work has been published in the covers of the Vancouver Sun Style Section, Reach Magazine, and Klip magazine. I asked her a few questions about her work, inspirations, and aspirations.

Q: What inspires you as a make-up and hair artist?
Ayumi: I gain my inspirations from my 5 senses, which are what I see, smell, taste, hear and feel.

Q: What do you think about when doing make-up and hair?
Ayumi: I think about what is the best for the client and strive to bring out the unique qualities of that person. Ultimately, I like to create something that is best for my clients. Also, I like to have different stories attached to different styles that I create.

Q: Please tell us your approach and experience in make-up and hair styling?
Ayumi: I always have the fundamental ideas and basic skills in mind. I also like to keep in mind that nothing can be done without a practical approach and I like to utilize my observational skills to replicate work that has been done by others. From the replicated works, I like to add my own ideas, which may not have any significant relationship to the art itself, to make a whole new piece of art.

I obtained skills in the areas of hairstyling, makeup, nails and kitsuke at the hair dresser school in Tokyo. Then I worked at a hair salon and learned the basics in working in a professional environment. I also obtained socials skills, which I require to interact with my clients. I often seek for advice from my fellow staff members and my customers regarding any potential improvements I could make in any areas of my specialty. I am a person who values individual differences, and after working for a while, I was at a position to teach others. I always only teach the basic skills necessary to the new staff members and let them improve from there using their own unique techniques, since it’s no fun having the exact same stylist.

Ayumi Komiyama, Make-up & Hair Artist – Images by Tommy Zablan

Q: What do you think is important for the Art of make-up and hair in the future?
Ayumi: Currently, CG (Computer Graphics) is becoming big and I would like to work with this wonderful technology, however, I would also like to preserve the beauty of the Art itself in that I want everyone to appreciate the natural beauty of the art (No CG or other editing).

It was an honor to photograph Sensei Alexei Goudkov for the Canadian Immigrant Magazine. The full article in the Canadian Immigrant magazine can be read here. You can also download the PDF Version of this issue here.

Sensei Alexei teaches the Kyokushin Kaikan (極真会館) style of Karate that means the ‘Society Of Ultimate Truth’, due to a heavier emphasis on full-contact sparring. I am familiar with this style, having studied Shotokan Karate in elementary school and immersed myself in the various differences and philosophies of the various fighting systems, and remember the stories about how the founder of the style, Mas Oyama, perfected his techniques by taking down charging bulls with various striking techniques.

I have to admit that I have a deep love for the Martial Arts, possibly even surpassing that which I feel for photography. Case in point is that Sensei Alexei is a Fourth Dan black belt (my sincerest apologies as I previously wrote Third Dan) in the Kyokushin Kaikan style, yet during the shoot, possessed that mixture of quiet confidence, courtesy, and humility that mark a martial arts practitioner. I’m sure it stems from a mixture of individual self-confidence, discipline, and possibly something a lot more practical;

A kick, like a photograph, is a singular, fluid expression that can contain so much technique, subtlety, and nuances, for something that looks relatively simple. It has emotional content. It has to connect. Unlike Photography though, you can’t talk, network, tweet, SEO, or otherwise irresponsibly enable someone into being a good Martial Artist. It takes practice, discipline, and eventually having to get into the ring to prove it. As for us, we like to get our kicks from being happy with our work…and aiming high.

From 5pm to 2am, I hear the screams of Olympic fans from outside from my window, along with what sounds like two or three different bands performing at street level. The sounds echo as they bounce from one building to another, creating a surreal blend of screams, fireworks explosions, cheers, horns, African drums, whistles, rave music, police sirens, the loud but unintelligible voice of an MC shouting emphatically, and many other unidentified sources, as the ebb and flow of echoes reach the upper floors of the surrounding buildings. It’s the Olympics here in Vancouver – and this is what it looks like.

On occasion, I just like to take a walk around the Downtown Vancouver area and shoot. The distance between Sunset Beach (the images in color), and Canada Place (the images in black-and-white) is about 2.5 km. It’s a nice and laid back walk – slowly reading the light, liking the smell of the sea, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time, setting up, and then taking the shot.