I've been involved in doing the artwork for Skytalks (Defcon offshoot, run by 303) for four of the past five years.  In years past I have taken the reference photography so I've had a hand in creating lighting and composition for these pieces.  My photos have been used as reference for original art pieces by Mar with (Dwight Bennett assisting on a couple) and they have created some fabulous designs.

This year the task fell fully on my own shoulders.  This piece is the result of a reference shoot at Sobo 151 with Tashaya and Acr0nym.  The original photo was subsquently used as reference for an original design on my iPad using Adobe Ideas.  Once the original design was complete a lot of texture and color tweaking was done using varoius other iOS programs.

Possible trigger topic ahead, also long brain dump.  Link to FB original post.

Disclaimer and intent: I don't know the accused in the following situation (who has confessed to the behavior so I will proceed without ambiguous language that allows for innocent-until-proven-guilty) nor any of the people whose boundaries he crossed. I was not there and didn't witness anything myself. This is a comment on the reactions of the crowd around those involved after the fact. Some of my reactions are not related-to and extend beyond the situation at hand. This is an emotional topic for me.

There is a thread that just took place on the Apogea group on Facebook about a guy who did a lot of stuff that would have resulted in charges had it occurred back in the real world. "Playful fun" he initially said in his own defense, "I didn't realize that people's boundaries were different than other festivals I'd been to". Bullshit on that.

Here are a few shots from a recent light painting session I did with Tarena.  She's pretty amazing!

Okay, this is late but it's worth posting.  Congratulations to Justin for winning our second Support My Tribe poker game!  His prize was a 24x30 canvas print of my Skull of Suits piece!  We raised $500 that was split and given to two friends who were having financial struggles.
 

Tim busted out first and won the sheep but since he rebought this prize ended up with Courtney.

Beertuck busted out second and won a lovely hat!

This past Saturday Cassandra and I hosted our first Support My Tribe poker game.  First prize was a box-framed canvas print (24x30 inches) of some poker art work I had created + a print.  Second place got two prints, third and fourth each got a print. 

The battle was fierce.  Ken stepped up early with some hyper-aggressive play and started bullying the table by instilling fear in their hearts.  The hand of the night occured when Mike flopped a full house and baited a trap for Ken.  They got all-in on the turn and Ken flipped over kings; he was dead to a king.... which happened to fall on the river (3.8% odds).  Ken added to his stack.

A short time afterwards Landa got involved in a few hands with Ken and started adding to her stack.  It wasn't long before she took over and we had a new chip leader!  Steph watch Ken and Dan and Landa battle and eventually Landa prevailed.  Steph and Landa remained.  At this point Landa had about 95% of the chips on the table so the heads-up action was shortlived and Landay took it down!

Thanks so much to the 11 players that cam to play.  Prizes were all art and all proceeds from player buy-ins, as well as a few print sales, go to the SMT fund.  We raised $400 with this game and those funds will be given to two friends who have been in rough shape financial due to medical issues.

Pictured is Landa with her prize!

Time on my hands and it was time to put a new skin on this site.  The new design is much more minimal and is intended to draw attention to the content of the site rather than the site itself.  A particular focus is given to recent blog posts and featured pictures. Now that I've started a Facebook presence I am going to try to make the features on this site line up if the photos are worthy.

I've also updated the e-commerce piece to allow for setting different prices for different pieces rather than having one price per output resolution/media.

As always this is a work in progress but at least this is something. Amusingly enough this redesign is only five days away from the time last year when I did the last facelift.  There must be something about the new year that does this because that timing was entirely not planned!

I have added two new features to my site today. 

The first is the ability to purchase prints from many of the pages of this site.  If you see a green button that looks like you can click it to order a print, well, you can.  Most of the model shots, many of the Art shots and some of the 'Other' shots are available for purchase.

The second is a new section called Support My Tribe.  This is a new initiative I am starting to help friends-in-need via sales of artwork. Follow that link for more details but in short it means that if you buy something from here you are also committing a social good.  Also, to kick this off you can use the promotion code of SMT25 to get 25% off your order for the rest of the year.

There are still many things I want to do on this site but I have deadlines looming for work that will keep me from making a lot of progress until the new year.  Some of the changes involve:

• a site facelift
• lots of conversion optimization to provide an improved user experience
• a retooled front page with more emphasis on current news and new art pieces
• the likely creation of a companion site at SupporttMyTribe.com
• disclaimers about how some photography may be slightly cropped to fit the output medium
• new art and photography!!!

Thanks for reading this and I hope you spread the word!

Although I started as "Dan Chick" I shifted early on to doing photography under a couple different names.  "Right Angle Photography", "MentalSwitch" and another name that preceded MentalSwitch and was around only long enough for me to get business cards printed.  This week I made a decision:  I am the brand.

My motivations for a pseudonym stemmed largely from the fact that I ran my own business, I was the face of the company, and this company wasn't about my art.  Some of my subject matter challenges social norms and this became a problem for my business.  At that point my company was most of my world and I retreated under the cover of a name of my own creation.  This week I leave that behind.  I am, once again, the brand.

I was feeling divided and struggling with my artistic identity.  Names and titles come and go.  They are associated with a period, short or long.  For me the time for a name besides my own has passed.   This has resulted in a merging of domains (with mentalswitch.com becoming DanChick.com) and the creation of a new Facebook page for my art.  I am who I am and I am proud to be me.  My art is continuing, my photography is resuming and my performances are finding some traction.  I am not a company.  I am not a pseudonym.  I am Dan Chick.  I am the brand.