I caved and made a Flickr page...

Nicole for NeoVintage Clothing
Originally uploaded by devinbruce

Here is one of the first entries I've plopped on my new Flickr page - it is fro a fashion shoot I did back in the day. I played a bit with it useing Photoshop and Voila - Nicole from NeoVintage!

Super Bingo

Get Out And Vote!

This is Kelli:

Kelli is a model I shot for a fashion shoot in 2006. She is participating in a contest to be the face of "Yes To Carrots" - a line of beauty aids that incorporate the remarkable cleaning and regenerative power of... yes, carrots.

Vote for her - she is nice and deserves to become the image I imagine when thinking about roots I can clean my hair with.



P.S. - That's my picture they are using for the contest - yeah me!

Spare Time

So I'm shuffling my way through blockbuster Video a few days ago when I see this perched on the shelf:


"Hey", I think to myself, "I was at that one shooting."

I pick the DVD up to take a look at the back and - BEHOLD:



Yes, that's right. That's ME!

I actually bought the DVD and found that it is chocked-full of me - next time you see me, be sure to ask for an autograph!


PS - I tried to find a picture of me taken by one of the other photographers there but all I found was a picture of one of the ring girls with my zoom lens sitting next to photographer Jaimee Itagaki on the bottom left (I was between her and the guy taking this picture):


Where the hell was I?!?! (Image by David Brooks/signsonsandiego.com)

I'm Still Alive...

Miss me?

I know, I know.... I've been gone a long time. To be fair, I have been busy. Since my last post I have:

- Gotten to work with Sports Illustrated for two rounds of the NCAA Championship in March.

- Gotten a new job as the Manager of a Portrait Studio.

- Been taking care of my wife who had to go on disability because of her pregnancy.

- Ended the brunt of work with SierraStyle Publishing (mainly because of said new job).

- Shot two weddings.

- Officiated one of the two said weddings.

- Became an Ordained Minister (obviously BEFORE I officiated)

- Had a photo essay published (both text and pictures) in Mainline - an experimental magazine put out by Sacramento City College.

- Bought five new dress shirts.

- Put together a crib.

- Shaved almost every day.

So, that's about it. You should be all caught up now!

XOXOXO
- Devin

HA!

The above is a posting from this week's PostSecret. (If you don't know about PostSecret, you should. Go here.)

Noticing that on the receipt that you can make out both "CA" for the state as well as the beginning of what looks like "Sacramento" for the city, I did a search for the name of the hotel here in the city.

Lookie what I found!!!!


Someone from Sacramento has been naughty....

Wow!

Over the last 24 hours, the blog has had a flurry of visitors all searching for the same thing - Jeff Landay. (You can read my previous post on Jeff and the event held in his honor here.)


Last night, one of the local TV stations did an update on his progress back to health. I didn't get to see the piece myself but, in the teaser clips in commercials I saw a young man that is coming along quite nicely. When I photographed him a few short months ago he was so skinny and almost... frail. Having a massive head wound can do that to you, I guess.


Last night, the kid looked absolutely ripped! Well, not body builder ripped - but he's put on weight and just looks like he's progressing so well. (The clip I saw had him doing some sit ups with a physicail therapist and he was just cranking along!)

I'm really excited for him because he seems like a genuinely nice guy and what happened to him just seemed so unfair.


Later today (when I get home from shooting) I am going to put together a slideshow of the evening at Club Aqua for everyone to look at. Most of these pictures haven't been seen before so it'll be a new look at a truly inspiring night...


Related Tags: jeff, landay, sacramento, club, aqua, aaron, tippin, marines, Iraq, veteran, injury, recovery, update

Laura

Laura and I got together and shot a number of pictures over the weekend. She needed a few headshots and I needed to try and cheer myself up and get out of the house. The picture above is one of the pictures that I took not as a headshot for her but a part of a portrait series I am thinking about putting together into a show.


I realized something today. Out of all of the people I have taken pictures of over my whole career a photographer, there is one who I keep coming back to - Laura.


I started shooting her back when I was in school and just starting out learning photography - we ran around in the same circles (mainly centered around the theatre department at our school) and became friends. It seems that everytime I shoot her I seem to be on the cusp of another personal breakthrough in my skill as a photographer. Does this mean that she is my muse (if such things exist)? I don't know.


What I do know is that I really enjoy shooting with her - she's always super relaxed and, even though she is definitely a hard core feminist through and through, she still allows me to make dumb, sexist jokes without giving into the urge to perform an impromptu tracheotomy on me with the nearest ball point pen.

Devin Bruce 2.0 - V.2

I lied.


I decided to try to keep the more "classic" look of my website instead of redesigning it to the orange-colored one I posted about below. I just decided to consolidate what I had previously and class it up a bit.


All I can say is that I love my Dreamweaver class - I just wish it moved at a faster pace. I've already done all of my homework that is due well into March!!!!!


Related Tags: Devin, Bruce, Photography, Gallery, Website, Design, Dreamweaver

The Beginning of an Illustrious New Career in Web Design

Class this semester for me consists of a magazine production class as well as a creative web design class - the latter of the two being the catalyst for what you see above. It is a project where you create your own homepage that later will be linked up with homework assignments you turn in.

It is as good as it is going to get for now - I've still need to learn how to use the slice tool in photoshop to create tables and content boxes but I think that it definately is a good start!


Related Tags: Devin, Bruce, Photoshop, Website, Design, Class, Sacramento, City, College, Slice

2 hours, 15 minutes

This is how much time it takes the Sacramento Police Department to respond to TWO calls about a noise disturbance from the assholes across the alley from us who keep their crying, howling dog locked inside during the day and, apparently, like to start full-scale drunken parties at 3:45 in the morning.

Once they police arrive they spend a total of 2 minutes dealing with the situation and then back in their car to wherever they go when they are busy NOT responding to calls.


It is now 6 A.M. Who needs to fuckin sleep, right?


Damn it, I'm fed up with Downtown.



Related Tags: I, hate, downtown, sacramento, horrible, police, response, tired, assholes

I'm a finalist!!!

I entered the "Best of College Photography 2007" contest this year on a lark - I saw the entry forms in my Photoshop class and grabbed one. I had actually forgot about it until three or four days before the deadline! I quickly had some prints made and asked my beautiful wife Rainey send them out for me.

A few months later I received the above letter in the mail letting me know that I was a finalist chosen out of the original 28,000 entries!! Grand Prize is a new camera and $1000 - man, that would come in handy about now (camera and cash both).

My chance of winning, based on odds alone, are still pretty slim. They culled the top 5% of the 28,000 for possible winning and that still means that I'm up against roughly 1400 other photographers. Who knows, maybe I'll be chosen. Allegedly I'll find out withing the next few days if I placed so think good thoughts for me!


Related Tags: devin, bruce, photography, contest, best, of, college, 2007, sacramento, serbin, photographer, forum, magazine

I've officially become the old man in the building...

So, I got some new neighbors last week (they rent the apartment to our right and share a wall that is the total length of the space) and they are NOISY. Nothing but banging and yelling. Thinking that it was natural "moving in" sounds I tried to ignore it - up until Thursday night.

It was non-stop. At one point my wife got up and banged on the wall and yelled for them to quiet down. They didn't even notice. I finally went over and, a bit angrily, told them that it was late and asked for them to quiet down.

Now, jump ahead to Saturday night/Sunday morning.

2:15 AM, dead asleep when I am awakened by a drunken group screeching the perennial favorite "Pour Some Sugar On Me" outside of my house. They then climb the stairs next door and proceeded to crank the stereo up to 11 and jump up and down while dancing and screaming at the top of their lungs.


Damn it.


I go over and yell at girls who don't look old enough to drink, let alone rent their own apartment, that they need to be quiet.

The best part is that while I'm talking to them, they look at me like I'm the asshole.


(In an old man voice) Young punks! In my day, kids had respect...


(Thinking about it, I actually think that I'm the second oldest person living in the building now. Jeez, I need to buy a house...)

This makes me happy

Shadows and Light

I love shooting subjects that are challenging - subjects like the tech rehearsals held today at the Magic Circle Theater in Roseville. The theater company is putting on Fiddler on the Roof and I stopped by for a few hours to see what I could shoot from it.

What I love about things like this is that, because of the changing light (and, most of the time, the lack of it), you have to come up with alternative ways of shooting. Silhouettes are cool but if you have a steady hand (or a tripod), long exposures are something to consider.


Related Tags: Magic, Circle, Theater, Roseville, Sacramento, Shadows, Light, Documentary, Devin, Bruce

More Tess

Picture of Tess taken in Downtown Sacramento in November 2006.

Related Tags: Tess, Fashion, Portrait, Downtown, Sacramento

Leatherface from Off The Hook TV

Everyone, meet Leatherface. Leatherface, meet everyone.

Here's a dude that I went to high school with - his name is Leatherface. Well, not really, but that's his stage name. You see, Leatherface is a wrestler - he was featured on an episode of Viva La Bam as a special guest star (The Arbor Day / Treetop Casino Episode).

I ended up running into him first on Myspace and then at the SushiMasters event I shot in September. Last month, I got together with him and his buddy, The Executioner, to shoot some stills for a DVD they are putting out. Very nice guy with a very sweet girlfriend.
He was pretty quiet in high school but, then again, I didn't know him too well. Never thought back then that he'd be doing what he's doing now, though!

Check out what he's up to at his website:
www.offthehooktv.com
(Probably NOT work safe)

Related Tags: leatherface, wrestler, viva, la, bam, sacramento, off the hook, dvd

New Tools Part 2...

Yeah - so, new monitors suck. After I meticulously worked on the brightness and contrast levels to FINALLY have a properly calibrated monitor, the computer went ape sh*t on me and decided that I should look at everything in contrasty black and white.

WHAT?!?!!?

So, I ended up breaking down (after working on the problem for the last week) and buying a Spyder2Express. The S2E (as I like to call it... well, not really) is a monitor calibrator. You plug it in, set the little eye dohickey on the screen of the monitor and let it do it's thing.

10 minutes later - perfectly calibrated monitor!

Good side - now prints are dead on all the time.
Bad side - $70 for the S2E that I'll use maybe twice.


Hey, anyone wanna buy a used monitor calibrator?


Related Tags: photoshop, monitor, icc, profile, color, calibration, spyder, new, tools