Here are some previews from my recent photoshoot with the World Champion Men’s Epee team. As a team, the defeated the French National team and were the first team to do so in World Championships or Olympics since 2003. They were also recently named USA-Today’s Olympic Athletes of the Week.

Maggie H by Michael Dote

Maggie H#2 by Michael Dote

I feel like it’s important to start the year off right, so I called up Kaback Model agency and set up a test shoot with Tori from Kaback Model Agency. Here are some of the samples from the shoot:

Hair by Melinda Love, Makeup by Harry Jefferson, Photo by Mike Dote

Hair by Melinda Love, Makeup By Harry Jefferson, Photo by Mike Dote

Hair by Melinda Love, Makeup by Harry Jefferson, Photo by Mike Dote

The camera is one tool that I find interesting in terms of it’s ability to output different results in spite of it being a tool that seemingly ‘records’ reality. In the making a photograph, we make so many decisions based on visual, personal, and cultural considerations, that we transcend the ‘taking’ of reality in and step into the realm of ‘making’ something. Even if these decisions we make are made unconsciously or subliminally, the fact remains that we make things that reflect our unique perspective in life. I would question the photograph’s relationship with reality because of the aforementioned considerations.

What is your opinion? Are photos really real? Can an objective documentation of reality really exist when there is a decision-making process that goes into each and every photograph made, consciously or unconsciously? Is there even such a thing as objective reality when each of us are the sum of a different set of experiences?

I am accepting submissions on behalf of GALO Magazine. We are looking for artists under the age of 30, to be featured in a multimedia series that we will distribute bi-weekly online on GALO’s site as well as on my blog.

You can be any kind of artist, ranging from commercial art to fine art to performance art. All that we ask is that you have an interesting story and be open to sharing it in front of the camera. You will receive a copy of the video and you can embed it onto your website, link to it on Facebook, or tweet about it if you would like.

To submit:

Please email Mike@MikeDote.com, with some visuals of your artwork along with a little bit of your story and a way to contact you.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply.

Below are the videos that have been completed so far:

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[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a while since I’ve last updated this blog. I will be doing a better job in the future to keep it and you updated.

Here is a video from a recent project that I’ve started for Galo Magazine. I will be covering 30 artists under 30. This project will be roughly one year in length and will be distributed bi-weekly both on my blog and on Galo Magazine’s website.

Here is the first video I shot and edited for this project. It gives the viewer a brief glimpse into the life of my friend Devin Westland, the painter. He paints in a style reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh. You can find an article on him here, accompanied by some photos that I took during my visit to the Cape.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Sleep time: by Michael Dote

Part one: Self-portraits

Artist’s statement:

The body of work I’ve began is a series of self portraits which will serve as a vaulting point for a much larger body of work that I will be creating in the near future. What I have begun is a series of environmental self-portraits, with the exposure time corresponding with the amount of sleep I get. In creating one of these portraits, the last thing I do before I go to bed is open the shutter while on the bulb setting and the first thing I do in the morning is close the shutter. This project attempts to question traditional measurements of time while simultaneously presenting three dimensions within a two dimensional space. The presentation and perception of time has always been of interest to me, and in creating these long exposure photographs has allowed me to view multiple moments of time occurring within the same space.

This project evolved from studio-based self-portraiture that I had been doing with long exposures and multiple strobe flashes. In that instance, the shutter speed was not relevant to the portrait’s exposure whatsoever. The aperture was the primary controlling factor under those set of conditions because the short duration of the flash did not take into consideration the shutter speed. Even though some of those images were visually compelling, I did not see that project having any life outside of their visual qualities.

As a result, I decided to change the direction of my self-portraiture. In keeping with the same understanding that I would make the shutter speed irrelevant, I set out to do a project that would be visually compelling while speaking about something else. While doing self-portraits that conceptually referenced Matthew Pillsbury, I remembered something I had read about the photographer Bressai. Bressai’s approach to Paris at night involved timing his exposures for the length of time he would smoke a cigarette. As soon as his cigarette was finished, he would end his exposure. I decided to experiment with a long exposure for the length of time that I would sleep.

I am fascinated by exposures that don’t last for a predefined amount time, but are instead done for the amount of time that it takes for a task to complete itself. In a sense, this photographic project attempts to redefine the way that we measure time. Instead of having the time of the exposure being based upon a tradition of calculations we’ve made upon the rotation of the Earth and the rotation of the earth around the sun, it is instead based upon something very imprecise and human. In a sense, it makes photography for me less of a mechanical process with precise numbers stemming from a tradition of calculation determining the length of time that my camera takes a photo, and more of a human-centered process in which my biology and the environment around me is determining the actions of my machine. This is something that I find interesting- a process in which tradition has taken a back seat to environmental and biological factors, much like the modern day. This project has made photography into a much more expressive medium for me, because instead of being shackled to my understanding of technique and propriety in the rather precise process of exposing a photograph, I am simply framing my shot, starting my photo and going to sleep. I wake up and the photo is done. No calculations are being made to determine exposure, and the mathematics inherent to this mechanical process is a combination of guesswork, and torpidity.

Taking a photo for any expanse of time, whether it be the short duration of time necessary to freeze action or the long duration of time you need to take a photograph in a pitch black room, makes the two dimensional photographic print into a three dimensional object in a remarkably different way than sculpture creates three dimensional forms. Whereas a sculpture presents height, width, and depth, the three dimensions that are visible in a photograph are height, width, and time. Photography in this was is a very unique process, because it allows our eyes to visualize the passage of time. It is a unique medium in that it allows us to see the un-seeable and to experience perception through a mechanical process, and perceive things that our natural senses have denied us access to. With a very short exposure we can see something so fast that no human eye can perceive it. With a long exposure and a stationary camera, we have the unique opportunity to see multiple times at the same time in the same place. This unique presentation of the 4^th dimension layered upon a two dimensional form is something that photography does that no other medium can portray with the same degree of accuracy. We as photographers have the unique opportunity to capture time in a box and give it a space to dwell within.