Gary Ochoa.

So the other day I went to shoot an artist, Gary Ochoa, painter/collagist, for the series I'm working on relating to LGBT seniors (50+).  Gary lives in this incredible environment called the Santa Fe Art Colony.  It's in an old warehouse district outside of downtown L.A.  This huge, old brick building along with some surrounding cottage-type spaces has been renovated so that there are quite a number of artists' lofts on multiple floors.  The loft I was in along with the various corridors to this place were incredible spaces with skylights throughout and interesting angles and textures throughout.   I loved the architecture and the varying use of different color temperatures 

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After photographing my subject in his studio, we meandered around the building finding several different locations to shoot.  Having taken up more of his time than I originally told him, we stopped, though I kept gathering ideas for a future shoot.  

As my subject and I were talking about art and looking at his work, I was moved by the idea that when we finish an art piece, it will live on long after we're gone -- assuming it's not damaged or destroyed.  In looking at the artist's huge collage pieces, I wanted to capture the piece's permanance along with just his essence showing how ephemeral our existence is.

As we were walking back to my car after a totally satisfying creative experience, we were passing a row of large individual studios.  I looked in the open door of one of the studios and saw this young female artist working in the middle of her space.  The studio was dark except for a small circly of light illuminating her at her table.  As I started to pass, I just had to go back and introduce myself to this young lady and ask if I could take her photograph.  Because of how dark it was outside and how I had originally framed the image, I had to use a very high ISO which gave the image quite a bit of noise.  Using one of the tools in Photoshop, I eliminated most of the noise, but this created a little softening of the image, almost giving it a "painterly" feel.  However, when I first passed her door, that is exactly how I saw the scene.

The last image was a fun shot of the artist and his studio space as seen through a concave mirror.