Moped
April 18th, 2011Michael Park introduced me to the zen of moped maintenance and helped me fix up this two stroke engine from the 1970s.
Elegance = Power / Complexity
Jimmy Sastra's personal website
Jimmy is of Chinese-Indonesian descent. To his great surprise he was born in The Netherlands. After a brief stint in Japan he now resides in the United States in the city of bro love called Philadelphia.
He is currently in the 20th grade studying modular robotics under Professor Mark Yim. His interests include robots, design, photography and the fine arts. An experimentalist at heart he loves to learn new
technologies and methods and apply them either as engineer or artist.
"Design is not just what it looks like or how it feels. Design is how it works."
-- Steve Jobs
Studio
1722 Spruce StreetStudio C3
Philadelphia, PA 19103
jimmy.sastra @ gmail.com
1.267.987.5154
Lab
220 S. 33rd StreetTowne Building, Room 170
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6314
jsastra @ seas.upenn.edu
1.215.746.7952
Archives
Curly Hair
April 3rd, 2011I asked Noreen if we could push the envelope of what’s possible with hair. Falon wanted big and curly.
Above: Falon
Hair: Noreen Fox
Make up: Carinn Kanaki
Rectangular to Polar
April 2nd, 2011Here’s something different. Remember Math 101? Take your panorama, convert from rectangular to polar coordinates, and you got yourself a little sphere world.
Above: Philadelphia Museum of Art
FEASTival
October 15th, 2010I photographed the FEASTival, as part of the live arts Fringe festival this year. It invites the big shots of Philadelphia’s restaurant scene to set up tables. I got to meet Stephen Starr, Jose Garces, Michael Solomonov etc. Mayor Nutter and Ed Rendell were also present for me to snap some shots of. Besides all these famous people and delicious food though, what I enjoyed was the performers on the ceiling hanging on wires dancing above the crowd.
one second film, two hour photo
September 1st, 2010This is a concept that has been in my head for a long time and I’ve finally managed to try it out. To capture the full sunset multiple images were composited together to form this photo. Some parts of this image show clouds during daylight, while other parts show high-rises late in the night. No longer do my photos capture only a fraction of a second. This image was made over the course of a couple hours.
Above: Amelie Boquoi
Cookie
July 8th, 2010A cookie in photography is short for cookaloris. It’s a technique where you shoot your flash through something with holes so the light that goes through creates a textured shadow. For example you can aim your light source at a piece of plywood, that has a bunch of random cut holes like this. Instead of an evenly lit background you can achieve a more varied image with shadows and highlights.
I like to use natural light as much as I can. In this one I’ve consciously used the shadows created by the sun coming through the trees as basically a gigantic cookie. Highlights and shadows create a patterned texture on the grass adding lots of depth to this photo. The red and green make for a great contrast. Flashes coming in from left and right, both at 1/2 power. One light to highlight Falon’s wavy hair and another one to create a rim light on her long legs.
Above: Falon
Oranje
July 8th, 2010Sorry I haven’t updated this blog for a while. I have been so busy watching the World Cup football games I can’t get any work done! But it appears my home country (The Netherlands) is going to the finals in Johannesburg!!!!! We even beat Brazil in the quarter finals. Come watch the World Cup final on Sunday. I don’t care whether you’re Italian, Argentinian, or Germanian, on Sunday you can all be Dutch. And you better be wearing orange! Unless you’re Spanish of course.
Above: Star Winters
Warehouse
May 18th, 2010It’s fun to shoot in old warehouses. You can walk around and discover cool little spots to photograph everywhere. We’re in front of an old freight elevator here which I thought would make a great backdrop.
I like the way the light falls on Amber’s hair. A little more than just a rim light, but not too much and some shadows are being cast on her face. Speedlites camera left and right. I forget what settings. Oops!
Above: Amber Curia
The Robot Etudes
May 10th, 2010
This blog usually functions as a journal for my photography endeavors, but I’m quite excited about this next project and figured it’s somewhat related that I decided to throw it in.
For the past three months architects and engineers students at the University of Pennsylvania have been working together on building mechatronic devices (think robots) to interact with actors in a play. Etudes were created and are loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s dream. They will be performed this Saturday by the Pig Iron Theatre Troupe at the Harold Prince Theater of the Annenberg Center.
The very avant-garde Pig Iron Theatre Troupe is highly renowned so we are lucky to work with them and Shakespeare was a rad hipster in his day so brush up on them here and here.
Being a roboticist by day and photographer by night I’m always interested in mixing the art and engineering disciplines. Often though when I look around and find these two disciplines combined it dilutes the two and the sum is less than the parts. The result usually being mediocre engineering and crappy art. It is difficult to find the right balance in which one discipline not only does not take away from the other, but that it actually enhances.
Adding technology may be fun for engineers, but may not work theatrically. What architects want to do, may not work engineering wise. Were we able to additively combine engineering with architecture with theatre? I’ll let you decide for yourself. Reserve your tickets here.
Private Show
March 10th, 2010Photographers always get front row seats. Or we get to hang out backstage with the band. But what’s best is that sometime we get hired and get our own private show.
Above: Timaree Schmit