garyorona:

“Tabitha in the Parlor”

I have a Spaghetti Western addiction and so I much prefer gritty, outdoor, wild west images. So every time Tabitha or anyone suggests a ‘studio’ shoot I cringe a little. But sometimes they work. I shot this one in our parlor.

Anyone in any city can produce a studio shoot. I’ve got this curse in that I have to be original, unique and I can’t walk down the well beaten path. In a world where it seems everything has been done, this presents a problem. It means I have to jump off-trail and walk a lot further each time.

Yet, this photo still works for me. I’m so confused.

Good Thoughts- Gary Orona

http://www.garyorona.smugmug.com

garyorona:

“Tabitha’s Grotto #2” by Gary Orona

This photographic work of Tabitha Stevens also shot with the vintage Voigtlander folding camera should lay to rest the ill-conceived, misguided, false, and overtly presumptuous claim that one must purchase a hyper-technical, fully automated, multi-focus point, matrix metering, advanced computer sensel processor based, $3,000 bundle of wiring and electronics in space age plastic device (modern digital camera) to produce a stunning photograph.

Next up… a work of photographic genius produced from a pinhole camera I built with yesterday’s box of Cheerios!

Good Thoughts! Gary Orona

cantnobodydoitlikeme:

tabitha stevens

garyorona:

December 22, 2011

“Tabitha in Hell’s Canyon” by Gary Orona

I called it Hell’s Canyon because Lake Powell (the reservoir of the formerly magnificent Glen Canyon) was extremely low and all these old trees that had been underwater were exposed. It didn’t look real, as if they were all planted by a very creative Production Designer on a movie set.

I was filming a scene in which Tabitha, in the midst of a dream state on a vision quest, wakes up in this tortured canyon which serves as the Lair of the Shaman.

The water of the reservoir was rising so fast each day that by the time we finished these natural sets were all back under water and the island we had been filming on (where Tabitha is standing for this photo) was gone.

It was all very surreal and magical, but… this movie ‘Sanatorium’ is to date the work of my life and the most tragic in the sense that I can’t really talk about it with comfort. 

It is severely complex and absolutely honest and because it is an adult movie it is completely taboo and notorious. Critics from both the mainstream world and the adult world called it the most “amazing adult movie ever produced”. I say this with absolute humility… it is.

Because no movie which happens to have adult content has ever been so honest, intelligent and populated with the symbols and metaphors of an epic spiritual adventure as this. And for the techies out there; I shot it on 35mm film, with huge production value, in over 30 sublime locations, in four different States over a period of five years.

The story is analogous to Tabitha and is about a woman who faces the demons in her life and emerges as a warrior every bit as powerful as any that Joseph Campbell would have talked about. 

But it contains sex. Now I am uncomfortable. Not because of it’s content, but because I live in such a censored culture that considers anything of an erotic nature as evil, and which in the same breath is so war-like that it raises statues for those who kill.

Now I am uncomfortable. I’ve pulled my own trigger… I will talk more about ‘Sanatorium’ at a later date.

Good Thoughts- Gary Orona

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tabitha stevens

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