Use of painted backdrops is quite standard in photography. I generally find them to be ok at best, and horrifically cheesy at worst. But it is not every day you get to use absolutely gorgeous painted backdrops that are each worth substantially more than your car.

Yesterday, Tiberio and I brought the La Figa live installation to the studio/gallery of Jose Luis Rodriguez Guerra – an  incredibly talented painter, originally from Mexico, but now living and working in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Tiberio is being featured in an upcoming documentary film, and we were there to get footage of him creating some La Figa pieces. Jose was kind enough to lend his space for the filming. More details about the movie (and of course still photos) will be coming in my next blog post, after I have had a chance to post-process the images.

While waiting for some extra video lighting to arrive, I did a spontaneous quick shoot with Reyna, one of our absolute favorite La Figa models. Regular readers (and anybody who was at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival this year) will undoubtedly recognize her. Jose generously allowed us to use his stunning canvases as the backdrop for these photographs.

Also note that Reyna is available for modeling gigs of all kinds. If you have a project that she would be suited for, and would like to get in touch with her about it, just drop me a line, and I will introduce you.

(Click for larger images)

Daniel Cardenas of NWLive.tv has posted the video of the La Figa installation that he shot at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. You can watch it right here.

And also see this video about SEAF from www.seattleiam.com, which has some brief footage of Tiberio and the La Figa installation.

After all of these months of preparation, it is a bit hard to believe it is really over. But it is true, the 2009 Seattle Erotic Art Festival is now just a memory. The organizers did an absolutely incredible job – this was by far the best SEAF ever. The huge space at the Seattle Center really worked well, the art, performers, and DJ’s were all top notch, and the midnight to 4AM after parties on Friday and Saturday rocked the house.

Our La Figa installation was also a smashing success – people really seemed to love it. We had eight large framed prints on our wall space, and Tiberio created new works of food and body art on over a dozen models over three nights.

I have posted three albums of images from the festival:

• The La Figa Installation (53 images)
  
• People and Art (46 images)
  
• Performers (37 images)
  

And here are a few favorites…

There was a great article about Tiberio and the La Figa project in the biggest newspaper in Tiberio’s home region of Italy on Saturday. You can see the pdf of the newspaper’s front page, and the story page, or read the web version,  or Google’s (attempted) translation of the article into English.

I just updated www.lafigaproject.com with all the details on our special installation at the 2009 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, as well as  some new photos, so check it out.

Here is our promo postcard for the event (postcard and logo  by Giannina Silverman, of RocketRanch Design). Click the images for larger versions…