Upcoming Film Screenings & Announcements!

I'M BACK!

I know it's been a while since you've heard from me, but there have been a lot of exciting things happening this year, and even more to come in the next few weeks! 

In case you may have missed it, check out my interview on The Black List about my recent spec sale to 1inMM Productions of the upcoming home invasion thriller screenplay known as Hell is Where the Home Is. The film finished shooting last month and is currently in post-production for an anticipated release next year.

The next bit of news involves what was actually the very first paid writing job I was hired for here in Los Angeles, back in 2014. It was for a re-write of a little indie film called Shine about the gentrification of Spanish Harlem.

"Two brothers once East Harlem's best Salsa dancers are separated after the death of their father only to be reunited years later on opposing ends of gentrification."

Well, thanks to the perseverance of the film's director, Shine is finally complete and held it's World Premiere on September 22nd at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York!

Read more about the project here and check it out if you're in the area!

This has also been an exciting year in the world of short films...

Next, I'm proud to announce that my award-winning 2015 short film To Police will have its International Premiere NEXT WEEK in Spain at the Madrid Art Film Festival on Saturday, September 30th!

To Police chronicles the story of a young police officer facing racially-charged fallout after the pursuit of a violent criminal ends in the shooting of an innocent teenager.

This marks the first time a film of mine will play overseas, and if this year has been any indication, it certainly won't be the last!

For those who might not be familiar with the project, check out the trailer below!

But that's not all, this year also saw the production of a brand new short!

I'm equally proud to announce that my second short film, entitled Voice, is now complete and will be premiering right here in Los Angeles at the LA Live Regal Theater for the 13th Annual LA Femme International Film Festival! 

"A young Muslim woman balances her duties as a wife and mother while searching for a voice of her own."

This is a festival dedicated to bringing forward stories by and about women, so what better place to debut a collaboration with two talented female filmmakers about a woman's search for her creative outlet.

Check out the trailer below:

Tickets to the Voice premiere at 6pm on Friday, October 20th can be found online here.

To those who might be interested in getting involved in my next film project, my feature film directorial debut Standing Up, I'm currently seeking managing partners and investors. We're going big this time. Send me a message if you'd like to know more about how you can get involved!

Now, last but not least, if it doesn't seem like I've been making efficient use of my free time this year, I'm also proud to announce the Opening Night Reception of my very first gallery exhibit as an art curator, Art From The Other Side!

So if you're in the Los Angeles area on Thursday, October 26th, come downtown to Angel City Brewery and check out the showcase, because what better place to look at art than a brewery? And it just so happens that October 26th is my birthday, so come kill two birds with one stone and buy me a beer or six.

That's all for now folks, look out for some more announcements to come in the not too distant future, and if you're not already doing so, follow me on Instagram @CoreyDeshon for updates from Madrid, LA Femme, and Angel City.

Sincerely,

Corey Deshon

Arsenic Feature

If you follow any of my Instagram stories, you'll see I've been collaborating with Arsenic Magazine pretty frequently over the last few months.  They first took a liking to my Basquiat series, and have since invited me to shoot a few of their video projects and even hang a few of my pieces in their offices.

Most recently, they decided to feature the Brianna Dreamscape series on their new website, Arsenic.tv.  

Check out the full feature HERE.

So I've Decided To Take Scanning Into My Own Hands

Luckily for me I routinely shop for things I can't afford in my fleeting spare time, as a way of keeping an ear to the ground for the general trend of fluctuating prices.  So like with the printer rebate, when I see a good deal, I know a good deal.  

A few weeks back I happened to come across a Plustek OpticFilm 7200i film scanner for $8. Yes, $8.  Eight dollars.  Gotta love Goodwill.  Now, this scanner is by no means the latest and greatest technology, in fact it's pretty outdated as far as film scanners go.  I think it may have actually been the first scanner in the Plustek OpticFilm line, and the first to be able to scan at 7200dpi, hence the name.  That would put it over ten years old.  But for that matter, that would make it about 30 years newer than the $65 worth of 1970s camera equipment I shoot 90% of my work on, so who gives a shit. Works don't it? 

When the 7200i was new, it only ran for about $250, which is still the very bottom of the food chain as far as film scanners go.  But when it comes to film scanning, considering how costly it gets to scan in print-worthy resolution, this was yet another no-brainer.  Photographers these days seem to have a habit of thinking more expensive = better.  The ability to self scan every 35mm negative I want to print cost me less than scanning one negative at a lab.  Yeah, I'll take it.  With this new (read: old) scanner at my side, I'll be able to offer a much wider range of prints in the store now, so look out for future updates there.

On a final note about the film scanners, I should point out that nothing in the roughly affordable price range for the average starving artist will be capable of scanning anything beyond 35mm.  A lot of people do have varying results with flatbed scanners however, and some even recommend them, but the size and workflow of those didn't exactly fit my (ridiculously busy and ridiculously cramped) lifestyle.  And even cheaper dedicated film scanners like the Plusteks are able to scan better quality high resolution negatives that the most expensive of flatbed scanners.  I knew a dedicated film scanner would be the right choice for me, and I'd just need to continue getting lab scans of my medium format work for the time being.  Any dedicated film scanners capable of medium format seem to run in the $1,200+ range.  And uh... That's rent.

So I've Decided To Take Printing Into My Own Hands

Because Why Not Print More While Spending Less?

A typical development & low-res scan package from a photo lab ranges anywhere from about $10 to $25 per roll depending on where you go.  I'd typically spend about $13 at my lab.  Add that to the cost of a roll of film, like my personal favorite Portra 800, and it's safe to say it cost me roughly $25 every time I wanted to shoot a roll of film to share with the world.  Now mind you, the scans included in this cost only provided enough resolution to display on the web.  For a truly high resolution scan needed for printing large formats, I'd be looking at anywhere between $5 to $25 PER NEGATIVE depending on just how much enlarging I'd need.  

All that covers is just getting my photos ready to make prints, never mind the printing itself.  At a fine art photo lab I'd be looking at anywhere from $50 to $100 per final print, never mind the costs of testing color profiles and paper stocks.  When it's all said and done I'd easily be looking at a few thousand in expenses to print enough work for my upcoming solo exhibit.  Now don't get me wrong, quality prints from a fine art lab are certainly worth it, but until people start shelling out thousands of dollars for my prints (give it time), these costs just weren't gonna cut it.  I am a starving artist after all, I barely clear a few thousand in annual income... 

So as I've moved into the printing era of my photographic endeavors, and now working on my third (and possibly also forth) gallery exhibit of the year, it became clear that it was time I took printing into my own hands.  And with the successful test run of my digital printing method and print sale, I've decided to do just that.  Thanks to an impeccably-timed rebate, I've recently invested in a large format digital printer from Canon (full review coming soon).

This seemed to make the most sense from a business perspective as well.  As much as people tell me they like my photos, it's hard to like something enough to spend upwards of $200 a piece on it (lookin' at you, Tinder dates, hope you like Ramen), so I'll be the first to admit that the darkroom pricing options currently in my Print Store just aren't for everybody. And since I've officially reached the limit of how many pieces of furniture and/or photographic equipment I can reasonably fit into a studio apartment, my home darkroom project is going to have to wait a few years.  

Still, it makes sense to offer a more economical solution for people who truly enjoy my work and would like to own a piece of it.  Especially considering that the majority of my audience are other film photographers, and we all know how broke we are.   But with that out of the way, there's still the other elephant in the room, in that scanning high res is fcking expensive.  How do we solve this problem?  Well, that's a good question for another time.  (Hint: I'm bought a scanner too).  For now, I've got some learning to do, as digital printing opens up a whole new science of photography that I have only just begun to scratch the surface of.

10K Print Sale!

To celebrate finally reaching 10,000 followers on Instagram, I'll be offering 25% off ALL print orders for the rest of the month!  Just use the coupon code 10K2016 at checkout!

I have also added new and affordable printing options to all prints in the store, as well as any custom orders.  Use the Commission A Print option to have prints made of any image on this site or on my Instagram @CoreyDeshon for as little as $25.

For one last added bonus, anyone who spends $75 or more in the print store will be added into a drawing to win a Canon Pixma Pro-100 Photo Printer at the end of next month! (Additional details on the drawing coming soon).

Only a limited number of each photo will be printed, so visit the Print Store today to place your orders!

Blog Redesign

Introducing My New Blog Homepage

When I first launched this site in January, the one thing I still felt significantly lacking was the design of the blog page.  The blog template used here doesn't provide any form of sidebar navigation, meaning there was no good way to quickly navigate posts, it wasn't very intuitive to differentiate one post from another, and it was almost impossible to notice that there was even more than one page of posts at any given time.  And if one thing was for certain, I didn't spend three days uploading my entire history-in-pictures as a film photographer in the form of two years worth of back-dated blog posts for nothing.  (What?  I gotta post em somewhere.)  So eventually something had to give.

Fortunately I was able to find a way to build a new (read: actual) blog homepage within the current template, as changing templates just for better blog features would've proved to be too counterproductive (read: pain in the ass) and hosting a blog elsewhere would essentially defeat the purpose of this site.  Luckily, spending four years working for a webhost was good for something, in that it's allotted me the technical wherewithal to make the most of customization in template-based site design, while having forgotten virtually everything else.  Go figure.  So today I'm proud to launch my new and improved Blog Homepage!

Now With Actual Working Search-Bar & Navigation Options!

Give it a try!

The new homepage includes a marquee of recent posts, a wall of featured content from over the years, and several choices for navigating through all of the posts.  Use the monthly archives, post calendar, tag/category cloud, or fully functional search bar to find what you're looking for.

I hope this makes it easier to get some use out of this blog, as I intend to keep filling it with interesting content about my various photographic exploits, progress made as a writer/director in the LA film industry, gear reviews, event updates, and much more. Plus, I promised myself I'd write everyday, and blogging is a lot easier than screenwriting.  Enjoy!