Sunday, October 22, 2017

Web-Slinger by Justin O'Keith


'With great power, comes great responsibility. This is my gift, my curse...'


The body under Spidey's tight fitting blue and red spandex suit is usually that of a fit, but not overly muscled high school student. The suit's dual purpose is to both expose the wearer as the masked superhero coming to their rescue, but maybe more importantly, hide the identity of the man inside. I'm afraid the muscled form inside this Spider-man suit would be a dead give away to the powerful body within.


I first introduced FH readers to Blake, and his work in front of the camera of artist Justin O'Keith this past September. I profiled Blake's story, and his incredible work Justin in Iron Sharpens Iron. Justin send on so many great images, it was difficult to narrow down, but I thought these shots, especially of Blake in his Spider-Man suit, would make a great piece for Halloween week.


One of the reason's I love Justin's work with Blake is the creative way he shot the body builder and model. Justin uses his imagination and experience to to create images that not only embrace the individual qualities of the subject he is shooting, but also looks beyond the those qualities to try out ideas and concepts most others would not.


My guess is that most photographers who shoot Blake would not think of making him a super hero, and if they did, they might think of The Hulk, or another character visually more parallel to Blake's body and look. I love that Justin turned Blake into the webbed one, and I think we can all agree that he fills out the spandex nicely.


'The Spiderman costume was a trial run for some future ideas we want to do for more marketable material, definitely Justin's idea he always goes through thrift stores and finds the coolest things that we can create a theme for a shoot with; as intricate as homemade masks/thongs/straps/etc or as simple as eye black making ALL THE DIFFERENCE in our shoot. Justin is THE most creative professional I have ever worked with and now that he is my manager as well we have great rapport and the content is only getting, how should I say, edgier?'






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