Kraftwerk All The Things

Kraftwerking all the things started with the driver's license photo, then our wedding and our version of the We Are The Robots video All these led us to visiting Düsseldorf (several times!!) and meeting Harald Naegeli & Wolfgang Flür (bonus!!). 

Kraftwerk mash-ups

• The Wolfgang Flür Skydancer
• Man Machine gingerbread cookies
• Grace Jones & Kraftwerk = Yoga Life

Now, I introduce to you... Kraftwerk P U P P E T S. 

Here is the Flickr photo album of the creation process!

Düsseldorf Sights and Sounds 2017

It's been a long time since I've put words down on the Interwebs. Yes, it's true. Last year, David and I were invited to Düsseldorf by Düsseldorf Tourismus and Rheinische Post to see Kraftwerk play a concert in their home town and the concert coincided with the Tour de France Grand Depart.

We joined up with a press junket to tour the city, check out some shops, museums and galleries on top of the Kraftwerk concert. The members of the press group were journalists, authors, musicians and press agents. David was set up with press credentials to interview Wolfgang Flur and I was to be working the event as a freelance photographer. As such, I held off on releasing any of my photos to Flickr, Twitter or Instagram until I heard back from the magazine on which photos they wanted to use. Well, the contact I had at the magazine went on radio silence for many months, so I finally put my photos out online, but it really dampened my spirits to get no response to my query and it took me a long time to get reenergized about putting our pictures and video bits together.

I finally finished a video of the collected photos and video snippets we shot while we were in Düsseldorf. Music used in the video comes courtesy of Mike Donaldson via his site 8Dindustries.com!

Düsseldorf, Tour De France, Kraftwerk, Air, Friends, Adventure, YES PLEASE!

Photo by @puthoor_photo via Flickr

In just a few hours, David and I will be boarding a plane to Frankfurt & then taking the train to Düsseldorf. Our wild Kraftwerk adventure is leading us to their home town to meet Jan Wiefels who wrote about our wedding in the Rheinische Post! He extended a pair of tickets for us to see Kraftwerk & Air & we booked our travel immediately. Who could say no to an opportunity like this (not us!)?!

Thorsten Schaar reached out to David and I, inviting us to take part in an International Press trip of Kraftwerk and the Grand Depárt (the start of the Tour de France). David is writing an article on the event for Electronic Beats magazine and I'll be their photographer for this story. I can't believe our good fortune. It all began with the pictures I took of David being posted to his Flickr photostream & now my own Flickr account was essential in establishing that I can shoot good pictures every now and then!

Friends of ours will be joining us in Düsseldorf (Marshall, Les, Hilde & our very own Scott Stapleton!) Friday, Saturday and Sunday we'll be with the press group. The members of the International press we're traveling with are authors, musicians, magazine founders, literary agents and sports writers. It's sure to be an interesting group of people.

Many, many photos will be taken. I'm bringing my Polaroid Spectra, Sony a6000 & my trusty Pentax 110 (of course!). My purse/camera bag is heavy with lenses, spare batteries, film and my FauxPro.

Gifts were made with my handy dandy new Cricut machine! So many t-shirts!!!

The Making of a Kraftwerk Wedding

Photo - Jon Wolding

It all started with a challenge to take a memorable (and awesome) driver's license photo... I donned my platinum wig & got an excellent glamour shot. David decided to dress as Kraftwerk for his driver's license photo and the rest (as they say) is history...

Knowing we were going to have a Kraftwerk themed wedding, I came up with the "weddingbahn" concept, created the 'cover art' for the invites and mailed them out. We'd set the date for January 4th, a Wednesday which would pair nicely as a Kraftwerk themed Wax Wednesday at Ella's Americana Folk Art Cafe in Tampa, FL (our favorite local restaurant). We reached out to our pal Michael Donaldson (aka Q-Burns Abstract Message) to compose Kraftwerk-esque wedding music & asked him to be our DJ for the event.

Getting a red shirt made online was the easy part (even if I put it off too long and then had to expedite shipping). I ordered my red shirt from Sumissura and it fit perfectly! I couldn't be happier with their attention to detail. The shirt was beautiful.

I hadn't given any consideration to decorations until Chef Suz at Ella's told us we could come in and setup the night before. Decorations? We didn't have any decorations. Easy. Well, that didn't last long - David said we needed decorations! His brainstorming and my crafting/painting/gluing capabilities brought forth mini album cubes, hashtag/Instagram table toppers, mini traffic cones, a life-size Computerworld photo prop and two Kraftwerk podiums for us.

The mini album cubes would prove the simplest to Photoshop, cut and glue together. Searching online for mini traffic cones (akin to the first Kraftwerk album cover) was an exercise in futility. Small traffic cones with two stripes are not a thing that can be purchased, therefore mini non-striped cones were purchased & painters tape was used to mask off the two stripes. Biscuit colored refrigerator paint & Rustoleum pearl paint were used to give the look of reflective stripes.

I bought the last 40x60 sheet of white foam-core from Office Depot, photoshopped up the album art from Computer World so that the computer had a left corner(!) & would be 40x40 when printed. I printed it out in sections, used glue sticks to piece the sections together and David helped me with spraying the paper and the foam-core with spray adhesive and gluing the two pieces together.

 The podiums were fun to make! The top and bottom are slender Amazon boxes, the center column is from double wall cardboard from IKEA (they always have huge sections of double wall cardboard in their box bins out in front of the store). The boxes were stabilized internally with expanding foam and a few chunks of brick (David's idea). I found photos of Kraftwerk's equipment online and with some minor photoshopping, edited those images into usable replicas of their gear for the top of the podiums. The printout of the equipment was done in sections on 11x17 paper, glued together and then spray adhered to two sections of tempered hardboard. The tempered hardboard was then glued and clamped to the top of the podiums to create a flat, smooth stable top to the podiums. The finishing touch was applying reflective tape to the front and sides of the podiums to give the look of the luminescent edges on Kraftwerk's actual equipment podiums.

Photo - Jon Wolding

Our padre was none other than Keith Ulrey, owner of Microgroove Records (an obvious choice). The cake was a chocolate/chocolate fudge cake from Charlie's Bakery in Orlando (hands down the best cake on the planet) photo printed with a white Arp Odyssey synthesizer and dollops of icing made the sliders 'pop' on the cake. It was delicious and gorgeous all at the same time.

Many thanks to Scott Imrich of WMNF (and Ella's Wax Wednesdays) who put in some DJ time so Michael could eat and catch up with old friends who were in town for our wedding!

We hired Jon Wolding of Ground Up Films to do our photography and his work was stellar! Here are just a few of the great pictures he captured of our wedding.

Photo - Jon Wolding 

Photo - Jon Wolding

Photo - Jon Wolding

The retro-futurism aesthetic Kraftwerk embraced throughout the 1970s led me to choose the short black 1920's finger-wave styled wig from Paramount Wigs for a feminine Kraftwerk look. I booked a 45 minute makeover at Sephora with the lovely and talented Christine in Sarasota (that was the closest Sephora with a next-day makeover appointment!). I wore my wig but no makeup, showed her the Man Machine album cover and she helped me craft a look to match the feel of the album cover and the style of hair I'd chosen. She did a great job and taught me a few tricks so I could recreate what she'd done for the wedding day!

The biggest thanks goes to our friends and family who came to our wedding in red shirts and black ties to take part in the Man Machine absurdity! We couldn't have done it without you! We made the news in several places due to your willingness to play along!

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