June Photo Journal by Angelo Sotira, for Five Four.
You may remember Angelo from a few months back as being look of the week, and also as the CEO of DeviantArt, the largest art community in the world, and one of the top 100 sites in the world. Anyways, Angelo went on a long journey the months of May-July visiting the top Deviant cities around the world.
Following is a document of Angelo's travels, also check out his write up below on the journal.
Thanks again for doing this bud!
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What's up FiveFour!
In early May I set out on a World Tour for deviantART, and I got back home for a stint in early July. I was on tour the entirety of June and what you'll see here are photos of my VP of Marketing Heidi Chambers and I rippin' up the globe, meeting artists, and holding deviantMEETS where we clue people in to upcoming deviantART features, and let artists of all kinds (photographers, painters, digital painters, writers, etc.) connect with each other in person and locally for (often) the first time.
We visited (in this order), Sydney - Australia, Singapore, Warsaw - Poland, Istanbul - Turkey, Ankara - Turkey, Berlin - Germany, Paris - France, London - UK, New York - New York, Toronto - Canada, New York (again), Los Angeles. We're still headed to Brazil and Mexico as of this writing.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Because deviantART has 11 million+ members worldwide and 26 million visitors, we provided very little advance notice as to where we would be. FOUR DAYS TOPS in any city... so that we could throttle the turn out!
And the turn out was absolutely amazing. It is the single most inspiring trip of my life. And it is continuing to teach me more about my community than I ever thought I knew.
I pretty much only wore Five Four or deviantWEAR on the tour and it treated me well and made me feel good. When a lot of people are paying close attention to you, it's important to feel that way about your clothing. It's weird, but clothing is one of those things that can give you confidence or add that extra kick in your step that makes a difference.
Thanks Five Four! Enjoy the shots, and keep deviating. You guys are making us all look good!
-- Angelo
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Skipping ahead for a glimpse of the London meet, this is one of my favorite shots of the tour. That's me in the middle. And 350+ members in front of me!! [shot by greenie.deviantart.com]
In the very beginning of June I was in Berlin, and this is the meet we held there.
We'd post animations like this one to "call" people to the meeting location. We'd only give 4 days notice and often less to throttle turn out.
That's trenchmaker.deviantart.com - the queen of cute (and I).
See?
Some bad ass golden girls. Shot taken without their knowledge.
deviantART HQ had sent reinforcements. And it's a good thing... we were running out of emoticon stress balls to hand out. ;)
1 million gallon aquarium in our hotel? Check.
Berlin is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever visited. This kind of architecture spread around contributed to that conclusion. (Berlin Cathedral)
My friend Travis met us for one stop on the tour. I don't know what the hell he was doing in this photo, but he was bringin' the laughter with it for suuuree..
Post-meetup, artists gathered around my Mac to use Photoshop and my Wacom Intuos 4 drawing tablet. That thing is SO nice.
Two days later we were in Paris holding another meet.
We used this to gather the troops to the Louvre.
France brings the eats like nobody's business.
Another day, I had dinner after walking the streets for photographs with gonzale.deviantart.com - at the end of the meal the waiter brought us fake tattoos with the bill. Check her gallery on dA she's amazing.
The center pyramid at the Louvre from the ground up.
The Raft of Medusa (1819) - I've never spent as much time looking at a single painting in my entire life. It's got everything for me.
About the second most cliche picture I could have taken at the Louve. (venus de milo)
Because THIS would be the first. Plus fave!
One of the many sessions I held on tour with smaller groups (from the larger pack) to explain what deviantART was up to next!
Next up; London! And what a sight... 350+ deviants with just a few days notice. Such a great time. [shot by cei.deviantart.com]
London shout out. These little art projects become a fun past time and steadily improved in quality I think.. hehe
Simon, Heidi and I from right to left. And the London Eye in the background. That thing is HUGE!
deviantWEAR needed me to do an impromptu photoshoot for our new fox t-shirt. Found this Ferrari near the hotel just for fun.
Heidi has a thing with unicorns; it's a long story. But here she is on the fivefour blog pointing at one. haha!!
I don't know what kinda cracked out drugs they put in this whipped ice cream you can buy in hyde park but i'm still jonesing.
Andrew McCann (deviantART's Chief Technology Officer) met us in London for a technology swarm with ....
Simon Murray (pachunka.deviantart.com) and....
Sasha Lerner (randomduck.deviantart.com) ... good times, highly productive for our new Groups system that's launching on deviantART.
Big Ben.
Wish I would have read that sign BEFORE I smacked my head HARD against that thing.
London Underground culture shot.
Time is Passing.
What's up TORONTO!! Epic turn out, fantastic meet. [shot by neom.deviantart.com]
Fireworks for canada day. Open shutter for the roman candles.
This deviant works at Dairy Queen and made us a fella/deviantART ice cream cake as a gift!!!
Chillin with the geniuses behind Udon Entertainment (udoncrew.deviantart.com) brainstorming about how to change the world.
Stanley Sy (winner of the 2009 bolt award; http://news.deviantart.com/article/88980/) opens up a gift we brought for him from Singapore; a sketch and autograph from perhaps his favorite artist Stanley Lau (artgerm.deviantart.com) - the sketch is of Pepper, no less!
Shutter stayed open and captured this.
The Big Apple is beautiful. Notice everyone holding big.... apples... [shot by goodfoot42.deviantart.com]
Hailed a human cab to scout locations a few days prior.
While explaining basic principles of photography to a deviant who was snapping shots with my camera....... I must have decided to explain even more things....
Addressing the crowd in Central Park's Bethesda Fountain.
Leading a crowd to one of my demo gatherings this time under a huge tree that's known to locals as one of the best climbing trees in the park.
This is danimation.deviantart.com - he draws for Marvel Comics among others.
I particularly enjoyed watching him sketch with a blue pencil.
Heidi Chambers. deviantART's VP of Marketing...
That's my deviantART GFX Artist Bag; And a bird had just shit on it.
Vroom.
Met Andy Starbuck who is one of deviantART's Advertising Sales Reps handling NYC as a territory. He took us to a kick ass pizza shop that's really famous and I forgot the name of it. But it was gooooood!!
That's Andy.
Back in LA in late June, my girlfriend ( Janina ) needed a couple of shots for some audition (she's an actor). So we did a quick photo shoot on my first day back.
It's good to be back after two months on tour. ;)
LA is #1 worldwide in traffic stupidity. I had completed a loop going West all the way around the world in 53 days within 10 hours of this moment; so you can call that a reputable first hand account of this fact! ;)