Broadway, 7th Avenue, Morning
The cross streets of New York City align directly with the sunrise and sunset at certain times of the year. When I’m walking to work in the morning these days and I glance to the right at intersections I’m met with the intense rays of the sun, blocking out nearly everything in sight, even with sunglasses. Crossing against the traffic signals on days like today requires a New Yorker’s certainty that everything is negotiable, even the physics of a speeding cab that may or may not be rushing out of the blinding light to strike you down.
Underneath the California Sky
In the fall when I was out in San Francisco shooting for Connect magazine, I met up with a friend of mine and we climbed the hills across the Golden Gate Bridge and looked out at the sea. The ocean is one of the things that never ceases to amaze me about the west coast. And the sky seemed so large that day, perhaps because we were up in the hills. Breathtaking…
Christina
Dr. Girlfriend and I love our apartment, but it is on the dark side. There isn’t a great deal of light from the windows. However, for a few brief moments a day the sun is angled properly to squeeze between the buildings around us and some gorgeous light muscles it’s way into our living room.
Post Project Blues
There is always excitement about finishing a project. Especially if it’s a project that you have been working on, or thinking about, or conceptualizing for months. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was finally able to work on some of the ideas that had been bouncing around in my head that I’d been procrastinating about for a long time. I had a great time working on the project and I’m in the finishing stages of completing it. I’ll share those images as soon as I can.
The problem is that every time I complete a project like this, there is that moment when I’m like…holy shit, I’m out of ideas. That was it, that was the last one I’ll ever have. What the hell and I going to shoot tomorrow?
I’m in one of those periods of time now and I haven’t even finished the last project yet. Maybe it’s the rain. In any case, I need to sit tight, stop stressing about forcing ideas, make the time in my schedule to relax and let my mind find the ideas. Sounds so easy to type, but at the moment there is just this hole in my creativity. Sometime soon that hole will get filled with an idea. But until then, that hole seems so very large.
Affecting Change
I know it’s a little early for starting to think about the new year, but 2010 is shaping up to be a year full of lots of changes. While it is much too early to talk about some of the big changes that may happen, the possibility of change has been on my mind a lot. One of the things that is going to first and foremost on my mind is where to take the next steps in my photography career.
Since I made my first professional (read: paid) photograph in 2006, I’ve certainly come a long way. Each photograph I take shows improvement, albeit sometimes subtle improvement, and I expect that to happen for the rest of my career as well. I don’t think there will ever be a point where I will be able to say, yes, ok, NOW I’m the best photographer I can be. I am always looking for how to improve and change my photography, to be more creative, to be more careful, to be more, well, aware of the photographs that I’m making.
The problem I’m seeing these days is that with my current situation, I spend a great deal of wasted hours waiting for the next project. This is, in part, because I’m a staff photographer at a large financial firm. If I was a freelancer and not chained to a desk between shoots, I would likely be out in the world experimenting, testing, and learning. As it is, I fill these empty hours with internet research and non-photography projects as needed to round out my billable hours. This is clearly impeding my ability to improve my craft to a certain extent because every project that I do has to have value. I don’t get a lot of flexibility and time to experiment, to take chances, to try something new.
So here’s the question that I don’t have an answer for yet. How do I affect change? When I’m sitting at my cube in my windowless beige office, what can I do to improve my photography for the next shoot? Where is my next personal project going to come from if I’m constantly exhausted from office living and don’t feel like picking up a camera when I get home and night or even on the weekends?
In any case, it’s time for a change. Despite the downer tone here, I’m feeling very positive about the change. I just need to figure out how to do it.
Bottle Shock and Wine
I was going through some of my images working on my portfolio and I put on the movie Bottle Shock in the background. I was working on a selection of lifestyle images and I kept seeing beautiful landscapes of Napa Valley on the TV. Dr. Girlfriend and I spent a luxurious few days in Napa and this movie brought it all back. The sun, the rolling hills of vines, the blue skies (and of course the wine). One day I’ll shoot a project out there (or at the very least take another vacation.
Transportation In Washington DC
Here are a few transportation related images I made while on a trip to Washington DC this past week.
Cabbage
Here are some more garden photographs that I made recently in PA. I think these go quite well with the corn photos from last week. I absolutely love the color and the complexity.
End of the world
I was in Martha’s Vineyard last weekend (along with the President and the Clintons, apparently) visiting some friends who were vacationing there from California. We were fortunate to get the use of a guest house outside of town in Oak Bluffs near a lake, which proved to be a great spot to watch the Friday night fireworks display. Despite the fact that the fireworks were directly in front of us, they were largely hidden by the cloud cover (provided in part by Hurricane Bill). The result was that in many cases the fireworks resembled footage that I’ve seen of nuclear bombs going off. Very surreal.
Into the sun
I was in PA for a wedding last weekend, and I took the opportunity to photograph things that I’m normally not able to do. In this case I went into a cornfield and made some images. I have been experimenting with some counter-intuitive methods of making photographs outdoors, since my efforts thus far have been unimpressive. I’ve found that my photographs outdoors have been either poor quality, flat and boring, or else very much like traditional stock photography. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with the traditional shots – in fact I’m working on building a library of stock images for sale. But as I continue to refine my taste and find style that works for me on a personal level, I want to push myself beyond commercial photography that I make for a living.
So on Saturday, rather than sculpt the ambient light into a nice, easy photo, I turned my camera into the sun in the cornfield and started to play with a wide aperture where there is a lot of light, and a lot of contrast. The result was a series of rather ethereal images, verging on abstraction which I’m really liking. Here are three of my favorites from the shoot.
I’m hoping to build on this concept and style, although I’m not entirely sure about where to go next. And of course with the heat that we’ve been experiencing in the last few weeks I don’t want to be outside at all.
Identifing as a Photographer
Rockefeller Center on a warm February day, iPhone
I was out celebrating the 30th birthday of a friend last night. It was one of those events where several of her friend circles came together, so I ended up talking to a lot of people that I hadn’t met before, and so therefore was frequently asked what I do for a living. My answer these days is that I am a photographer. When I was a graphic designer I used to say that I was a designer, and then when I started doing more photography I felt like I was in a gray area. For a long time I didn’t feel comfortablte saying I was a photographer and would always stumble with an answer when asked. Sort of like when I used to be self concious when people asked where I went to college. Now I know that saying that I went to community college and am largely self taught in design and photography is not something to be embarassed about.
The bottom line is that when I was asked last night what I do for a living, I realized that I am able to say photographer without being worried that I’m posturing, that I’m not “good enough” to call myself a photographer. I have a lot to learn, certainly, but I think that’s what helps me to make better photographs: I’m always trying to improve.
Anyways, one of my friends asked me how I’m identifying these days, and I said I’m identifying as a photographer.
Moody Friday Goodness
I have a few shots to share from a while back that I’m finally processing. I had just gotten my 50mm 1.4 and was playing around with it wide open. The depth of field is so short it has this crazy ethereal quality.
Obama Inauguration in Times Square
One of the first things I did when I moved to New York was to spend a weekend protesting in Times Square. I’d been in the city for just under a month at the time of the election and since I didn’t officially have an address yet, I hadn’t registered to vote. But that fall of 2000 was important enough that I voted absentee in PA before my registration expired. And then a few weeks after the election I found myself yelling and screaming at a fraud in the white house.
This year couldn’t be more different. This year I spent the day in Times Square photographing excited New Yorkers watching Barak Obama’s inauguration to be president of the United States. When Bush came on the huge monitors people were singing that Steam song. Every time Obama appeared on the screen the people went nuts. Whether they were alone or in groups, everyone was riveted on the monitors. It wasn’t the crazy jubilation of election night but more of a sober, clear positivity. Everyone seemed to be looking forward with hope and optimism, just like all those posters suggested. It was pretty impressive.
You can see the complete set of images from this afternoon here
Film
I’m reading that new Leibovitz book and am enjoying the hell out of it. I love photographer biographies, and although this one is more along the lines of discussions about photos, she does it in a more or less chronological order, and you can see how the work progresses over time.
The book is not about technique, but she mentions a couple of tidbits that I thought were interesting. When she was shooting 35mm, for example when she was touring with the Rolling Stones, she generally had three cameras with her, each with a prime lens: 35, 55, and 105. She’d put the 105 on whichever camera had a light meter (I assume she used cameras which didn’t) and basically used it to meter rather than running across the room with a hand-held meter. Then she’d use the other two for her primary shooting.
Makes me want to shoot a few rolls of film. The only semi-working film camera that I have is an old Konica that I bought at a pawn shop in the Village my first year in New York – I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. It’s a piece of crap, really. I believe I shot a total of three rolls of film on it before it became apparent that the shutter would jam whenever it was even slightly cold. I put it away until it got warmer and in the interim I bought my first digital, and never looked back. Now it sits on my window sill in the nostagia technology boneyard.
Anyways, point is, I’m all rev’d up and I want to do some work today, but instead I’m sitting at my desk in cubicle land.
Portfolio Review
I’m stuck at work this week without any actual work to be done. When I look at my office IM system, the only people on the job are the ones in my department, waiting for the ones who aren’t in our department to bring us some work. Which ain’t going to happen.
But I’m not letting this time go to waste (at least not all of it). Over the last couple days I have started a comprehensive portfolio review for myself. I’ve made prints of 60 or 70 of my favorite images and have begun the process of building a new and improved book. What started as an excercise to keep busy during a slow period is starting to evolve into something much more. My new list of immediate goals is a bit longer than just updating my book:
- Update the book
Obviously I want to refresh the images that I have in my hardcopy book. My online portfolio has been largely ignored lately which is think is a symptom of not having a strong hardcopy book. Nothing in the world beats looking at all of your prints at the same time – I’ve found it’s tough to get see the story as clearly clicking through a website. - Decide what my story is
This process has really made it clear to me that I have several different stories happening in my book, and I need to figure out the best way to focus my story. To do that I need to determine what story is important to me. - Get rid of the crap
This exercise has shown me that my work is really all over the place. I have no doubt that there will be times when I will have to do work that isn’t always exactly what I want to do, especially now so early in my career, but that doesn’t mean I need to promote myself with the stuff I don’t like. In the past I’ve put images in my portfolio that I thought people would want to see, but that didn’t excite me. All of those images are going bye-bye - Fill in the holes
As I dump images that aren’t up to my standards, I’m also creating holes in my book. As a staff photographer, I have tons of work that is similar, but there are gaps in a logical story and flow. My goal is to identify those holes and find projects to fill them for a more well rounded portfolio. - Create the best prints possible
One of the things that I’ve realized as I go through this process is that there are many images in my book that work well as electronic images, but need work to really shine as hardcopy prints. Since we are a design department we have a wonderful top of the line Xerox color machine, which makes prints with fairly decent accuracy. Ultimately I’ll have Adorama make the final prints for me, but I’ll be able to get pretty close to where I want to be using the Xerox. I’m going through my book and adding post-production notes to each. This is tedious, but it’s giving me an idea of what needs to be done, and hopefully when I start my final edits it will go quickly. - Find all source files
I have been terrible with file management. At work, each job is assigned a unique number so it’s been pretty easy to archive, search and locate images. My personal work is spread across any number of drives and folders. It’s a mess. One big goal of mine is to organize all of my images, which I’m hoping will be easier especially now that I’m using a Drobo at home for my files. I wish there was a way to link my Lightroom library at work with the one at home, but that doesn’t seem possible. In any case, I’m going to locate all of the source files for my selects and get them archived properly and also uploaded to my Photoshelter account.
All in all this has turned into quite a project, and I don’t think I’m going to get it completed before the end of the year, but seeing as I’m not actively lo0king for freelance work at the moment, there is no immediate need for a hardcopy book. However, this is something that is long over due and couldn’t come at a better time. I’m going to be starting the new year with a clearer idea of where I’m headed in 2009.
Additionally, I’m going to try to get back into regular blogging, if only to keep my internal monologue focused, so stay tuned.
Victoria
Sometimes I fall in love with a photo I’ve taken and can’t stop looking at it. This was an outtake from a shoot yesterday and I keep coming back to it. It’s fantastic when a standard sit n’ pose corporate portrait yields something like this:
Apple Picking
Dr. Girlfriend as Eve…
Over the weekend we went upstate a ways to go apple picking, something that Dr. Girlfriend has been begging to do for a long time. Having grown up with apple trees in my yard, it’s hard for me to understand her obsession with manual labor of this sort, but I likes to keep her happy. We piled into a massive van with six other friends and drove for a couple hours to Lawrence Farms. I didn’t pick anything, but I took my camera along hoping to capture some non-city material. Unfortunately we arrived right when the sunlight started to get ugly, photographically speaking, and left about a half hour before it started to get pretty again. It was a gorgeous day though and I had fun in spite of myself.
I spent the first part of the afternoon working with a wide angle lens since I’m determined to expand my vision to include large spaces rather than just details. Of course after a half hour of that I switched back to my long lens. Maybe I should use only a fisheye for a week to get me to expand my skills. The other thing is that I’m generally inclined to shoot portrait, so I was vaguely surprised to see when I was editing that I’d shot 90% of the day in landscape…
David Alan Harvey Workshop Party
On Friday night, Dr. Girlfriend, my friend Tim and I trekked out to Brooklyn to the loft/studio of photographer David Alan Harvey. David has a workshop called At Home with David Alan Harvey that he puts on twice a year. He describes the class like this:
i will spend “one on one” time with each of you to help you choose a photo essay which you will complete during this week….first, i will look at each of your portfolios and see where you need to “go” for your personal “next step”…daily group critiques from the previous day’s work will be followed each day with a guest editor or photographer presentation
One of my friends was a participant in the workshop, and invited me to the post-workshop show (and fiesta). After getting lost trying to get to Dumbo because of bad maps and the seemingly randomness of Brooklyn streets, we finally made it to the show. It was truly and exciting experience to be around so many working photographers. In my bubble at work, there isn’t much of a photography atmosphere, so it was great to rub shoulders with other photogs. David was a gracious and interesting host, making sure that he talked to everyone and introduced himself to all the stangers that he invited into his home. It’s pretty neat going to a studio of a photographer that has an original print of a portrait of Che Guevara that he shot! Pretty great.
The show was interesting too. It’s focus on photo-journalism and photo essays doesn’t interest me much professionally, but the photography was really interesting. There was a brief talk by Eugene Richards and another one by Bruce Gilden. If you haven’t seen it already, you have got to check out this video of Bruce working in New York:
While the Richards and Gilden parts were interesting, I found the student work to be more exciting. I’d already seen much of Gilden’s work, and while Richards’ work was beautiful, I found that much of it seemed to be pretty typical photo journalism from the 70s. This isn’t to say I don’t admire it – I think that the larger issue is just that I’ve seen so much photography that is similar, that even his stark and shocking images don’t seem that original. For example, the shots of a woman smoking crack on a bed with a crying baby lying nearby. Amazing that he’s able to get those shots, and amazing that he can build those relationships, amazing composition, everything. I guess what I’m saying is that while it’s excellent and beautiful work, it’s work that I’ve seen a lot of, from a lot of people, so I’m not moved emotionally, perhaps.
Either way, I enjoyed the freshness and rawness of the student work. I like some photographers more than others, but the work excited me and made me want to shoot, so which is why I was more impressed by it than the more established photographers.
All in all an interesting evening in Brooklyn. Got me very fired up to work more. I’ve been shooting far too little these days, and while photo essay isn’t what I’m interested in, the party was a reminder that I need to shoot more and spend more time thinking about what I’m shooting rather than jumping from project to project. I’m going to try to get more involved in the community too – I live in New York for a reason, right? I need to make the time to do things like this more often. Great stuff.
Driving
I don’t own a car and therefore don’t get to drive often. But when I do I drive million miles an hour, like a spaceship. Kidding mom, just kidding. In reality the car* I was in doesn’t do much more than 55 so I wasn’t going that fast. Pretty happy with the results though.
*The car in question is a Nissan Pulsar, which was formerly my grandmothers car, now owned by my parents. This model is freaking awesome. Because of it’s small stature and snub-rear design, I always say it looks like an escape pod from a larger car.
Lighting Workshop At SVA – Day 1
As many of you may know, I have been mainly self-taught with regards to photography. Having been taught the fundamentals in college back in the day has certainly helped my ability to learn at a quicker rate, but nearly everything that I’ve applied in a practical sense as a professional in the industry I’ve learned by reading, researching, and good old fashioned hands on, under the gun experience.
However, I’ve also been a big fan of getting other people to tell me how to do shit. It’s that simple. When people talk to me (assuming I’m interested) I usually am able to remember what they say. For some reason this doesn’t work in social situations, but generally works pretty well in a classroom situation. Which is one reason that I enrolled in a lighting workshop course at SVA. The other reason is that I want someone to show me how to use a Profoto pack without electrocuting myself.
After the first class, here are a few impressions. First, the instructor is a photographer named Clay Patrick McBride. He’s a working photographer (in fact he’ll be missing next week’s class because he’ll be off shooting Metallica somewhere) and seems to know his stuff. He’s approachable and enthusiastic and I dig his work, so I’m looking forward to the next few weeks. I’m hoping he has the chance to take a look at my work at some point, I’d love to get some feedback him.
Second, I’m probably the most experienced shooter in the class. I’m the only one shooting professionally, and from the quick introductions we all gave, I’m the only one with any lighting experience. This could be both bad and good. Bad because I have a natural tendency to show off, and could waste my time in the class regurgitating everything that I already know. It could also be good, though, because I’ve often found that when someone new explains something I already know how to do, they often give me one little tidbit or extra piece of information that I didn’t know, and clears the whole thing up for me. And, of course, Clay has tons of stuff to teach me that I don’t know – hopefully we’ll get to some of that stuff without going too fast for the rest of the people in the class. At one point he set up a beauty dish, handed me a tethered 5D with a 24-105 on it, and had me take a shot. It was beautiful. Not the most amazing shot I’d every taken, but beautiful in it’s own way. Here was a camera I use, with a lens I use, taking a near perfect shot using Clay’s light. That in itself is quite a lesson.
At a bear minimum, I’ll be working with other photogs for three hours once a week, and the resulting creative burst will be a big help. After the first class I wanted to run out and blow all my savings on renting a studio so I could start shooting famous people with Profotos and making great photos. All in good time I suppose, but man, I was all fired up. Makes me want to shoot every day.
Soon, I hope. I’m looking forward to the next class!
Canon G9 – Quick Review
Since I started shoot professionally about a year and a half ago, I pretty much stopped carrying a small format point and shoot around with me. When I felt like making photos, I’d lug out my SLR, and for the most part, it would stay in the bag anyway, so I eventually stopped doing that too. After a while I found myself being disappointed when I’d see something I wanted to shoot without having any camera on me at all, so I decided to invest in a new model point and shoot. After some research I ended up choosing the Canon G9
I should start up front by saying that I had high expectations about the G9, having read dozens of very thorough reviews by both standard camera geeks and pros who use it as a handy tool. The next thing I should say is that despite it’s popularity with pro-shooters, this is obviously not a pro-shooting tool. It is merely a small, full featured camera that is great for having in your pocket when you don’t want to drag around a large SLR.
The camera itself is amazing – it’s small, yet very dense giving it the feel of a old fashioned film camera and it’s brick styling has often been compared to old Leica range-finders (in a very roundabout fashion). Unlike the Canon G3 which I used when I first moved to New York, the G9 fits handily in a coat pocket and despite the weight is very easy to carry around. And even though it has a number of exterior knobs and buttons I found that they didn’t protrude enough to get get caught when taking the camera in and out of pockets. Additionally, unlike the earlier model I had, the G9 has a proper neck strap, as opposed to a wrist strap and can be easily hung from the neck while shooting.
As for using the camera itself, it should be noted that knowledge of how a camera works is key – this isn’t a simple to use point and shoot: to get the most out of the camera, you need to know about shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings. One of the most lauded features of this camera is the fact that the ISO can be changed manually via a knob on top of the body (although it could be argued that the camera’s poor performance at higher ISOs makes this point moot).
The interface is excellent, and the scroll wheel on the back allows for easy changes when in manual modes and once you learn the ins and outs of what everything does, it’s fairly fast and easy to change your settings. I love the onscreen options on the big LCD, including a live histogram, which comes in handy when trying to capture the correct exposure. Additionally, the startup speed is excellent on the camera which makes it easy to power up and start shooting. Beware though, that the autofocus is slow and the shutterlag is very long, so if you’re trying to shoot action, be ready well in advance.
Overall the image quality is decent for a point and shoot, and I imagine that I’ll be getting better at it once I learn more how to tweak the settings for this particular model. The images are very noisy even in lots of light at ISO 400, although to be fair I’ve been spoiled by near-flawless images on my high end SLRs. As you can see from my samples, I’ll be depending on the RAW mode to allow me to manipulate images, and I think that I will be primarily using my G9 for black and white street photography – the noise turns into a nice, gentle grain when converted to grayscale. Which is completely fine for me.
When I was out shooting over the weekend, I found myself being going back to a more loose style when I was just a hobbyist and not a “professional.” With nothing on the line but having fun and making good photography, I had a great time. Plus, it’s much more important to focus and frame your images when using a small format camera since you don’t have the latitude for cropping etc. While the G9 isn’t going to replace an SLR obviously, I’m pleased to finally have a small format camera that I can have with me most of the time, so when I get the bug to shoot I’ll always be prepared for something, anways.
Year In Review
2007 has been the first full year that I’ve been shooting professionally as a staff photographer. One of the things I am learning about the photography business is that the number of days you spend shooting is a pretty good yardstick about how well you are progressing. One of the bloggers that I read daily was pleased with 150 days for the year, for example. I decided to take a look back and tally up how I did this year. It was dismal by comparison, a mere 50 days. Which means that I spent the other 180-190 working days of the year doing design work.
Now to be fair, I am only including editorial and portrait shoots in that 50 day tally. I do headshots nearly every day of the week when I’m in the office, but those are along the lines of Olan Mills – same setup, nearly point and shoot at this point. They are a big money-maker for my department but there is zero creativity involved. The one thing that has been a benefit of the hundreds of headshots I’ve done this year is that it has made me very comfortable with strangers, and I’ve gained the ability to put strangers at ease quickly. I generally have each person for less than five minutes, so it’s vital that I can get them to relax enough so I can get a decent expression or capture something other than the proverbial say cheese smile.
I have traveled a good deal this year on photoshoots: Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Columbus, Wilmington, Lyndhurst and Washington DC, with the majority of my shoots have been right here in New York city. My Lightroom library consists of close to 14,000 individual shots. My work has appeared in three issues of Leaders magazine, Fortune, Diversity, Inc., and on the cover of Careers and the DisAbled magazine. Additionally my work has appeared in national advertising for my firm, as well as in a variety of other publications that my firm produces. All in all, I’d say that for my first year, I’ve had some great exposure.
The challenge for the upcoming year will be to exceed the number of days shooting, and to build on what I think is now a solid corporate-photography base. This year I’ve learned how to organize a photo shoot on the road, how to interact with the subjects, and more importantly my technical knowledge has increased dramatically. I am now confident that going into just about any situation I will be able to get the shot.
The trick, moving forward, will be to move beyond “getting the shot” and into getting the great shot. My relative inexperience has made me shoot very conservatively, especially when I’m on the road and the pressure is higher. I need to start taking some risks and push my creativity farther.
At some point over the next year I need to make some choices as well. My staff position is secure, and I like the work. However, I’m not sure that this position will afford me the ability to shoot more in the next year than I did this year, and honestly, corporate isn’t likely to get more exciting. However, corporate is lucrative – if I was shooting for myself and not on staff. So yeah, now that my toe is in I’ll need to think about whether or not to take the plunge.
Other things I’d like to do this year: Nail down a Strobist-style, easy-to-travel-with lighting kit. My shoot in Wilmington before Christmas was a nightmare because I had to drag monolights on the train and then find outlets in the 100 year old building I was shooting in – If I’d had a reliable speedlight set-up I would have been a much happier camper. I put together a kit on the cheap back in February with some Vivitars and slave triggers for a shoot in DC, but it was a disaster. The slave triggers didn’t work, and I was left shooting with my single 580EX. If I had to do that same shoot today I’d probably pull it off no sweat, but back then I was in the weeds. I pulled it off, but have been scared to try that again. I need to buckle down, get some experience using speedlights and save my back a lot of extra strain.
Finally, I want to do more personal shooting. It’s disappointing how little personal shooting I’ve done, mainly due to my hectic schedule. I need to find a way to be shooting daily without investing in more technology. For most of the year I carried my 30D with me everywhere, but it never leaves my bag. Mainly because I’ve been looking for opportunities to shoot that don’t conflict with what I’m doing otherwise. I need to make a point of going out to shoot, rather than trying to make something of a social or work situation. I need to start acting on some ideas, rather than bitching about not having any time. I think part of the problem is that I’ve done the walk around, on the street photography. What interests me is portrait and editorial work, and it’s not so easy to the kind of shots I want without having people to shoot. A note to all my friends: be prepared, I’m going to start asking for volunteers for my personal work.
All in all, a good year though. I’ve started a new career path and launched a business, both of which are very exciting. Here’s looking ahead to a great 2008. Happy New Year everyone!
Large Format
Last year we hired several models for a photo shoot for a recruiting campaign at my firm. It was the usual “united colors of megacorp” model search, with all races accounted for (or at least implied). You got your white male, white female, Hispanic male, Hispanic female, African American male, African American female…and so on. There is something inherently creepy about choosing models. It goes beyond who is hot and who is not, especially for corporate. You have to make distinctions between people who are too good looking, too sexy, or too…whatever…to be accountants and boring white collar workers. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s creepy to have to cut someone because their nose doesn’t look right while your going through model cards sitting on your ass in an office munching on cheetos.
The pool of models in New York is not as large as you’d think, and it constantly amazes me when I see models that I’ve hired in ads around the city. It happens more often that you’d expect. One guy I saw in a Bud Light ad, another one in a Total Vision Care catalog. Recently one of the women I saw modeled for one of the local colleges and was featured on a subway billboard.
In Times Square across from my building, Target has bought all of the advertising on one central building between Seventh Ave and Broadway. For the last few years they have put up massive billboards, probably at least ten or twelve in all that completely surround the building, and each probably six or seven stories high. Every day when I come out of my building I see these billboards and it wasn’t until today that I realized that one of the giant models on the giant billboard was one of the models that I hired last year.
I guess I’m still at the stage where that sort of thing impresses me – ooo I hired that same guy that someone else hired for something way cooler than what I did. Maybe one day one of my photos will be up on a billboard like that…
Union Square Protest
When I got downtown last night there was a large gathering of people protesting the brutal police shooting death of Sean Bell in November. The protesters were holding a life-size paper cutout of police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, on which appeared to be illustrated bullet wound for each police murder on Kelly’s watch. I captured this rather surreal photo of one of the protesters underneath the cutout, and with just the feet in the shot it almost looks like a real set of feet dangling above her head…
