Minneapolis
It’s been a busy week, and today was the first day back in the office. My last assignment before the long weekend was in Minneapolis, and after some trials and a frightening run in with a corrupt flash card, I’m back. Overall I feel pretty good about the shoots thus far and now I’m getting keyed up for a grueling few weeks of almost non-stop shoots. It’s going to be intense, but I’m liking the work. I’m evening getting some variety in there, so more to come.
In the meantime, here is a shot from the nearly lost corrupt flash card of Minneapolis in the morning…kinda has a sci-fi feel, no?
Chicago
I am in Chicago for a shoot, then off to Minneapolis this afternoon for another shoot. It’s hectic and I’m tired of traveling alone – the excitement of traveling for photography has worn off. I miss Dr. Girlfriend and I’m ready to come home. The work itself is still exciting. I even got up early this morning to get some exterior shots of the Willis Tower (formally the Sears tower) as part of the project. I really like this one…
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.
Clay Patrick McBride on Bravo
I don’t watch much regular TV these days. My couch time is spent watching streaming netflix or hulu, so when I watched Bravo’s Make Me A Supermodel last night, I was shocked back into the world of commercials. I was watching because a friend of mine who I met teaching my lighting class at SVA last summer, Clay Patrick McBride was the photog for last night’s episode. It was kick ass (as it always is) to see someone you know on TV, and it was even more exciting because Clay was shooting on a kick ass set which included all kinds of kick ass pyrotechnics. Makes me jealous that most of my “large production” shoots are in offices with accountants.
Other than the photography part the show itself was pretty lame. Since the final four were three guys and a girl I figured they’d leave the girl in for balance, but then by the end it occurred to me that the demographic is probably mostly women, so having three men for finalists makes more sense. But the way that they mold this “reality” is ridiculous. For example they dressed the girl who was kicked off in the most unflattering dress I have ever seen, and then the designer (who is also judge) complained about how she looked in it.
Anyway, nice job Clay, nice to see you get some good exposure!
Photos ©Bravo
Florida
The best thing about Florida is the feeling of being at a resort while at the same time being surrounded by the inescapable feeling that things are just not right. The smoke belching factory on the beach, for example…
Quiet
Yeah, yeah, I know, I haven’t posted anything forever and ever. The fact is, sadly, that I’ve not been doing anything interesting. I’m not shooting nearly enough these days and my time has been sucked up by moving, bachelor parties, weddings, guests and a myriad of other activities. And even worse, things have been slow at work, and I’ve been doing a lot more design work again, and a lot less photography work. Which sucks. Hopefully things will pick up again soon, and I have a couple of personal projects that I’m going to try to get started on once I get back from Florida this weekend (another wedding).
In the meantime, I thought I’d share a tearsheet – I shot the cover for a new alumni magazine Connect, which I thought turned out really well:
Portfolio Site and Update
On Friday I went to a friend’s gallery opening which was amazing and inspiring and got me all fired up to stop k’vetching about my lack of work and actually start doing some work. It didn’t really hit me when I handed my business card to someone that I was a bit embarassed by my website which they’d no doubt go to check out. I’ve been working on a hardcopy portfolio lately and haven’t devoted any time to the website. Which is silly because I’m not actively looking for a job or for freelance work, so who am I planning on showing the hardcopy portfolio to anyway?
So I sat down on Saturday and took a long hard look at my site, and didn’t like what I saw. A few of the things that stood out for me were the following:
- I wasn’t happy with lots of the images that were on the site because many of the images were old, and since I’ve only been at this for a couple years, the old work is pretty bad. I’m sure I’ll say that about the work I’m doing now when I review it again in a few years, but there you go.
- I haven’t updated new work in a very long time
- Lots of the non-professional work, meaning various levels of personal work didn’t have a space on the site
- The design was fussy and didn’t display the work in a flattering manner.
So I spent the weekend doing a few things:
- I removed the work I didn’t like
- I added work that I do like
- I added a section called Stories as a venue for all the random work I’d like to share that doesn’t fall into my regular commercial photography portfolio. I should note here that my section called Stories is not meant emulate the great stories by Jonathan Saunders. His stuff is great, you should check it out.
- I streamlined the design.
Now that’s done I can get on with making more photography. So without any further yammering on, go check out my updated photo site. Feedback welcome!
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
Highball Glass
I assume I will tire of the Camera Bag filters sooner or later but for now I’m loving them.
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.
Titles
How does everyone feel about titles? When I was in college I would tend to make up romantic, moody, and cryptic (read idiotic and random) titles for my photography. For example titles like “Existential wasteland” and “Thought unfurled” and the ever popular “untitled” followed by a random number – more than four to show it’s part of a series but under 20 to show that I’m choosy. All of these titles could have been applied to a ubiquitous image of a deserted swing set on a rainy day or some other pretentious and predictable art photograph. I should dig out some of those college images for a lark.
Having grown out of that phase I tend to employ fairly descriptive titles or obviously witty or ironic titles on occasion. Perhaps this is a result of my career being focused on commerical photography versus the fine art aspect of the medium.
What are you doing with your image titles these days?
Corporate Event Photography
One of the aspects of my job is to shoot events. It’s one of the things that I am least good at, and although when I look at my work over the years it’s clear that I’m improving, at the end I feel unsatisfied. I am never 100% happy with the work I produce at these things, and I always feel like I should be doing better. Which is to say that I think more seasoned event photographers would do better than me.
Now, a note on that last statement. I am not talking about wedding photography when I say events. I’m talking about corporate event photography. And while I risk starting a flame war here, I would be willing to say that there are far more competent wedding photographers than there are competent corporate event photographers. When I try to locate examples and tips and advice about event photography, it is almost always about weddings, which is an entirely different animal to your basic corporate event.
Let me break this down a bit. At a wedding, people expect, if not beg, to have their photo taken. There is an understanding that having your photo taken at a wedding is part of the gift you are giving the bride and groom to remember their day, and that to avoid the camera would be depriving them of their happy memories. The photog usually is able to use flash, have an assistant, and have a dedicated period of time for photography (for at least the wedding party). And for the guests there is usually tons of booze making it easy to forget about the photographer.
At a corporate event things are very different. First, there isn’t any booze, at least during the day sessions. And if there is booze at the cocktail hours and dinners, they don’t want anyone having their picture taken while they’re drinking, so you have to get creative to crop out wine glasses etc. But most of all, people don’t really want to have their photos taken at corporate events. They are there to work, and not to have fun. Sometimes they fake having fun if they need to for their jobs, but they don’t want photographic evidence of it.
So here’s the problem that I face. I walk into the room usually with a slightly hostile crowd who doesn’t want their photo taken in the first place. Furthermore, they are generally sitting listening to a lecture, or taking notes, or sleeping. Hard to get exciting shots under those circumstances. There isn’t time for me to build up a rapport, or to be there passively for so long that they get used to me. I have a short period of time to build a library of images for the client, so I can’t mess around. And then there is the problem of how to get the types of shots that I want from a technical standpoint.
What kind of shots do I want? I want candid expressions, people interacting. I want shots of people who have forgotten that they are on camera and are reacting to the event in a natural way. These events usually take place in large hotel ball rooms which generally don’t have windows, and do have very high ceilings. For me, this makes lighting a particularly tough challenge.
Option one is to use on-camera flash. This is particularly difficult for a number of reasons. First, your standard speedlight, although powerful, is very small in comparison to the size of the room. In order for me to get the quality of light I am looking for, I have to be very close to my subjects. However, this usually isn’t possible because hotels generally pack tables so close together for these events that it is very difficult to navigate more than the edges of the room, and there would be large portions of the room that my flash won’t reach. Not to mention the fact that I’d really be getting into people’s faces, which wouldn’t get me the shots that I want. And the constant flashes would be a distraction to the people at the conference.
Off camera flash? The only way I could think of doing this would be to set up a series of fill strobes to raise the ambient light in the whole room, while at the same time being hidden enough so that I can shoot from any angle. But then I’m faced with the same problem of the lights causing a distraction.
Last week I photographed a tax event for college students that my company sponsored. 100+ students listening to lectures and doing team-building activities. After a few stuttering tries to capture the event using my on-camera strobe, I put it away for the rest of the event and decided to shoot the whole event using available light, long exposures, and high ISOs. I shot most of the event using my new 70-200 with image stablization and I couldn’t be happier with the that! Having been used to the non-stablilzed 70-200 I felt like a zen master, snapping crystal clear shots at 200mm at 50/second, handheld. This may not be that exciting for some people, but for someone without super-steady hands this was a real breakthrough for me.
As you can see, even though I’m using the high ISO, I was able to get some great detail (click on the image to see the full sized sample on Flickr). For the pixel peepers, sure, when blown up these images are a bit grainy. You won’t be seeing them on giant billboards or even large posters any time soon but the quality is more than enough for my client and what they were looking for. I shot all of these images with available light on a Canon 5D on or around 800-1000 ISO.
So what happens if the client does need better quality? What if they needed to use these images larger? That’s when I’d start to sweat, and would probably tell the client that it wasn’t something I could do. One part of me is like, anything more than I was delivered is asking too much and I shouldn’t worry about it. But the other part of me wants to be able to solve the problem. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else has any ideas I could try when photographing these kinds of events. Again, the challenges to be over-come are:
- Large, windowless hotel ballrooms with overall low ambient light
- Inabilitiy to get close to the subjects due to layout of the room and/or semi-hostile attitude towards the photog
- Flash photography could distract from the event
Mobile Fotos App for the iPhone
As I mentioned last week, I’ve been utilizing my iPhone a bit more lately for scouting, idea capture and in general, just another way to boost my creativity a bit. One of the challenges that I’ve faced with the iPhone, however, is how to get my photos off the phone and onto my computer in a reasonable fashion. The problem lies in the fact that I sync my iPhone to my home computer (a Mac) and spend most of my day working on a PC at work. I don’t want to connect my phone to my work computer, so this means that if I snap a photo on my iPhone during the day, I can’t really access it to post on my blog or on Flickr unless I email it to myself, wait for my email sever to hiccup a few times, and finally get it through.
So I’ve been looking for an app that will easily and reliably allow me to upload photos from my iPhone to Flickr. Surprisingly, Yahoo doesn’t have a native app for this. You would think that they would at this point, but they don’t. So after some research through forums and the iTunes store, I narrowed my decision to two apps: AirMe and Mobile Fotos. Both allow you to take photos on your iPhone and post them to Flickr directly from the app.
I tried out AirMe first because it is a free application and I’d read good things about it. Almost immediately I came across some obvious problems. First, with AirMe you can only post photos that you take using the AirMe camera interface, which is poorly designed and covers way more of the screen (in this case, your viewfinder) which makes composing more difficult. You can’t post photos from your camera roll, only from the AirMe camera interface.
The first time I tried to upload the photos, it worked great, and I was prepared to deal with the other problems, because the price was right. After my third upload, however, the app started to crash. I’d take the photo, would choose “Use Photo” and then watch as the app cranked for a minute, then crashed. This resulted in losing the photo. On one particular occasion I was really excited about a shot I’d pulled off, only to lose it seconds later when AirMe crashed. It ended up being a waste of time and effort.
So I ponied up the $1.99 for Mobile Fotos and so far everything has been golden. I can upload directly to Flickr, I can add title, description, tags, create or add to existing sets, and set privacy levels for my images, and best of all I can use the regular iPhone camera and pull images from my Camera Roll. So far I’ve uploaded images without trouble using the Edge network as well as when connected to WiFi. Mobile Fotos also has a great interface for browsing your photostream on Flickr which caches thumbnails to make subsequent viewings go faster.
I’ve only been using Mobile Fotos for a day or so, but so far it’s been a great compliment to my iPhone.
Megan at the Races
Here’s a quick shot from October that I finally have gotten around to doing the post-production on. This was taken at a steeplechase race in Virginia. Incidentally I picked the overall winner for the cup race that day – a horse called Bubble Economy. Unfortunately lots of other people bet on that horse as well so my one dollar bet only paid out $4. Still, not a bad return.
Lately I’ve been trying to grab concept and location shots on my iPhone when I don’t have my SLR, and I’ll try to share more of these. In general I’ve been grabbing shots that capture a mood, or feeling that I’d like to recreate in a more professional format at some point later. I had been hoping to do this with my G9, but have found that I’ve been having much more luck with the iPhone. Building a library of these concept or mood shots is on my list of things that I’m trying out for the new year as a foundation for upcoming personal projects.
With a little tweaking to contrast and saturation you can make the iPhone camera do some neat stuff. Once again, while gear is fun, it isn’t always necessary to have the best camera to get interesting shots.
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.