December 29th, 2009
The year that was… looking back it’s a blur. There were lots of portraits I’m pretty sure, a bit of travel, some strange little bits I shot for myself, several compelling stories and failed experiments, some work on personal projects, and yeah a bunch of portraits, of athletes and authors, executives and educators, scientists and seniors, divas and the indebted.
Last year I spent a lot of time thinking and looking at scale and felt very strongly that I wanted to incorporate a more removed, grander, almost reverant/classical perspective to serve as a counter point to my portraiture. This year my portfolio has several pieces that definitely are moving in that direction, either in landscape or numbers, and it’s been a really nice challenge and motivation.
In portraiture this year I think that I found a rhythm and method to my lighting style, though that was completely left behind or stripped back when it didn’t fit a particular subject. In some ways I was going at two opposite directions, using a more direct approach with a lot less that had “fingerprints” all over it, and then also building up a whole lot more to create some sort of unmasked ideal. God love my subjects this year who all endured 30-50% more set-ups than I might have insisted upon in years past… I definitely threw more spaghetti/ideas at the wall, which will continue and expand in 2010.
Here then are my (released) favorites, several of which you may have seen:
Posted in Action, Creativity, Freelancing, Portraits, Promotion, Travel | 1 Comment
December 27th, 2009
Belated happy holidays to you and yours and early returns on a fantastic new year to us all!
It’s hard for me to imagine a bigger and better year than 2009 — one in which I married the woman of my dreams, traveled to see some amazing places, became an uncle, moved to New York City (though still kept my base in Miami as well), turned 30, and continued to work with new and old clients on some very interesting, challenging, and rewarding jobs. 2009 was a great and full year.
What lies ahead in 2010 is the big question… personally I’m both super excited and a little scared. There are so many things to learn and absorb, so many areas to grow in photography, and so many risks out there as the commercial and editorial markets continue to hobble along in a thick fog. Those of us who can maneuver into the right position and take advantage of the many opportunities that will surely surface as our clients begin to truly switch gears will certainly be rewarded. Hopefully I can be smart and open enough in 2010 to treat this uncertain time as my biggest chance…
Whatever happens in the new year I’ll be around to talk about it. Thanks for listening this year and I hope your holiday season was very happy and safe. Best to you all!
Posted in Creativity, Freelancing | No Comments
December 9th, 2009
Well if there wasn’t for bad luck we wouldn’t have any luck at all… or something like that. I was pretty busy in November for Business Week’s SmallBiz magazine shooting for freelance photo editor Jane Clark (rumor has it she has now moved on to Smart Money). Just a week after I rushed in my final files for the new Dec/Jan issue seen above and below new owners Bloomberg shut the door on SmallBiz; thankfully no staff was fired.
First up I shot a package on corporate diversity in the NYC area, visiting the fine folks at Neil Cerbone Associates and Double Platinum ad agency, both gay-owned businesses certified by the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Despite taking place in boring offices we managed to find some fun and weird elements to incorporate into each shoot and the subjects were a great pleasure to work with. And fair warning out there: if I find a giant roll of packing bubbles I’m going to use it!
After the success of the first two shoots I was called back to shoot the cover for the issue down in FL on a story about business financing during the credit crunch caused by the meltdown. Honestly I’m really upset with the pre-press/toning for this cover (my final file is above right) which is completely off from what I shot and delivered (the image of Neil Cerbone got abused as well), but c’est la vie.
The cover feature was for a story that had already been shot once, but they now wanted a different look. Unlike the vast majority of my work, the editors and art director had a very clear idea of what they wanted (background, props, etc) so I tried to make a mark on the details & lighting. We still managed a few different ideas and had fun, but it was a crazy shoot because the whole thing took place inside a refrigerated room at Field of Flowers florist in Davie, FL. That’s right, cover shoot inside a flower freezer… it was cold.
Big thanks to the subjects and my buddy Matt who assisted me for their energy and endurance. Here are a couple more of the Flipse family that I liked:
Posted in Freelancing, New Work, Portraits, Promotion | 1 Comment
December 3rd, 2009
Hopefully by now you all have watched the new demos of Magazine 3.0’s (?) that have been released lately (Wired, Sports Illustrated). Sigh. Even if you ignore the simple fact that they have been made for a platform that has not even been announced yet (have we ever seen so many major media companies tying their fates to Apple before? Because lets face it, only Apple is capable of delivering a game-changing new platform right now) we still have a few pretty big problems with the Next generation. First of all, there is very little next to be found.
This is a 100,000 word discussion and I just don’t have the energy for all of that. So let me break it down in notepad form on what is keeping me up at night this week.
- More shocking than how depressing that Wired video is (WTF is going on with the audio, are all magazines going to be read in techno clubs in the future?!), is that the concept is basically Advanced-PDF. Hold the phone… Wired is one of the best designed, most thoughtful magazines being published today, so how could their new product look like it was built on the following budget: 24 pizzas, 2 cases of Red Bull, 1 overtime weekend with 4 code monkeys and a bored assistant art director?
- Before I saw the Sports Illustrated video (which I was impressed by), I first saw this link from TechCrunch… and in seeing just that picture of the SI page (looked a lot like looking up micro film in the public library, and even the page looked yellowed in the image as if it was really old) I almost lost my shit. Oh my god, oh my god, we are all doomed…
- “Magazines are fucked, still” has been the prevailing comments from the Tech blogs I’ve seen in the past 24 hours… heavy use of sarcasm and “even if this didn’t suck” no one is going to pay for it, with a bunch of “content should be free” sort of bullshit as well. Guess what assholes, content is not going to be free and all of the little filter/bottom feeders out there from HuffPost on down are going to go into their own little tailspin as soon as the big media corporations put up pay walls to nearly all of their incredibly expensive content. So now you can’t just link and comment anymore… uh, oh, looks who’s fucked now.
- Tablets aren’t coming out in the next 6 months, and we’ll probably be lucky to be waking up next to one covered in drool this time next year. But obviously with this sort of support and groundswell they are coming.
- Tablets are going to be expensive and the only one making any money at all on them at all in the next year is probably going to be the hardware manufacturers.
- I’m really excited for The New York Times to put up a pay wall… like today. I can’t wait to pay them for their incredibly well executed content. I’m so excited that I just bought a New Yorker digital-only subscription. A lot of us are… stop giving it away and allowing everyone else to build sites that just loot those links and rake in ad revenue.
- If this Sports Illustrated mock-up is even 40% as hungry as the final release, the need for imagery, still and moving, is going up at Time Inc maybe 500% or more. This is why anyone signing a contract that gives away all digital rights for their work right now is going to be in huge trouble.
- The only thing I liked about the Wired demo was that it looked like you could actually read the text, which is one of the worst things about reading on the internet now. Please build in a Kindle-like integrated text-only mode so that those few of us who actually read anymore can do so without ruining their vision.
- Catharine P. Taylor wrote in her bnet “piece” this morning about the SI video that “it’s too late” for magazines… that’s bullshit. Catharine, you and every person like you, including me, and hundreds of millions of people around the world today, even more than yesterday or 5 years ago or 50 years ago wants to be informed, wants information, wants media. They want it on their own terms and they don’t want publishing to act like they are a bunch of moronic idiots who only want Hollywood gossip, a casserole recipe, and the jumble — but they want it.
- And lastly I just want to remind all of the scholars out there delivering these sermons on the future of media and blah blah blah blah that you can’t begin the story from a flat, even plane. The story begins in hell, with buildings on fire and people straight-up scared. And from that place the bullshitting about social media has to be understood because we aren’t in fairy-land and bloggers aren’t necessarily adding anything at all to the conversation, or at the very least are rarely “experts.” It’s not about crafting a democracy of information… it’s about creating a better, more engaging, and more informative experience that runs on CONTENT.
Posted in Freelancing, Media, Writing | No Comments
December 2nd, 2009
I’m really excited to announce my participation in Collect-dot-Give, a new online photography gallery launching today that is devoted to raising money for charity. Collect.Give was created by my buddy and talented photographer Kevin Miyazaki, who very quickly took a great idea and turned it into a reality over the holiday break. The inaugural group of photographers includes some big names that I hope you’ll be excited to support: Susana Raab, Dalton Rooney, Emily Shur, Allison V. Smith, Kevin, and myself.
For the project I’ve creating a brand new edition of 40 archival 8×10 prints of a new image that I shared on the blog not long ago which I’m calling “World’s Largest Rocket, Kennedy Space Center, 2009.” 100% of the money from print sales will go directly to my charity, Texas Equusearch, which some of you will remember me writing about as well… Texas Equusearch is a non-profit, civilian search and rescue team dedicated to searching for missing persons around the U.S. It’s an important cause that I hope some of you will choose to help support.
So go check out Collect.Give and show your love. Personally speaking I have so much to be thankful for and it’s awesome to have opportunities to give back even in a small way. For $40 why not pick a gift for someone this holiday season and do some good at the same time. And if someone really wants a much larger version of the NASA print just get in touch and we can give back even a bit more.
Posted in Gallery | No Comments
