Monday, December 26, 2011

My busiest month yet!


December has been super busy. I am still grateful for my cheese client who has continued to need photography despite the continuing worldwide recession. Their Cello brand is working on a new website and requires many images for support. We have been shooting new product shots and other supporting objects, but the real fun is the many recipes that need to be shot. The team included the client Melissa, the food stylist Marie Haycox, and me. The three of us make a terrific team. Melissa brought all of the props and art directed the shots, Marie made each of the recipes look awesome, so all I had to do was light and focus each different shot. I believe that I am done for 2011 but have already been booked to shoot more in 2012. We are even going to shoot video (a first paid video shoot) so I've got an editor ready to go. Maybe things are beginning to turn around....

Friday, July 29, 2011

Yum

I am very grateful for the cheese folk that I have been shooting for this year. So far they have been by far my best client. Not only do I get to create pretty images but I also have lots of cheese to share with friends and relatives. This is all working out to be tons of fun. It's a yummy win win!

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Bringing the past around again


Back in the mid 1970's, as I was trying to leverage my feeble relationship with Eileen Ford into a fashion photographer's career, I had a style that involved underexposing film by over 3 stops and then pushing the processing the same amount. I did this with 3000 ASA (ISO) police recording film for black & white, and Ectachrome 200 for color. The resulting film was so contrasty that I had to shoot with a #4 Tiffen fog filter. The result was an image that was basically of normal contrast but super chunky grainy with puffed out highlights. I have fashion and beauty images still from that era. My engagement to Barb (we are still together) made me end pursuing my career in fashion (since I had never seen a faithful fashion photographer) but now, over 30 years later I am trying to replicate that style digitally. I'll keep posting them as a find some that I like.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Pretty shots are more fun


I picked up the product for this shoot while on location for another client. That's exciting! My client/friend Nick had this to shoot and gave me an Italian booklet of the kind of images he wanted. The Italian images were soft and beautiful: just the kind that I love to shoot so I used a Nikon D700 with a 55mm macro lens almost wide open. The lighting was an optical spot from the back right and then just a large overhead light to fill in the shadows. That's it. I like it a lot. Like I said before, pretty shots are just more fun!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Photoshop to the rescue

As a current full-time commercial photographer and an adjunct university photography professor, I always tell my students that Adobe Photoshop is a super important part of our photo arsenal. This recent image is an example. I was hired to shoot a salad for a cheese client. I was directed to use multi-colored lettuce, as well as tomatoes, croutons and oh-yes cheese.
I shot two different examples and sent them to my client to pass on for approval. Low and behold, the client says they are looking for an all green salad because the red lettuce looks like "olives". Well, I set everything up again and shot 2 more salads, this time with all green lettuce. Just to see if I could, I also selected the red lettuce in one of the first shots and changed them to green. Now the client had three choices and guess what? They chose the retouched salad. Like I said, Photoshop to the rescue!

Monday, February 28, 2011

Been busy


Life isn't as busy as it was maybe three years ago but this year so far has been far busier than last year. I spent 2 full days shooting cheese for
Arthur Schuman. Beyond that I have been retouching others images for my clients. Morgan Design has kept me busy at night retouching images from stock companies. I strip parts, add them to others and end up with what Clint (my client) wants. He sends me an InDesign file with the parts all together and notes as to what he wants. I can just export the .indd file as a pdf and add it as a layer to my .psd files. It all makes things go very quickly. I just strip things, clean them up, assemble them and send them out via ftp. It has kept me pretty busy and nicely filled in spaces between my own shoots. It's so important to know Photoshop. It helps to keep everything busy and earning money. There you go. It's still nothing but fun!