Bill Truran Productions!

In the bathroom with Whitney Houston

2012-02-13T13:51:00.003-05:00

I got to photography Whitney Houston along with Bebe & Cece Winans at a NJ Nets basketball game back in the early '90's for a radio station. She was there along with her mom Cissy and a girlfriend. It was a trip to listen to all four (2 Winans & 2 Houstons) singing just for fun in the Net's bathroom before the show. Commercial photography takes you places you would never imagine...

One Pretty Dodge

2012-02-08T18:11:00.001-05:00

You have to admit, this is one beautiful car. I'm trying to loosen up my car photography. I want the images to look great, but real. I am best known for food and fashion but when the job to shoot a car comes in, I want to be ready and keeping up to date is important. I can still shoot cars in a studio with perfect highlights, but I am enjoying this looser style.

Breakfast

2012-01-13T16:15:00.001-05:00

This was breakfast last Wednesday. I poured myself some Post Honey Bunches of Oats and when I saw the morning sunlight streak across the bowl, I could't resist grabbing my camera. By the way, the cereal was yummy!

Too busy to post

2011-11-17T12:33:00.001-05:00

I've been busy (thankfully) lately. I especially appreciate this during this current recession (my third since opening my studio). This job was a lot of fun. I spent three days shooting in a high security storage facility in NYC's upper east side. This job involved shooting still-lifes of many different antiques that were going to auction. These were for the catalog. I shot a Chagall pastel as well as other works of art, furniture and many beautiful things. The room I set up in was small so I had to get creative with the light. I even lit the art work with my modeling lights (tungsten) because I couldn't get the strobes low enough.
Hey, it's money with a camera and in the end it was all fun.

more rock 'n roll

2011-10-03T12:17:00.001-04:00

As a photographer I love teaching because it keeps me connected to kids. I have 2 of my own and it even helps me communicate with them. To that end I also love to help out the screaming rock bands. This was a shoot for their Think Quick clothing line. They were tons of fun. Just like it should be...

Wolves vs Lions

2011-07-29T22:07:00.001-04:00

Okay, I'm old. But I love hanging (for limited amounts of time) around with the bands that Wolves vs Lions designs shirts for. This band is Ender plus there were some shots of friends of the company. The shoot was fun and we got 12 GB of great shots. Remember: if it's not fun, it's not worth doing......

a favorite

2011-06-06T21:38:00.007-04:00

I am known mostly as a food photographer by my clients although I have been hired to shoot fashion, portraits and products as well in the last year or so. This image was taken in Spain while my wife Barb and I sat in an alcove next to a hallway in the hotel lobby. I was playing with my camera when I happened to notice a bride and groom almost passing before us. It strikes me as funny that the people sitting in the alcove had no idea that this was one couple's most important day. I love this image because it is one of those bazaar moments in time. It could have been capturred in the 40's.

Have I mentioned that it's all about light?

2011-05-26T14:07:00.007-04:00

I've said it before and I really believe it. Commercial Photography is always about light. If you can master the control of light you can shoot anything. My other blog is primarily food because I am known as a food photographer but you can't make a living in this economy shooting just one thing. That is why I say it's all about the light and if you can light, you can shoot anything. It just adds to the fun. These images of jewelry were part of a 3 day booking. I shot with two other photographers and just had FUN! What could be better than that?

It's only Rock 'n Roll but I like it...

2011-04-03T17:22:00.004-04:00

I did two shots this time for the Wolves vs Lions T-Shirt company. This is the band Sirens who use band shirts designed by the Wolves vs Lions folk. Here they are wearing Wolves vs Lions' own designs. We shot this image in the woods and a second in a garage while they broke up computer equipment (I'm not sure why). I got punched in the eye a few weeks ago as I shot this band by a whirling idiot. At least I was able to keep the camera safe. If you live anywhere near northern NJ, go see this band. They drive hard and I like it. Just watch out for the "dancers".

Commercial Photographers Can Light Anything

2011-03-07T11:02:00.003-05:00

Jewelry photography like this takes a special lighting set up. It also takes some practice with hot glue and a BBQ igniter. However, when you are a true commercial photographer (commercial photographers differ from amateurs in that they will work when sick) the learning curve is not steep and you can be up and running in no time at all. What I do is look at my subject, imagine how I believe it should look and then move lights around until what I see matches my mind's picture. Keep this in mind: It can be a human, an animal or even jewelry it all needs a purposeful light to be shot.

Photo retoching

2011-02-28T15:27:00.006-05:00

I just finished replacing backgrounds on 101 portraits for many Nestle Power Point presentations. I recognized many as those I have shot but some had trees and buildings behind so I assume they were scanned from prints. The one trouble I had was that they were all tiny 72dpi jpgs. I used Photoshop CS5's quick select tool and refine selection brush. That and an identical gradient made all of the power point images look the same.

I tell my studio lighting students that in 2011 each and every photographer has to know Photoshop so that they can pre-vision a shot and know how Photoshop can help them. I used to shoot Oreo's in ice cream. Oreos demand a certain light and ice cream needs something different, By knowing that one can light the ice cream beautifully and shoot first, then replace the lights for the Oreo and shoot secondly you can have both lit perfectly and put together in one final shot. Remember; you get paid if you light and shoot or retouch. Most of my earning this February has been from retouching. Thank God. Thank Adobe.

Panoramas

2011-02-09T12:52:00.007-05:00

This job was nothing but fun. Akiva and I went into NYC yesterday to a Zales jewelry store. It was there that I shot some panoramas of the interior. The image above shows panoramas made in Photoshop. One was shot with a 20mm manual lens on my Nikon D700, the other was shot with a 28-75 AF zoom set to 28mm. There are programs that can take these images and turn them into very cool VR Panoramas for the web. It's all fun and after overlapping the images around 50% as I shot, Photoshop took over and did most of the rest. Here is a hint if anyone wants to try this: Each layer has a mask attached. If a layer is off slightly, unlink the mask and carefully transform the layer into place. Then re-link the mask. That seemed to work perfectly.

Snowboarding with the Nikon D700

2010-12-30T13:00:00.005-05:00

My son William has a T-shirt business called Wolves VS Lions. It seems to be doing well.

As I do photography for his company, I am stretched beyond what the studio work I normally do and it helps to broaden my experience and test Nikon's D700 as well.

We did these shots at Mountain Creek in New Jersey. Two young ladies offered to be models and for light on this night shoot, I bought a Brinkmann flood light at Wal*Mart as I drove to the mountain. My son (since he was the client) was in charge of keeping the light on the snowboarders and I set the Nikon to ISO 6400, and continuous high shooting with a 28-300mm auto focus lens. I just focused at the end of the tube and hit the trigger when one of the girls got there and followed them along the very slippery tube.

I was amazed at this little camera. Out of 6GB of images (around 200) I missed focus on only one image! The Nikon followed and continually focused as the camera shot image after image. At ISO 6400 the noise looked like grain (I love grain) and was easily modified in Camera Raw. The battery only went from 100% to 85% even in the very cold weather. I have the MB-10 attached so I think I could have shot for over 4 hours but I got too cold out there.

Well, this photo thing is still fun and I am still learning. I think I prefer the warmth and control of the studio though.....

Photo assistants

2010-11-16T11:37:00.002-05:00

I worked as a photo assistant for about 4 years before I set out on my own in NYC back in the late 70's. I always loved working as an assistant because I was good at it and the final responsibility always rested on the photographer, not me. It gave me tremendous freedom to think out of the box and focus on getting the job done. I have striven to continue in that mindset now that I am the one with all of the responsibility.

So it was fun to be an assistant once again. This time it was for my son William, a junior at William Paterson University. He has been doing a series of odd images involving inside scenes outside in the woods. In this one he was doing his own version of Norman Rockwell's "freedom from want" painting. William did all of the work, he held all of the responsibility and I just pushed the shutter at the appropriate time. I got to be the assistant and once again, I had a ball, just like the old days.

A note about who creates an image. I have never felt that it mattered who pushed the shutter on the camera. The creator of the image is the one who composes and lights the shot. Here is a shot I did for Milkbone. The Grinch arm is mine. My art director pushed the shutter. I consider it my image because I set it up and I lit it.

Now go out there and be the creator!

Making money with a camera

2010-10-26T11:38:00.005-04:00

I am a commercial photographer. That means that I trade images for checks. The only thing better about a client sending you money in exchange for an image is the client calling you back time after time for a new image and a new check. Wow.

I was asked by a client to shoot a three day conference a few years ago. I never really do that kind of photography. I am primarily a studio shooter and for my first 30 years in business never used an on-camera flash. I am now onto my 4th or 5th job like this and am finding them to be lots of fun. This image is of the 2010 Breast Cancer Walk in NYC. I was hired by the Sensible Portions company (I usually shoot food packaging for them) and got to spend the day in the sun, in Central Park and just look for interesting images that told the story of how Sensible Portions was helping the walkers.

This Thursday I will be driving for about an hour to get to a winery where I will be photographing people from the Post Foods company as they get to know each other better. I will be bringing a very nice Nikon SB900 flash with a Quantum battery (that I borrowed from my good friend Bernard) and will try to visually tell the story that is happening there. Wow again. Money with a camera and a new option for me. This is too much fun!

Keeping busy during a downtime

2010-10-26T10:53:00.000-04:00

I keep on being blessed in this business. Things have definitely been slower this year as the recession moves on but I have spent the last 2 months shooting high-end jewelry and products for a great catalog house and printer. The day rate is low but they pay at the end of each week and I am able to keep on shooting for my own clients in the evening and on weekends. The printer owners are orthodox Jews as well, so I have been able to schedule most of my jobs on the many Thursdays and Fridays that they have been closed. It gets crazy but it's money with a camera and I love it. This image is of a set of Etienne Aigner bags that I shot for this company. They came to me at just the right time and now the work has ended for a while. I usually slow down as my clients take summer vacation but this year I worked right through. Welcome to the freelance life of an independent commercial photographer. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Fun with the folks at Nestle

2010-08-12T13:41:00.003-04:00

This was a full, fun day. I was hired by someone new at Nestle to cover a meeting with nurses and the company. It was a lively day with a lot of discussion and I captured some images of the individual speakers and the group as a whole. I was asked to capture some portraits while I was there for the day, so I set up a portrait set up in a conference room and shot these at different times during the day. The people are wonderful and the day was tiring but tons of fun. What could be better than that?

Photoshop CS5

2010-07-31T15:49:00.004-04:00

I was excited to get Photoshop's CS5 Design Premium. Imagine my disappointment when the installed software didn't work. After a few tries I got Photoshop and Dreamweaver to launch but Illustrator and InDesign would just quit. The Adobe web site showed me that others had the problem as well. Why would CS4 work, but not all of CS5? I was anxious to experience Adobe in 64 bit finally. Maybe my older dual core MacBook Pro was too old for this software? Why would some parts work and some parts not? I didn't want to play around in terminal as some suggested. I even made a new admin account but to no avail. Finally I thought... what does Illustrator and InDesign have that Photoshop doesn't depend upon? Why maybe type! I took all of my type except for Arial and put it into the trash for safe keeping. Then I launched InDesign. Wow! It launched! So type was the problem! I slowly moved the type back into the font folder first the A's then the B's. InDesign kept opening until I put the H's back. I just slowly removed each H font until it started again and then I had my culprit. One lousy type font I have never before seen or used hiding amongst the H's! Now everything is working like clockwork. What fun!

Mark Ensslin

2010-07-17T17:03:00.007-04:00

Last week I lost one of my best friends.

Mark Ensslin has been in a wheelchair for the last 12 years after a skiing accident. Before that he was a police sergeant in New Jersey. I never really knew Mark out of the chair. Despite this seeming dilemma Mark lived his life as a good husband to Peg, great and awesome photographer who communicated well through his art and an educator who cared more about his students success than his own. Mark's death took me by surprise because he was active and vital until the day he left us. God's speed Mark. We'll all join you sooner or later... See his work on his website.

Carolina Wren VS the D700

2010-07-17T16:33:00.005-04:00

We have a friendly little wren family who built a kind-of cave nest in one of our hanging plants. It gave me a chance to test out yet another talent of the D700. I set the Interval Timer Shooting schedule to 2 shots/min, said okay and walked away. After 15 minutes I would swap CF cards and do it again. What you see is a little of what I caught. Too much fun!

Parse3

2010-07-05T19:37:00.003-04:00

This one was fun. It is for the company Parse3.

My sons borrowed my Taurus wagon to drive to Illinois for a big concert with 3 additional friends. That meant I had to use William's Escort to go to this shoot. No gurney this time just a car filled with heavy equipment. Thank God my friend Dave (second from the right) had many young interns to help bring all the equipment up the 1 1/2 flights. Anyway, I shot the principles against a white seamless, shot the wall, the table and the pictures. Once home I extracted the people from the seamless and built a 60" file of background and table. Finally I added the people in the proper order, gave them a little shadow and made it exactly the size Dave requested. Soon, it will be a wrap around for the web site. Great fun with great people and now my wagon is back and ready for Wednesday.

Another reason to love digital

2010-06-21T14:01:00.005-04:00

This is an image of a Traulson refrigerator. I was helping out a friend at a firehouse when I saw it. We used to have one just like it at Nabisco. We had to fill it with around $90,000 worth of film and polaroid twice a year. $180,000 - $200,000 was just for the film. On top of that we had to have it processed.

Now realize that to capture the same amount of shots with todays digital cameras would cost about $200.00 for camera cards and DVD's. Why on earth would anyone ever look back at film shooting as the "good ole days"?

Another Guitar

2010-06-11T13:16:00.005-04:00

Wow, I'll try not to repeat myself from the last time I wrote about shooting for this company but while it is always fun to shoot, it is awesome to shoot such beautiful works of art. B&G Kaufmann is the company and I met the creator yesterday. What an artist, what a sculptor. To take wood that comes to him as some exotic tree and then cut and scrape and rub until it looks like these. I am truly in awe. Oh, and it helps that he is just a great guy. Always remember: photography is even more fun when you get to shoot something that is this perfect. It almost lights itself! (almost).

One amazing Nikon

2010-06-07T09:57:00.006-04:00

My wife called me outside on Saturday to see a tiny deer that was bedding down next to our front steps. Naturally I grabbed my new Nikon D700. I set my ISO to 400 with a Tamron 28-300 lens. Well, I didn't need the long lens because the fawn was sitting right there just 4 feet below me. I quickly shot two images but the camera's monitor was black. I looked around for the problem and discovered that I had the camera still set on Manual from a commercial shoot the day before (125th @ f/22). I quickly switched the camera to Program mode but the deer had taken off. I did use the long lens to get some shots of the fawn dancing around like a little lamb. It was really cute but I was bothered that I had missed the sweet close-up shots. I always shoot in raw. Now you will see why: I opened this image in Camera Raw and there was almost nothing there. I swung the exposure slider to the right four (yes 4!) stops and added some fill light. My final move was to desaturate the greens a little. That was it. That is the image you see above.

Let me run over this one more time. It is a 400 ISO image shot with a Nikon D700. It was 4 stops underexposed and pushed in Camera Raw. After all of that there is NO noise in this image. If I want the kind of huge chunky grain that I used to create by pushing Ectachrome 3 stops I'll just have to use Lightroom 3 to get it after the fact. This Nikon does one splendid job of shooting with little or no noise. Yea Nikon!

A new Nikon for the studio

2010-05-28T10:26:00.009-04:00

My second camera when I was still in high school was a Nikon F with a 58mm 1.4 lens. That was far enough back that it was before they could get an aperture that wide in a 50mm lens. Since then I had moved through different Nikon film cameras (ending with a Nikon F3) and different lenses. My first DSLR back in 2006 was a Fuji S3 which used Nikon lenses. It still takes beautiful pictures, but had a DX chip and couldn't take my old lenses. Well despite the terrible economy, I broke down and bought the company a Nikon D700. I really did my homework on this one but this camera has more benefits than I had ever expected.

Before I took delivery of the camera, I sent three of my lenses out to John White to be "AI'd". These were the same lenses I had had back in the film days and had the forks that used to catch the meter pin of the old Nikon F (I just couldn't give them up). He converted them for a super reasonable price and did it super quickly. The D700 allows me to enter up to 6 non-CPU lenses in the menu and when you select one of those, the camera can "see" the proper f/stops and meter through the lens. For an old guy like me who spent the first 30 years focusing SLR's and view cameras manually this is fun! I have 3 zoom lenses that I used with the Fuji S3. These went from 15mm - 450mm and did a great job for my clients. Now however, I have an additional 4 prime lenses of 28mm, 50mm, 55mm micro and 105mm. They are sharper than the zooms and working perfectly on the full-frame D700. I am enjoying walking around with a digital camera and a 50mm 1.4 lens so much that I am considering shopping for two more of the older, sharper pre-AI lenses. I'll have John White convert them for that reasonable price, and then have a total of 9 lenses. Wow!

Oh did I forget mention that I bought the MB D10 battery grip and that the camera can shoot 8 full size raw files per second? I think I am sounding like a geek now but this is just too much fun!

Annual Reports

2010-05-17T11:27:00.006-04:00

It's not always what you know.

It's not always who you know.

It is always who knows you!

That's a good thing to remember and helps to explain how I got a full day's job shooting for this annual report for the Endo Pharmaceutical company. My friend is Clint Morgan of Morgan Designs. Because he knows me he called me and offered me this job. While it has nothing to do with the food I normally shoot (see my food photo blog), because Clint knows me and some of my work he knew I could do this job well and offered it to me. My client is happy, his client is happy and I am happy too! Isn't that a great way to do business? So remember, be a friend to your clients, let them see what you can do and take good care of them always. That way, since they know you, they will give you fun work so you can make money. It's a wonderful way to live your life.

Photoshop fun

2010-04-27T11:29:00.004-04:00

I've had some time to play lately. There seems to be more time time between jobs than the last few years. This is typical during recessions (this is my third since opening my own business). This time around I have some things to fill my time. This time I am fully digital and have a nice computer and Photoshop to play with. To that end I have been playing with different images from my databank and layering them with different curves and layer blending modes. I think I'm getting close to a nice super contrasty look. It almost looks normal but it's a long way from the start. Photoshop. It helps fill the time with fun!

Guitars

2010-04-13T19:57:00.007-04:00

This is one beautiful bass guitar.

It was created by B&G Kaufmann.

The shots I did were for a new web site. My friend Manny Rhinesmith is doing the site so he asked me to do some images of the guitar. Manny is a guy you just have to love, so we spent the afternoon shooting pictures and having fun! One of the great things about photography is having a subject that is just plain beautiful (be it a guitar or a human) and meeting the challenge of lighting it so that it's beauty shows through. I love this shot. Now I wish I could play the bass.....

Spec

2010-03-22T16:33:00.004-04:00

What is this?

Is it an illustration or a photograph?

The answer to those questions is: Yes!

Each piece has been individually photographed with the same light. The shadows have been duplicated in Photoshop with paths and each part is indiviually controlled on it’s own layer; even the paperclips. Now the art director can tweek the file to his heart’s content. This kind of digital work can look real when the photographer knows the end result and all of the light matches.

This was a job I did on spec for a friend who has his own design firm. I'll have to wait and see if the company chooses this direction or one of the the others he has presented. Still, it was nothing but fun to make. If they go another way, maybe I'll put it up on Alamy. We'll see.

Why I love Digital

2010-03-10T11:35:00.004-05:00

I didn't shoot this image. Actually, my wife did. What you see here is my own back, covered in 140 little cups of allergens.

This all began in late fall when my entire body broke out in tiny itchy red spots. I rarely go to the doctor and I am nicely healthy but when the spots began to move up to my face, I was convinced to get checked out. Here is what we discovered after spending three days covered by these tiny cups: I am super sensitive to formaldehyde. I figured that was a good thing to be allergic to until the doctor handed me a 100 page list of all products that contain formaldehyde. Just about everything. I have now had to modify my very comfortable life. I found some products that don't contain formaldehyde, things like soap and shampoo (harder than it sounds), and pretty quickly my itchy spots went away. So why do I love digital photography? Why because the doctor tells me that 25 years of B&W darkroom work has led to my sensitivity to formaldehyde.

The good news is that all of you young photographers who have discovered photography since the digital age will most likely never have to modify their lives to avoid formaldehyde like I have to. Just one more reason to love digital!

Pharmaceutical Still-life

2010-03-05T17:13:00.005-05:00

Why would a food photographer find himself shooting still-lifes for a pharmaceutical company? In this case there were a number of good reasons.

1) They agreed to my price so I could be a happy shooter.

2) The art director was a friend.

3) Food photographers can shoot everything very well and

4) No one else wanted to book me that day.

We drove out to Pennsylvania in the Taurus with the gurney full of studio equipment. We stayed over night so that we could get an early start the next day and shoot all day in a corporate conference room. We ate well. I have known Clint, my friend from Morgan Design, for many years. We were able to be totally comfortable for the two days that we were together. So there it is: One day + shooting, one day retouching, a happy client and money with a camera. What could be better than that?

Welcome to 2010!

2010-01-15T12:09:00.003-05:00

Meet Jerry and Jason. These two guys own World Gourmet Marketing and it's Sensible Portions brand. They help me stay busy shooting images for packaging and sports stars. My first two days of bookings for this new year came from them. We shot straight portraits, funny portraits, pallets of products and groups of packaging. I think that images like the one above help show what a great company it really is. They help keep things fun and after all, if it isn't fun, it's not worth doing. Welcome to 2010. We'll see how this year goes. If the first month is an example, we'll be okay.

Giant billboard from a tiny chip

2009-12-13T15:50:00.009-05:00

This is a giant billboard on New Jersey Rt 3 as you are heading East into the Lincoln Tunnel. It's sitting on top of a building and is probably over 50 feet wide. I am putting this up on the blog because I shot the images of the three pro athletes individually with my lowly Fuji S3. I shot the main body portion of the guys first and then their hands with the packaging (which was replaced in Photoshop) separately. I shot the guys with a 10-20mm Sigma lens and their hands with a 28-75 Tamron f2.8 lens. As I said before, it's a 12 mpx Fuji S3. The shots look totally great from street level and being so near the Meadowlands, I'm sure it will do the Sensible Portions company very well. So when someone tells you that you need film or at least a medium format digital back to shoot for a billboard, tell them about me and the huge billboard that I shot with my Fuji S3. This is too much fun!

Anything (almost) for a buck!

2009-11-03T12:38:00.009-05:00

When a client calls, the answer is yes. With very few exceptions, that describes my life as a professional photographer. This blog probably shows that I am a primarily studio photographer. My food photography blog shows my studio speciality. But when a food client calls and asks me to shoot an event, I answer yes... and then run around to figure out how to do it. This client hired me to shoot three days of a big corporate meeting last year. I had to learn then how to use an on-camera flash (not even TTL). I ran around and shot tests until I was secure in my new ability. It's funny that with over 30 years in this business, I have never had to shoot one of these things. Well, the 3 days went great. I shot the meetings, gave them jpgs each day for a slide show and even set up a portrait shoot in a hotel room. Since then I have gone back to shooting products and food for this client. Then 2 weeks ago they called again, this time for a sales meeting. My answer was: yes! Especially for my day rate.

I set up my MacBook Pro on a table in the corner and launched Lightroom. Then I switched between 2 cards as I shot, downloading one card to Lightroom while shooting to the other. I was able to equalize all of the images quickly and even ran a slide show of the downloaded images on the laptop as I went back and shot. It was actually fun, made my client happy and made the studio money. What could be better than that?

Retouching

2009-10-17T12:33:00.012-04:00

Digital Photographers: Today, you have to become totally comfortable with Photoshop if you are going to make the most money from each job and keep your clients happy. A good knowledge of Photoshop began helping me as soon as this job started. I knew that I had to strip the cakes away from the background so I made sure that if the cake was dark, I had white paper behind it. If the cake was white, I had dark paper behind it. This was all done after I made sure the light was perfect. When I got back from the client's place, I was able to strip a lot of cakes from their background pretty quickly. The plate for all of the cakes was made in Photoshop. I have all kinds of Photoshop plates saved and use them often. I had originally placed a wooden table below the plate. That was the images they saw on the first website. During the second shoot, we photographed different cloths that the client had. I used parts of them to replace the table at the client's request. These went up on the second website. The client's final request was to make the white cloth dark red-ish. I have sent them two different red choices and one has been approved. Now it will be a case of quickly adding the color same layer from file to file. See, the original lighting took around 20 minutes to perfect and gets changed a little from cake to cake. All the rest is added time and money in Photoshop. In the end, the client is happy and so am I. One last note: when the last change is done, I will put up another web site to replace the second one. I can do this so often and easily by using Adobe Lightroom. I just import the images, fill in the appropriate information, hit the Export button and go get coffee! What a wonderful life.

Chef Howie

2009-09-29T20:37:00.006-04:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah... It's a food photograph because the client who pays me is a food company and it's people photography because, well, it's a people. See how a food photographer has to know how to do a great job shooting everything? This is chef Howie. He is a great guy and we had a wonderful day. We not only shot pictures like this of him, but also did some beautiful editorial shots for packaging of this companies' crackers topped by chef Howie's recipes. I can't wait to see the packages in the grocery store (I never get tired of that). I used Photoshop's Extract filter (which I have moved from CS3 to the CS4 I use now) to strip out 8 different poses. That's it for this job, I just need to upload the files tomorrow and were done. Now it's on to a day of cakes on Friday. Yeah, I like this life.

Filling the empty spaces

2009-08-07T17:40:00.004-04:00

Boredom: I can't stand it. Maybe it's the ADD or maybe it's just human nature but I dread being bored. I'm not booked on a food packaging job until next Tuesday. I look forward to that job but what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Thank God a FedEx package arrived this morning. It was filled with NUK products for me to shoot. I like photographing NUK products because they handle light well and have lots of small detail that I can obsess over while I light. Most photographers seem to hate simple product shots (compared to the larger packaging type jobs) but I see them as a way to stretch my creative lighting legs on a lowly job, a good way to make money and most of all a way to fill my days between the bigger jobs. For me they are a boredom killer. I will be teaching two classes at William Paterson University this fall. That will help to keep me busy but my favorite boredom killer continues to be these simple product shots.

Bobby Simmons

2009-07-15T23:14:00.004-04:00

Why does a food photographer have to know how to shoot everything well? Why do we have to be Photoshop experts? The reason is that food clients have lots of ways to promote their products beyond food shots and we want to shoot it all (and earn all of the money). This client asked me to go to the Javits Center in NYC and shoot Bobby Simmons as he signed autographs at their booth. My assistant and I went in and spent around 2 hours shooting candids of Bobby.
Then before we left for home, we set up a full length portrait studio in a conference room and shot more formal full length portraits of Bobby for our client. It was a fun day, we got to meet and spend time with the NJ Nets new forward and we kept making money. It's a great life and I feel blessed.

what a creep.

2009-06-26T18:54:00.008-04:00

Have I mentioned that I am blessed with ADD? While it may be a blessing to me, it is much less so for those who have to live with me. Medication has been a big help but I still have to battle the passive aggression and anti social tenancies that used to be my natural personality. It is to that end that I present the beautiful hand crafted model of my old Nikon F that I had in high school. A girl named Jeannie made it for me. It still amazes me. She was a girl friend but so were one or two others at the same time. This ceramic Nikon sits on my desk as it has for many years. Unfortunately it reminds me of how poorly I may have treated Jeannie while we were together. My wife had lived with me that same way for 23 years. Wow.
I think I have been greatly blessed by the patient women in my past, but most of all by my wife who reminds me when I slip back into the old, selfish habits. Thanks for loving me Barb.

Ya gotta know Photoshop

2009-06-10T09:54:00.005-04:00

These were some of the 18 quick shots I did yesterday for Gerber. The finals will be PNG files for Power Point, but I still shoot RAW and save the images as layered Photoshop files. I just emailed the files to Gerber.
It's jobs like these that keep me working (thanks Ellen) and I love the way they fill the empty spaces and keep me busy.
As simple as these shot appear, you have to know what my client expected and why Photoshop was so necessary.
First, each of the 18 images needed to be stripped away from the background. Sometimes that means using the magic wand, sometimes that means using the path tool. Whatever works best is the right tool. Next, each of the images needed to be retouched. Corners were dented and had to be redrawn and for three of the shots, one front had to replace another so the box top would read the right way around.
When a photographer knows what is possible with Photoshop, they can shoot with that in mind making products easier to strip and capturing pieces that will be needed later in retouching. The more you do it, the faster you become and the more productive you will be. So you see, Photoshop made for one happy client, more money for the studio and one less bored photographer.

History Channel

2009-05-20T16:06:00.020-04:00

This is why I love working on my own. Sometimes things just work out great. I got a late start yesterday after spending about an hour on the phone with my friend Bruce Frazier, another photographer. We had a great time catching up. After the call I got $20.00 cash, air in my tires, and headed down to NYC to shoot for Pearl Media again. On the way I called Josh and it's a good thing because he told me there were 2 different locations to shoot. Since I was heading into the city anyway, I arranged to meet my old friend Mike Harris at ICP to see the Avedon fashion show in NYC. I hit the first location at 5th and 43rd by 12:30 with just a bag full of cameras and began shooting the building piece by piece. The images go around the corner to 43rd street so it took a while to cover the whole thing. I shot a full 2 GB of images so I would have enough pieces to assemble and get rid of most of the people in Photoshop. The top image above is the assembled 5th Avenue side. I hope it looks like one quick shot, but it's really assembled out of over 20 files. By 2:30 PM I was done so I headed over to the ICP at 6th Avenue and 43rd Street, just one block west. It was great walking through the huge exhibit with Michael because he began his career as an art director for such companies as Revlon. That was in the late 60's and early 70's so he actually knew some of the people in the images from those years. I didn't arrive in NYC until the mid 70's (when I assisted Michael) so I missed out on knowing people like Jean Shrimpton. We had a great time. I shot us as we stopped for a nosh, I wasn't even supposed to take a picture there....
After the show I got my car out of hock and dropped Michael off at Penn Station so he could catch a train home. I then drove down to West Broadway just below Spring Street and waited while the guys finished installing the other History Channel building art. When they were done, I shot pretty quickly and was all done by 5PM. When I finally got home I began the Photoshop work of taking all of the disparate pieces and loosely joining them in layers. I have spent today correcting and cleaning up the shots. We'll have to wait to see what the client thinks. All in all it was one beautiful day in NYC.

The Biggest Loser

2009-04-26T20:55:00.013-04:00

This is Bill Germanakos the winner of the 4th season of The Biggest Loser. What a great guy and believe me, no loser. He was a pro in front of the camera, funny and just made my life as a photographer easy. I appreciated having my son Daniel assisting me on this shoot. These shots were for the Sensible Portions company.
We began this day by setting up and shooting Bill and a grocery cart full of product in a Costco parking lot. It was hot and the light was too, so we took some light of Bill with a big white umbrella.
After we had lots of shots out there, we moved into the store and did shots with Bill against shelving filled with product. While Costco has plenty of power outlets all around the outside of the store, there don't seem to be any as you move toward the center. That, of course, was where we had to shoot. Fortunately, I had a small Sunpack strobe in my case, so I stuck it on my camera, slowed down the shutter speed to brighten up the florescents overhead and shot tethered to my MacBook Pro so I could see exactly how the shots were looking. Our final shots took place outside the offices where we set up a 1/2 wide white seamless, and lit Bill nicely with a bank and strobe. That is the shot at the top. I have moved the extract plug-in from CS3 to CS4 and used that to easily strip Bill away from the mostly white background.
Okay, I shot using my beloved S3 using Fuji's Studio Utility to save to a certain folder and then launched Lightroom and set it to watch that folder. My clients love to see the big images as we shoot. We got home late, but still I was able to do a quick cleanup of the files in Lightroom and then gererate a flash web site. I emailed my client the link and I got choices back from John (the client) by 10PM the same night! Hey folks, digital rocks! Don't let anyone tell you differently. Gee, John seems to be working way too hard...

Product shots keep you busy.

2009-04-11T08:32:00.004-04:00

Let's see... feed the family, pay suppliers, have some fun... this is why we trade checks for images that fulfill our client's layouts. This job was for Andy at Gerber. It was a rush job. I had two days to shoot and strip 55 Gerber products and then overnight a Fed Ex envelope so Andy would have the disk in his hands the morning of the third day. Andy did a great job of providing me with an Excel spreadsheet that laid out each shot needed and I kept throwing jpgs at him so he could see if what I was shooting matched what he was thinking. I only had to reshoot two shots and Andy got his disk on time. We call product shots like these our "bread and butter" shots. They can be done well and quickly and can be shot in the dungeon so the expenses are close to zero and everything is profit. We depend upon these kind of jobs to keep all of the bills paid. They are an important part of keeping a commercial photo studio profitable over the long haul. Hey - it's making money with a camera. What could be better than that?

Wide lenses

2009-04-06T09:46:00.008-04:00

There is something special about using a wide lens. They don't work for every shot but when they do, they are amazing. Okay here is the truth: The lens I used for this series of pictures (I only show one here) was a Sigma 10-20 mm rectilinear wide angle lens. On my digital camera it acts as a 15-30 mm lens. That's still wide. I originally purchased this lens for a shoot of the Gerber building redesign. I have used it for the Sika antique flooring jobs as well as these Pearl Media jobs. In this shot I wanted to see the big white pointing finger, the general HP signage and the fact that this building is well placed next to the David Letterman Late Show studio. The only way to get it all in is with a very wide lens. Most of the shots for this job were straightened up using free transform in Photoshop. That way we got to see all of the different aspects while having the vertical things vertical. Somehow, I prefer to see it the way it shows above. I've got to say, this lens is super sharp. If you get the chance, try a really wide lens. It adds to the fun!

Kids with Cookies

2009-02-26T12:23:00.005-05:00

This was a fun day. Sure, I only had 5 hours of sleep the night before and it was a full day on a concrete floor, but all of the kids were great and John from World Gourmet Marketing is one of my favorite clients. John had booked our models (real people) to come in one after the other with little overlap so I could demand the model's full attention with little effort. I only had to ask a parent of one of the younger models to leave (to the waiting room) so the youngster would look into the camera. Over the very full day (11 hours) we shot 17 individuals and groups. I arrived home around 8PM and after another hour, Photoshop had created a 560 image website that allowed for comments to be mailed to John. The company liked the images so much, that they want to do more (that means more fun and more money) with different people. I just got an email and we're trying for tomorrow. I guess I'll go and get ready.

Lie To Me

2009-01-15T10:48:00.011-05:00

It's been a slow start to the year but every job I have done has been tons of fun. This job involved shooting on a cold but clear day in NYC and then a lot of Photoshop back at the studio. I was able to park near the target building at a Muni-Meter on Broadway. I even ate breakfast at the Applejack diner after the shoot while I backed up all of the files to a portable hard drive. The bottom image ended up being one single pan image but is actually built out of 4 different shots. I didn't use Photoshop's photomerge feature, but instead dragged them all into one big (32" wide, 192MB) file. I then used free transform and masks to match and blend the layers into one.
My client had asked me to shoot around 2PM to capture people lined up for the David Letterman Show, but this was a Friday and they don't tape on Fridays. Ah well, I captured as many people as I could and retouched them into some of the shots for the finals. Another happy client and more money for fun. It's still a great life.

More green flooring

2008-12-21T10:49:00.005-05:00

Last Friday it was food packaging. This Friday it was flooring in NYC. This is one of Gary's lofts. He is a guy that has 2 floors on 36th Street and 3 floors in Brooklyn. Each floor has terrific sets of bathrooms, bedrooms and living rooms and are beautifully decorated. Gary rents the floors out to photographers, for launch parties and weddings.
The floors that were in this loft were terrific. They came from an old barn somewhere, and were very rugged with original saw marks and nail holes. Gary (from ATC hardwood flooring) is the contractor who put the floor down and Rich was the rep from Sika who makes the mastic that is used to stick the flooring down. My son Daniel assisted me, and the shots were great. It really is a nice way to make a living.

Green flooring

2008-11-15T20:30:00.004-05:00

This job tired me out but it was nothing but fun. Hard work and fun. I think I have to get used to running up and down ladders and up and down stairs in these huge houses.
There is a company in New Jersey who tears down old barns, refinishes the boards and turns them into antique flooring. I met with the contractor who installs this stuff and the company that makes the adhesive to stick it to the floor. Everyone was new to me, but they were all just terrific. Even the homeowner was great. I don't mind the hard work. It's the people that can make a day miserable or fun. This job was fun. I think it was David Kelly of IDEO fame who explored the bridge between playing and creativity. We all had a very creative day.

Photoshop and More

2008-10-03T08:56:00.005-04:00

I haven't written in a while.
September seemed to be the month of jewelry shooting. It took me around 2 days to learn the way these folks like their jewelry captured for proper printing but after that it's been full steam ahead. After 10 or so days, I'm through with jewelry for a while.
Then came this job...
It all began with an emergency phone call. I was asked to shoot 2 packs of gum and end up with them HUGE. First I had to run around and find the new gum design because there was no time for the client to send them up to me. Once I found them, it was just a matter of shooting them with a macro lens to fill the frame, shooting it raw, blowing it up to the proper size and resolution and then stripping them out and retouching them.
Not bad. Pretty quick and a happy client. Then he asked me a new question: "You are good with Photoshop, can you do one more thing?" Of course I said yes, so he sent me a jpg of a shot of a NYC news-stand. He told me he needed all of the too-sexy magazines replaced with different magazines and the man behind the counter removed totally. It ended up taking about 5 hours, but by 11PM it was done... almost. A quick phonecall, and I added some new gum packages to the front of the shot.
So all of the shots involved Photoshop, some more than others, and in the end, the client is happy. It's still a great life.

Jewelry

2008-09-10T10:19:00.009-04:00

I have been very fortunate. The one thing I can't stand is boredom. I love to shoot but the high end jobs don't come every day. I landed a new free-lance job working for a high end jewelry catalog house. It's helping to fill in the empty days between the big jobs and keeps me doing the thing I love, studio photography. I've taken three days to fine tune my shooting to they way they like and now I think I'm ready to shoot for production. The company I'm working with is great. The people who work there are wonderful and the work is fun. Hey, it's making money with a camera. What could be better?

On being "Green"

2008-09-06T09:24:00.022-04:00

Eco-fascists - leave us alone!
I am happy to report that Bill Truran Productions is pretty green!
We have been increasingly digital since 1994.
Leaving film and processing behind has been a big help toward caring for our environment. Film used to involve acetate, silver and tons of chemicals. In the 1970's we shot a lot of Kodachrome 25 film because the colors were amazing. Kodak had to discontinue making the film because the chemicals used to process the film were deadly. Less scary Ectachrome and Tri-X used massive amounts of chemicals for processing. The labs that served commercial studios poured tons of chemicals down the drain in the 70's (who knew or cared?).
In 1994, we began the journey that was digital photography. The first step was to replace film and processing with a digital chip and CD's. That was a big step toward eco-health. The chips capture an image with no waste. No film and no chemicals for processing. Digital cameras since 1994 have even greatly reduced their energy usage, from large AC power supplies, to fire-wire and rechargeable batteries. Today, there are many ways to recycle old computers. Not everyone loves old Macs like I do. We still have our first Apple 8100 (we don't use it, we just can't part with it).
I would say that in the last year or two, our industry has improved even more.
Each year between 1994 and 2006, we saved client's images to CD or DVD and Fed-Ex'd or messengered disks to them. We then printed out bills and mailed them.
By 2008, almost all of our clients access their image files from our ftp server (no waste) and accept bills vis email (no printing).
Our company owns just one lowly Taurus wagon. We've discussed it in past blogs. This car is set up to hold a gurney with all of our studio equipment, a photographer and one assistant. No truck, no pick-up and trailer. We just drive to the location unload and park.
I think we have eco-improved greatly, with no damage to image quality. It's a win - win situation that I am very happy with.

Something new

2008-08-07T18:04:00.023-04:00

I just recovered from 3 days of location shooting for my clients at Gerber. I was exhausted! I did things I have never done before for any of my clients.
I've been shooting commercially since, well, for a long time (before disco!). In all that time, I have shot available light and I have shot using studio strobes, but I have never used an on-camera flash. I don't do weddings or parties, so I never really needed to use one. There is a Sunpak flash in my camera case however because it belonged to my dad and I took it. It's been in there for maybe two years and this week, for the first time, I used it. A lot.
I bought a new lens for this job from one of my former students, Steve at Unique Photo. It's a Tamron 28-300mm zoom with vibration correction . I used it with my Sunpak flash and spent the days shooting meetings and parties for Nestle, the new owner of Gerber.
This job required three very long days. I worked with Kim Lime the coordinator for the meetings who arranged for there to be a room for me to set up as a portrait studio. I shot over 50 portraits, the opening meetings, the closing party, 7 breakout meetings, and a few other shots. 13 GB of files in all.
Aside from the portraits which involved a full studio set up (brought in on my gurney), for this job I used a 10-20mm lens, a 28-300mm lens, a Sunpak 333 flash, 2 sets of 4 AA batteries & charger, and my trusty Fuji S3.
Here is where the "professional" in professional photographer comes in. When you are a true pro, there is NO place for mistakes. For this job, I knew that I didn't know much about on-camera flashes so I assembled my preferred set up (28-300mm lens, flash and camera), and shot an informal dinner at our church on Sunday night. Everyone there knows I am a photographer and was patient as I made all of my mistakes and learned how the equipment worked. I discovered which settings were best, and that practice served me very well over the next three days on the real job.

Portraits

2008-07-29T21:56:00.016-04:00

This week it has been corporate portraits. 68 of them over two days on location. Each lit, cleaned up, retouched and placed (by me) in a powerpoint presentation to be ready tomorrow for the foreign heads of this company. They are flying in to see the American company they recently purchased. We used our gurney to move our studio to the corporation, set up in a conference room and shot on Friday and Monday. The people, all of them, were great. It really is an amazing company. They work very hard, for very long hours but they are all very nice at the same time!
Here is a hint for present day and potential commercial photographers: Learn the software. As much as you can. To shoot, I have to be an expert with Photoshop, Lightroom and CaptureOnePro. I have to have a passing ability with Illustrator, InDesign, and Quark, and I have to know Word, Powerpoint and Excel so that just like this portrait job, I can be as big a help to my clients as I can. Commercial photography is a service business. Service: the best photography, every time, and anything extra to make your clients life better. It's a great life!

Free tan!

2008-07-17T11:13:00.010-04:00

This job was different (I guess every one is different).
This job came because a client gave my name to one of his clients and they hired me to shoot this job. Pearl Media does huge advertising displays just like the one above for Fox's new show Fringe. They wanted a lot of people around their display, so we shot during the All Star Parade (see the red carpet?). Even with over one million fans on 6th Avenue in NYC, my 6' tall 19 year old son and I (he watched my back and carried the laptop), got good spots in front of installations on 47th street and 57th street. The sun was hot and the day was great, the people were fun but nobody understood why I was shooting the buildings while everyone else was photographing the old baseball players. It's a nice way to make a living... hanging out on 6th Avenue in New York City on a beautiful day.

Photoshop

2008-07-02T13:02:00.004-04:00

I know this looks like an office window. It might (I hope) make a nice background for a corporate portrait. My client at Gerber is hiring me to shoot 2-3 days of portraits. The shot that is 2 entries back was for him too, but required a great deal of stripping and retouching to include an office window background. This image at 5x6 feet will save me a lot of effort and time when shooting many people.
It looks like a real shot, but actually exists nowhere but here. I took a picture of one slat of a small window mini blind. Next I shot an image outside the window of trees and sky. I rotated the mini blind slat 90 degrees, transposed it to fill the image vertically and copied and repeated it across the image. I added some walls above and below the window and soft shadows where the blinds cross the walls, not the window. This image will please a good client. This image will make my life a little easier. This image could never have been created if I wasn't so experienced in Photoshop®. There you have it. To succeed, a photographer needs to expertly control light and focus, and know Photoshop® very well.

Son of Sam

2008-06-28T20:59:00.009-04:00

You never know what will happen when you work as a photo assistant...

"While most of the New York media dismissed the cult possibility out of hand as the ramblings of a crazy man, the demonic possession angle intrigued me.

The fact of the matter: Both of Sam Carr's sons died in the midst of the Son of Sam spree.

Michael Carr died in a single-car crash on a New York City highway. Far more ominous, John Carr died Feb. 16, 1978, at the Air Force base in Minot, N.D. It appeared to be a suicide, with a shotgun placed vertically from the ground up into his mouth. But conspiracy theorists to this day suggest it was murder."

The preceding is a quote from the New York Daily News web site. I have to laugh in a sad sort of way.

I spent two years with Michael Carr when we were both photo assistants in a New York photo studio. I knew at that time that Michael was a member of the Church of Scientology. I remember him continually trying to be "clear". The conversation that really stands out to me is when Michael said to me "Bill, you and are are the same, we're both very spiritual." I was a young Christian at the time, and said: "Mike, we may both be spiritual, but we're on opposite sides!"

He died soon after that in a car accident. The Michael I knew was very, very sad. He was abused by the photographers he worked for, and he was trying so hard to find happiness. Then he was gone. Cult? Church of Scientology? One in the same?

This all happened while I was working as a young freelance photo assistant in New York City. Maybe the next time I'm bored, I'll write about the time I walked into a Chemical Bank in the midst of a robbery.

Portraits

2008-06-24T10:35:00.004-04:00

Corporate portraits;
Here is the thing about being a commercial photographer. We are not a portrait studio but we shoot portraits. We aren't baby photographers but we shoot babies. When you are a commercial photographer, your job is to satisfy your client. That means shooting everything that they need for the jobs they give you. Here is a group portrait of three executives at an international food corporation in New Jersey. This client usually hires me to shoot food, but knows we can handle a portrait shoot of executives, do a great job, and not embarrass him in the process.
The original shot was against a gray muslin backdrop that I usually use. It can be easily color corrected to almost any color background. This time however, my client wanted an office/corporate background, so I stripped the people away from the background and put the window shot in behind. It was a fun day with fun people and in the end, we have another happy client.

It's a peacock!

2008-06-16T20:16:00.005-04:00

Okay, this one is weird even for "the woods". It's dusk, cloudy, rainy and what walks across our front yard but a peacock! I guess one of the farms around here must keep them with the horses, but this male got away. It walked across our yard and off into the back woods. Bye peacock. Have a nice life.

The Bear

2008-06-16T14:28:00.004-04:00

I live on the edge of the woods in a house we built 14 years ago. I live there with my family, some neighbors, the deer and the bears. It's a nice life. I like to drive into New York City with a car full of equipment, shoot all day and then drive home to my family, the deer and the bears. It helps to keep everything in perspective. Sometimes I need that.

Top Ten Trust List

2008-06-06T17:27:00.007-04:00

This is my top ten list of trust. From most to least.

trust the most
1.) God
2.) My wife
3.) My family
4.) My clients
5.) Individuals
6.) Corporations
7.) Law Enforcement
8.) Most Higher Educators
9.) All Building Contractors
10.) Any Politician
trust the least

The Company Car

2008-05-22T09:41:00.007-04:00

Well, we're back in the saddle again.
Here is what you get when you buy a junker, replace parts from the crashed car, and buy a few new ones (like a rebuilt transmission). I have to thank All Tune & Lube in Dover New Jersey who did the great work for a great price and saved the business some debt. Now we have a 24 valve Dura Tech engine, dual exhaust and even reasonable gas mileage.
A funny thing is that over the winter when this whole mess was getting straightened out, we only went on location once and took only minimal equipment. Since the car was fully rebuilt, we have been on location using the gurney 6 or 7 times. The timing was perfect.
Anyway, there you go. Nothing in life is ever easy, but in the end, it's always good.

Dane Sonneville

2008-05-16T11:27:00.005-04:00

Here's a tip of my hat to my great friend Dane Sonneville who passed from this world last Tuesday after a VERY full life.
My relationship with Dane began in 1982 when the awesome artist and art director Tim Barrall introduced us and he became my rep in NYC for 7 years. When we closed the New York studio he remained my friend for the next 20 years.
Later in his life, Dane lived half of the year in Sonora Mexico where he became a writer of novels and a painter of pictures which can be found on the Oovu gallery website. Dane will be sorely missed by me and his other friends and family.
As we walked the streets of NYC together, Dane taught me: "treat every human you meet as the most valuable thing in your life at that time because they can either move you forward or stop you in your tracks". I saw him live that as he treated every doorman, receptionist or creative director as the most important person to him at that time, and that made everyone happier, and propelled him onward.
As for the image above? That is what I call my 6 degrees of separation from Bill Truran. It shows that every one of my clients has come from another client. None have come from direct sales. And everyone has become a good friend. So my clients find me other clients and we are all friends. That's a great way to work, it's a great way to live. And I learned to live this way by walking the streets of NYC with my friend Dane Sonneville.

Money for Photo

2008-05-13T11:41:00.000-04:00

When asked the question: "do you shoot...?" The answer is always: "yes!"
This time it's for a magazine about commercial flooring. I brought a small hand cart, bungied a light stand and light to it, put my camera case and Speedotron strobe on it and just rolled around from shot to shot. I had a shot list, but (as I was told) shot anything that looked interesting. I even went to up high on a forklift to shoot a big room. This shot is of the Seamless Flooring crew. No matter what language each of us spoke, we all got along and had a great time. Oh - and the client was very happy with the results. The answer was: yes, and I shot something for the first time and the client was happy. I already got a check, and now everyone is happy!

Cheese

2008-04-13T21:00:00.004-04:00

This time it was cheese, lots of cheese, 64 shots of imported cheese, yummy cheese, all for the Arthur Schuman company with the delightful Melissa.
This is the way things work today: One full day of studio shooting, and then more than another day and a half, stripping and retouching. 100 years ago, tintypes and glass plates identified the photographer. Today, it is Photoshop® and image manipulation. These are the things that keep us working.

It's a crazy life!

2008-03-18T23:03:00.009-04:00

It's a strange life for sure. Life seems to travel in cycles. For a while I was just a food shooter, next came a year or two of fashion, and lately it seems to be time for cosmetic still life. I now count three different clients from different agencies (one is Revlon's agency), all who send me cosmetic products to shoot. Hey - it's making money with a camera. What could be better than that?

Boots

2008-02-18T10:49:00.005-05:00

Boots.
People are still asking me where my cowboy boots have gone.
I've worn boots almost every day since 1975. Most of the time they are Noconas. They seem to fit perfectly from day one. I don't wear them the way you are supposed to. I wear the same pair almost every day and they last about three years, being resoled 2-3 times within their lifetime.
However, I have worn Nike running shoes for the last year. After walking all around Manhattan with my friend Mark (from Quad Photo) at the photo show in 2006, I started a hole in the bottom of the sole. By summer 2007, it was too bad to wear. Since then I have worn these running shoes while I tried to find someone near here who would resole these boots. No one liked the job done by the last guy in Ridgewood NJ, so no one near would do the work.
Finally, in February 2008, I dropped them off at the same old place for their last re-sole. They should last one more year, and soon, I'll be back in boots again.

I always wondered if I my 5'8" frame could live without the 2" heals the boots offer...
Well, after one year without, I guess I know I can.

waiting

2008-01-24T22:19:00.001-05:00

Well,
life is certainly interesting.
It's still January, and I have failed to be healthy yet this year. I have been on 2 different anti-biotics, and 2 different antihistamines and I am still deaf and a tiny bit pained (it's a sinus infection).
As for the car, the green wagon engine does not match at all the gold one, so we are trading the struts, wheels and tires, but my faithful mechanic is looking for a rebuilt trans so I can finally drive it home. The reason there is a picture of a Mercedes above this blog, is that my faithful mechanic lent me the one he is rebuilding for auto shows while he fixes my car. It rides great and is a nice trade. Still, it will never be able to carry my gurney.
I did teach my new semester Wednesday night. It'll be a great class. Only 8 or 9 students (instead of 16), and we'll all learn a lot.
I've been uploading stock images to Almay (my stock agency). It's a slow grueling process involving keywording and stuff, but it fills the down times.
Oh, I have shot 3 jobs this month, it's a slow start, but it's not dead. Thank God!
Bye

We'll see...

2007-12-29T22:39:00.000-05:00

What do you get when you have a green wagon that was hit in the rear at 40 mph, and a new gold wagon with a perfect body but trashed transmission? Well, like the title says, we'll just have to wait and see. If this thing works out well, I'll give the repair place all the credit. They were the only ones who were willing to do this. The gold wagon has already limped over there. I'm driving the green one still (the one that was considered totaled). I'll give them the green one in the new year. I have high hopes as I need a working wagon for the studio. We'll see....

An Article from Studio Photography Magazine

2007-12-24T18:48:00.001-05:00

The studio Bill Truran rented for this pizza
packaging shoot was in Fairfield, NJ. All the
equipment for the shoot arrived in his Taurus.
Thanks to the gurney and some strong straps, he
was able to bring it all into the studio in one trip.

Bill Truran, of Bill Truran Productions LLC (www.billtruran.com), owns a commercial photography studio in the New York City area. To keep overhead costs down, he closed his full-time studio and began to rent for each shoot. Only problem is, this caused logistics problems.

As Truran explains, "Adjusting to different studios is no problem, as long as we have our own gear. Problems begin when we have 10-16 cases of equipment on the sidewalk, a car to park, and no way for our assistant to get the equipment off the street and into the studio while I go park the car.

"Our solution was to retrofit a medical gurney like the ambulances use, replacing the tilting bed with a desk surface. Now we pack most of our cases onto the gurney, and strap them on. We push the gurney into the back of our company's Taurus station wagon, and the wheels collapse up and under it. Any additional cases get packed around the gurney.

"Once we arrive at the rental studio, we pull the gurney out and the wheels drop down and lock. We strap the additional cases on top of the others, and my assistant puts all the equipment on one rolling table ready to roll into the freight elevator. All I have to do is drive away, park the car, and walk back to the studio, entering through the front door. One photographer and one assistant is all it takes!"

Alice B. Miller Studio Photography Editorial Director

Ah, a week off...

2007-12-24T12:49:00.002-05:00

Well, the last three weeks were spent shooting fashion & stills for a catalog.
That might sound fun or glamorous, but at my age, the constant running seems to wear me out. I never like time off from shooting, but I soooo look forward to having the last week of the year to recuperate. The great part of this kind of photography is that I get to play with some great people. Bouchelle is wonderful (she does hair & makeup). Sally, Astrid & Barbara took different days styling the clothes, and Dawn (one of my favorite directors) told me what to shoot. While the work may be hard, the whole time is fun because of good models and the great team. I think that by the first of the year, I'll be raring to go once again.

it's new to me...

2007-12-09T18:37:00.001-05:00

This is a picture of my "alas" beloved green Taurus wagon. That's just what happens sometimes when you stop for a red light on a 40 mph road and the guy in the big pick-up behind you does not.
Anyway, I have a new (to me), 1996 Taurus wagon. This one is gold! It will fit my gurney perfectly (see 11/18/07) and is fancier than my beloved green one, but as is true with so many over 60K Taurus, the transmission is slipping.
I'm going to pick up a bottle of Lucas' Transmission Fix tomorrow and see if that can fix it. If it does, I'll shout out loud! If not, I'll whimper quietly. If it does not fix it, I have a guy (and his whole shop) who will trade the transmission from the green car to the gold car. As you can see, it was hit in the back. The front is fine. We'll see what happens. By the way, I'm teaching the man who owns auto repair place Photoshop®, so it won't cost me much to have it fixed anyway. Ain't life strange sometimes? When this car is finally up to snuff, I'll put up a picture of it on this blog. Then you'll know we're all set for more location work.

Voting

2007-11-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

Folk,

I have a friend who was ritualistically abused since birth.
It caused me to realize this:

People use witchcraft to control other people with programing and curses.

However, people become politicians because they want to control other people with laws and rules.

And that is why I think politicians are evil. All of them.

Therefore, we need to realize that voting will always be a matter of picking the least of two evils...

The Ebay wait...

2007-11-18T14:45:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting near my computer.
We are drawing near to the end of a bid on a 1996 Taurus Wagon.
Why you wonder? Well, I see automobiles as 2 things:
1.) A way for me to earn money photographing them and
2.) An instantly/continually depreciating means for me to move my studio from place to place (read this article to see why).

The Taurus wagon is the only car made that can fit my studio gurney. That gurney is part of what makes my studio so successful. I can shoot anywhere I can drive and can have all of my special comfy personal equipment with me. It cuts down on surprises considerably.

I had a great green Taurus wagon until last August. That day at 7:02 PM, I was sitting at a red light and driven through at 40 mph by an overly large pick-up with a big wooden bumper.

The good news is that I am totally fine. The wagon soaked up all of the impact and I am healthy as a horse (what ever that means). The bad news is that my beloved Taurus wagon (which got 24 mpg), is toast.

It is the perfect car for my business, but now it's gone.

And that is why I am sitting by my computer, seeing if my bid holds on a replacement 1996 Taurus wagon.

It's nice having a history in this business

2007-11-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

I moved to NYC in 1975
Although I had a BS degree in Photography from RIT, I knew that I really didn't know anything about NYC commercial photography. Therefore I was a freelance assistant for many great photographers to learn the "business". The Mark who graduated with me and dragged me (thank you) to NYC (He got me my first assistant job), is still my friend today. We've had our ups and downs over the last 35 years, but we're pretty even now, and getting along well. That's cool!

One of the 10 photographers I assisted regularly back in the mid 70's was Mike Harris. He shot lots of food and drinks for big advertisers. I built sets, loaded film, moved lights, all the things assistants do for photographers. He was always a nice guy, and a good boss.

We kept in touch with each other after I started my own business, and have even shot together occasionally. My expertise in digital has brought us together as peers but still as friends. It's nice.

That's what I mean about having history. I have a number of colleagues, some peers some previous employers, who continue to be good friends after all these years. We share information and knowledge back and forth, share our lives as they are today, and just relate on all levels.

And that's why it's nice having a history in this business.

New photographers remember, be nice. You're developing relationships that can benefit you for the rest of your life.

It's crazy out there.

2007-11-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

I have a saying:

"Photographers are crazy when they are not busy because they realize they may never work again. Still, the overhead goes on and on. They are also crazy when they are busy because clients can be demanding and the schedules can be grueling". Therefore it seems, commercial photographers are just crazy!

I got up this morning looking forward to a fairly easy day. I knew I would meet with my master's degree independent study student at 2 PM, and teach 62 miles away at 6 PM, but that until 2:00 I could just relax.

Then my beloved (yes) client called. All of a sudden I needed to retouch 13 images to match marketing's desires, and then print them. That would be easy except that I am not a match printer. I'm a sort of close-to accurate printer. Still, I had to skip my meeting with my master's student (sorry Mark), work like a crazy retoucher, make the files ready for the printer, and then just make it to Fed-Ex and finally to college. Whew!

In only one day I went from crazy slow to crazy busy.

My client, unless she happens to read this, will never know. I guess that's why people don't necessarily think of commercial photographers as crazy. Our families know but our clients, if we do it right, never will. Still, I would never trade this life for anything.

(Does anyone reading this realize that the yellow things in the shot are 8X10 film boxes?)

School

2007-11-07T12:14:00.000-05:00

I am teaching at two colleges this semester. One is Introduction to Digital Photography, and the other is a Studio Lighting course. It's fun to take students who have been taught nothing but fine art photography and lead them in the paradigm shift of the studio where you are the creator from start to finish. Some get it, some never do, but they all get to see and experience part of the world that is commercial digital photography. You never know what sharing the things you love will result in... maybe inspiring my toughest competitor?

Bread & Butter

2007-10-12T14:16:00.000-04:00

Bread and butter is a term we use for jobs that don't require too much special lighting and focus ability but help to contribute to the overall profit of a commercial studio. Sometimes it might be packaging for a test, catalog, or coupon. Sometimes it might be a full group of watches or maybe some tools. As I think about it, I guess bread & butter shots are anything that can be set up once, and then multiple products cycled through the set utilizing the same lighting and focus. The per shot price is usually low, but as you shoot through all of the product, the low prices add up to real money. Sometimes bread and butter jobs reward us with a higher day rate than we get from our normal shoot days.

I can remember assisting a photographer in the '70's on a watch job. He set the whole thing up, lighting, set and focus, then I cycled the watches through and exposed the 4X5" film. Aside from the responsibility of the set up, I did all of the work and the photographer made all of the money (except for my small day rate).

I was involved in a similar watch job recently. It reminded me how much things have changed since I began. There was no assistant (just 2 photographers), the shots were stripped out (by me), and the per watch price was less than 30 years ago! Still, we made a terrific day rate, the client was happy, it was easy. and a good friend and I got to play together for a few days.

So there you go: Bread and Butter shots. Commercial photographers would starve without them and they're just a good thing.

www.billtruran.com

I love it whan a plan comes together!

2007-09-22T19:15:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if all photographers have a favorite shot, but I do.
This is it.
The food stylist was Alyssa Alia. She is, I think, my favorite food stylist. The client was... Alyssa Alia.

It was sometime in late summer, and Alyssa and I had just finished a full day of shooting beautiful recipes. We had agreed to work on a holiday card for her after that job was done. Alyssa made the mousse, brought the cranberries and the ivy. I provided the glass and the red velvet cloth. That was all we needed.

I always have a clear picture of the day's shot in my mind before I shoot a job. Sometimes it takes a while to make the shot on a set look like the shot in my head. This time it all just fell quickly into place. In less than an hour, the food was prepared, the cranberries were sugared and everything was arranged. I tilted the camera, composed, lit and carefully focused the shot. The shot you see is the shot we saved. You might notice, that the light and focus are working together in this shot to lead your eyes to the mousse itself. That's the product. Well, sort of. I guess Alyssa's awesome talent was the real product for this shot.

www.billtruran.com

The Rich & Famous

2007-09-18T14:40:00.000-04:00

Yes, It's still all about light & focus, but sometimes, there are many things trying to draw your attention away from that. Shame, shame...

I am guessing the Manning brothers are rich. I know they are famous. If I had attempted to work magic on light & focus on the day of the shoot, I would have been side-lined by overseeing the 30 clients, managers, and crew that were milling around.
Each one has a question or opinion. What's for breakfast, or lunch? Where should I set up for hair and makeup? Where's the bathroom (they somehow always ask the photographer). Where's the product? Where is the studio? Between the phone and the people on site, there is little time to set up lights. On top of all of that, when you are shooting (photographing) people, famous or otherwise, you need to give them your attention and direct them. Ideally, the creative director speaks to you, and you direct the "stars" as you have been told.

Therefore, even though this was a very expensive studio in NYC, my wise client (Fred Weber from Edge-Design) insisted that we go in the night before (additional rental) to get all set up. We used a lighting I teach at a University class. I blew the background out evenly 1 1/2 stops brighter than the huge Elinchrom Octa-light that we used on the Mannings. Some of the shots had both brothers and the dad, so the Octa-light did a great job giving them all a soft Rembrandt light. The perfectly lit background allowed the clients to put in their own backgrounds easily.

All three Mannings were delightful. I can't remember any rich and famous person that we have photographed that hasn't been great. I guess they're just human after all. Just remember that those around them expect you to give them all of your attention, so take care of the important stuff before they show up. And that is the light & focus.

www.billtruran.com

Pretty Picture

2007-09-14T10:17:00.000-04:00

In case I've forgotten to mention it. It's all about controlling light and focus.

This shot was for a catalog client, and is sort of an homage to Jimmy Moore, a fashion photographer who died this year. Some thoughts about this shot:
It's a great idea for young photographers to assist established pros who's work they admire. Most commercial photographers aren't great teachers, but as you clean and carry equipment, you see how the business is done, and how different photographers control light and focus. This shot was set up with a huge shoot-through umbrella, a white table, and lots of fill cards, just like Jimmy did when I assisted him years ago.
Another thought;
I just started shooting catalogs this year. It seems to nicely fill in the spaces between my regular clients. With catalogs, you have to shoot quickly to get through all of the shots, but no one cares how you light as long as the product looks great. I run through all sorts of lighting. Super soft beauty like this, super hard spot lights, all sorts. It helps to keep me on my toes, and it's fun! By the way, this shot was supposed to be inside the catalog, but the clients all loved it so much, that they made it the cover.
So far we've looked at pizza, a rock band, and now a beautiful model. Trust me, the basics are all the same: we control light and focus to make the "product" shine through.

www.billtruran.com

Light & Focus

2007-09-13T22:25:00.000-04:00

Remember, in this place, it's all about controlling light and focus.

Last time we showed one of our favorite pizza shots that we did for A&P Pizza packaging.

Look at our web site. We are asked to shoot so many different things, why, even rock bands.

Pizza / rock bands? Remember, we believe with our whole hearts, that commercial photography is all about light, and focus. No matter what you put in front of us to shoot; we simply look at it, peek at the layout, talk to the art director, and control light and focus to make it the center of attention.

Shots like rock band photographs (which are amazingly similar to fashion shots), seem to require more physical work than the pizza shot. For this shot, we had to drag heavy strobes and cameras up to a 3 story roof in Nyack NY. Once we recovered from that, we had to constantly adjust the camera exposure throughout the shoot as the sky grew darker, however, the strobe exposures stayed pretty much the same, and we were able to concentrate on keeping the band jazzed (or calming them down). On the pizza shoot day, we only did 4 different kinds of pizza, and ended up with 4 final pizza images. On the rock band shoot day, we gave the client almost 300 files. There were a ton of great ones, and the client was very happy.

Still, what makes this shot fun and effective, is the hard light on the "boys", and the cool sky behind. Yes, we paid attention to the band, but it's the light and focus that makes the shot.

www.billtruran.com

Good Recipe

2007-09-13T21:00:00.001-04:00

Alright, here's a question:

What is the recipe that guarantees a commercial photograph for a business will result in increased visual traffic and thereby, sales?

I think there are three ingredients which, when added together, always result in a photograph that helps to increase sales (that's a good thing).

1.) First you need an experienced photographer who appreciates each client, seeks to understand their needs, and works to oversee a peaceful, creative day of photography.

2.) Second comes the need for a photographer to have an appreciation of lighting. Creative use of light and shadow controls a consumer's eyes to a specific place in a photograph where your product rests.

3.) Lastly is the effective use of focus. A consumer will always look at something in focus rather than something that is blurry. By having your product in a photograph sharper than the balance of the shot we can, once again, direct a consumers eyes to the product being advertised.

When these three ingredients are used together, the result is a great day of photography in which you and your product are the star.