Famos People

 I have been a food photographer since 1989. Before that I photographed everything for NY agencies. Products, People and even animals. After 1989, I continued to shoot people. Food companies use celebrities to sell their products so that's why I have photographed so many famous people. This was a Polaroid from a week I spent with Chubby Checker in Chicago. He signed this for my wife and my only son at the time. He seemed much younger that I thought he would be and was nice as ever. It was a great week that ended being back stage at one of his concerts. All that for a food photographer.

It's Magic!

Well, slight-of-hand maybe. I did a job for Morley's Magic Shop in Butler NJ. It consists of the Morley Magic Stage and the Morley Magic Shop. Scott will teach anyone who buys a magic prop how to use it. The whole family is involved. They put on magic shows at the shop for events or birthday-type parties which I think would be very cool. I did both stills and videos. I shot a lot of video of Scott doing close up card and prop magic, ran it back slow and still can't figure out how he did most of the tricks. The Morley family were gracious and lots of fun and the day was just a blast. I love doing jobs for fun people. Almost all of my clients are that way now.

Product Photography

This job came through a former neighbor who owns Gravity Design Works. I have never shot for him before but he called and said this was a rush job. I ended up lighting, shooting, stripping and retouching 48 images including the ones above in one day. So you never know where work will come from. The answer to a job request is always, for me, Yes we can do that. It has always been that way for the last 42 years. I will shoot almost anything that involves trading a check for images...

 

Adobe's new neural filters

This is my lovely wife way back in 1979. The original was shot on Tri-X film which is black and white. A lot of the fashion stuff I shot back then was B&W. I had a great relationship with the Ford agency and Eileen. She would send me models to test and I did a lot but when I met this lady, I wanted to stay with her forever so I quick shot a still life book and gave up on fashion. Anyway, this is about Photoshop and the new Neural Filters. One you can download in the Beta section is Colorize. So I tried it on Barb 1979. Basically it begins with the push of a button. That did take me 80% of the way. I liked the way Barb looked. The color was very good, very real. However, it made the background yellowish so I lifted Barb up onto her own layer and made the lower layer blue-ish. Then I did have to desaturate her teeth, make her lips red and her eyes blue. What you see here as far as Barb is concerned is the Photoshop's Neural Filters. It knew to make her hair blond and her skin pink-ish. She looks good in color... 41 year later.

 

Photographing art work

 

You have to admire print makers. I know that as photographers we are considered artists but print makers are a different breed. These huge prints were wood block prints. The top one was the original and the lower ones were washed with black and then silver or white. Tiny reproduction images really don't do them justice but my full res huge files do. They are color correct and accurate. My clients were nothing but fun. What a great way to make a living.

Nikon D850

  

So we lost power today. It doesn't happen too often but when it does, work stops. I am totally dependent upon power to run my computers and two external monitors as well as YouTube TV. So when the power went out I got my camera, put it on my favorite Tiltall tripod and set it to live view. I have my live view set to silent shooting, auto ISO and I trigger it by tapping the back LCD. The lens was a Tamron 300mm but the D850 is set to DX (as opposed to FX) so the 300mm becomes 450mm. That way I can sit in a chair on the deck and not bother the birds. The bird feeder is green not blue. What you see here is the focus help that the D850 gives you in live view. Anything that is blue is sharp. Even though the temperature is going up to the mid 80's, this morning was cool, breezy and I had a nice morning photographing birds.