Ahmad... again

This is my second time shooting Ahmad Bradshaw. He is just a wonderful guy. This time it was for Rickland Orchards a food company making Greek Yogurt Bars (they're yummy). Ahmad draws a big crowd especially after helping the Giants win the last Superbowl. I brought a full strobe rig in the car but the place was too crazy for power cords so I used a super clamp to attach a Quantum flash head to a huge white shoot through umbrella. My assistant was my 6' son Daniel who held the lighting rig in his hands. I just told him to keep the umbrella's point on Ahmad and when he lifted the umbrella over his head, I had a 7 1/2 ' high light stand that would move anywhere I asked. I have no idea why I never used this human light-stand before. It was perfect!

In the bathroom with Whitney Houston

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... We'll miss you girl.

Wolves vs Lions

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......

Have I mentioned that it's all about light?

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...

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

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.

Panoramas

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

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.....

Making money with a camera

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

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.

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Fun with the folks at Nestle

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

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!

Parse3

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

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

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).

Annual Reports

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

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

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

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.

Pharmaceutical Still-life

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?