Look out bunnies!

This is the last shot for my table top WPUNJ image. I shoot each image as the students look on so they can then do them for themselves the next week. They learn how to light different things by #1. seeing me shoot them and then #2. shoot them themselves. We'll see how they do next Monday...

a favorite

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.

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.

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.....

Bobby Simmons

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.

History Channel

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 Bear

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.

It's a crazy life!

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?

School

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

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!

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

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