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!

Mark Ensslin

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

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

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.