Business, pt. II

In a previous life that ended just a few months ago, I spent many years in the advertising department of a major Northeastern U.S. supermarket chain. while my last position was that of a web/electronic media specialist, I also (ahem...) did time as a layout artist and creative man, amongst other positions. After my stint doing production photography for the print ads, I was often called upon to shoot store interiors and exteriors around the region, especially when there was a grand opening or reopening.

In the first panel above there is a shot of a video monitor that ran content when the on-staff chef was not in front of the cameras cooking. Some of that content included video billboards that acted as promos for each of the store's departments. These were created by yours truly using Final Cut Express and Live Type. Nice resume builder, but nothing else much came of it because of the company's rather conservative business outlook. Nothing spectacular here photo wise, but just a look into what kind of corporate experiences can be had if you can pull off the work...

Business...

As I said, I shoot more because my clients need it than I would if they didn't. Above is one example of where my photos wind up, which is on a CD jacket designed for a duplication run by Discmakers. I've been doing work that goes to them for more than 10 years. Their friendly service combined with my prepress experience has made for some great work and a trouble free production run each and every time. They're not the only game in town, but I think their help to the independent film and music community has been invaluable.  You can't buy this CD because it's just a demo, but you can go to his website (which I built) and listen to clips from the tracks. Oh, and guess what? I'm playing drums on the recording, but more about that later... 

Honey, I Blurred The Background (and the foreground, too...)

I think there's no question that one of the funnest things about photography along with lighting and stuff is working with depth of field. It truly separates an SLR boy or girl from the point and shooters.

And I think most devotees of photography will admit to being lured by the beauty of seeing a subject pop from the background in such a dramatic way that they will probably at first go nuts and shoot everything at ƒ/2.8 and wider, even when it can be too much of a good thing. The photo of this lovely young subject was one of my earliest semi successes with a portrait featuring depth of field, but at ƒ/1.8, it made for such a narrow plane of focus that the hair closest to the camera was also a bit out of focus. I chose this one because it was the most attractive pose, and she would be most unhappy if I had posted one of the others instead, some of which have more colorful blurred backgrounds. But I think this illustrated the point just fine. Sure, shoot some at ƒ/2.8 and wider, but also do a few with a narrower aperture as well. Regardless, I'd still blow a couple grand on a nice ƒ/1.2 if I had the cash...

The Prerequisite Flower Shot

Okay, let's get this over with. Are photography students required to shoot flowers at some point in their studies? It seems every amateur that posts online sure has. Well, here's my contribution to that venerable institution. Ken says to stop shooting flowers-go find more interesting things to shoot. So you won't be seeing any more flowers in my photos, unless I shoot a wedding or one just happens to be in a picture about some other subject. FYI-Irises shot at the Presby Memorial Iris Gardens in Montclair, NJ. Everybody brings their cameras there when these things bloom. They're out now, but this shot was from 2007.

A Work In Progress, Indeed

What started as a way to serve clients better has become yet another obsession. Before websites it was CD covers, and clients had no photos. It's ten years ago, and my eye is on the growing group of digital cameras starting to get reviewed in the magazines. They are one, two megapixels at the most, just barely good enough for a full sized compact disc sleeve shot. But each new bunch gets better and better, and they start to come with the ability to use hot shoe flashes, and their own little sets of wide angle and telephoto lenses. The top names are offering the best products, and I'm wary of cameras coming from people who make watches, video games, or calculators. I have to believe that people who have been making film cameras are going to make the best products. 

If you are old enough, you may have been around when Cream's Disraeli Gears record comes out with its photo collage cover. The record reviewer says the images come from Eric Clapton, who is a Nikon freak. "Well, what's a Nikon", I wonder, and I discover that it is the name of a fine Japanese camera. I imagine one day that when I get a camera, it will be a Nikon. So my first digital camera was a Nikon. Coolpix. 950, all 2.1 megapixels of it.

And I'm just snapping, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know what white balance is, so the pictures come out blue (in one case, a happy accident-see the photos at Barry Danielian's website-or even better, buy the CD here). I don't want to use flash, but I think the camera is broken because my shit comes out really blurry every time I don't. Because the Coolpix was a system, I bought an SB something flash just so I could bounce the flash I was forced to use. And then I bought all the accessories, including the little lenses that you can get with some of the better point and shoot cameras even now. And, because I think I'm some kind of purist, I get myself a bottom of the line Nikon film camera, F-something, a couple of cheap zooms and a 50mm lens. The magazine said that was a "normal" lens, and the great photographers of the past, sometimes that's all they had to make some pretty historical pictures. My SB something flash works on it, too.

But I'm a faux purist, you see, and the same reason I never wanted to be bothered with darkrooms in the first place kept me from ever developing a single roll of film with that camera-I just put the few rolls I did shoot into the lab. I even got me a couple rolls of that rich, saturated, Fuji Velvia 50 slide film that Ken Rockwell still raves about.

And I never shot a single roll of it. I eventually donated that film camera to an organization that brought arts programs to inner city kids.

Two years later I had gotten a Coolpix 995, 'cause it had a whopping (count 'em) three megapixels, and that meant my pictures would be better, right? (Don't laugh-at that size, that's like going from 8 to 12 today! Or maybe not...). Actually the pressing thing for any graphic artist is enough resolution to crop photos and still have something of a decent size at 300ppi. The need for megapixels is a legitimate one for people whose work goes to press, not for someone making snapshots, obviously. Plus those old camera saves images as tiffs, which were as hi res as you could get before RAW files were made available to the common man.

By now I'm on the all the camera sites, checking out the latest gear, the developments in technology, and the advent of RAW and the RAW plug-in in Photoshop. I'm looking at the race between Nikon and Canon up at the high end, and I'm noticing that Canon is sorta doing things first, more often, and with more megapixels (Ken I know, I know-megapixels don't matter!). My friend Belle has a Canon Elan-something or other with the eye control focus, and she's not a brand switcher at all. And I'm reading more and more, and the list is impressive: first with autofocus, greatest number of lenses, a ƒ/1.0 50mm, a 1200mm telescope of a beast-boy these guys don't play. But $3000, $2000, even $1500 is too much to pay for a camera...

So it's August, 2003, and I have been making regular, even daily visits to the camera sites by now, and before I shut down late one evening I decide to go to Steves-Digicams. The headline read something like:

Canon Shocks The World With 6 megapixel DSLR For Under A Grand! Digital Rebel EOS-300!

Now people, this is big. I literally stood at my desk and raised my arms in the air as if a favorite team had just won the pennant! Yes!, Yes! Yes!!! I shout at the screen in sheer joy-I won't forget that night. I'd been paying a grand for each of the two previous point and shoots (those twist bodied Coolpix 900 boys were much more than simple point and shoots, but any camera that has a  "manual focus" mode which makes you choose a preset distance in feet and fractions of feet for focus is a point and shoot, dammit!), so now getting six whole megapixels for the same money was beyond my wildest dreams! However, let's not forget that this was a really dumb time to be paying that kind of money for cameras with fingernail sized sensors each time an uptick in resolution was announced, because by the time of the Rebel's introduction, prices were in freefall - 3, 4, and 5 MP point and shoots were coming out at $500... $400... $300... what can we get today? 12 megapixels for $199, somewhere, right?

But that's okay. I preordered that sucker as soon as they were taking credit cards, and it was at my doorstep the day they hit the stores! I got me an SLR, now, baby! I can trigger remote flashes, I can use that 50mm ƒ/1.8 and blur my backgrounds, I'm on fiyah! I gots me a Canon!

Most important of all, I got nice resolution, printing 13x19's on my Epsons (another waste of money-4 inks, 5 inks, 6 inks, 32 inks, all for more than the price of the printer!!! WTF???), and easily making images that give me 300 dots for a CD cover.

Eventually several clients are coming for not just CD covers, but for web sites as well. And they need pictures. And my pictures are truly rudimentary, because I'm still trying to figure out how apertures relate to shutter speeds, how ISOs affect them both, and whether the white balance settings are supposed to be dead on, a little off...

The RAW module in Photoshop begins to be somewhat of a help, in that I can correct some of the real out and out mistakes concerning exposure and white balance. This other stuff guys do to pump up the color is yet to come. I upgrade to the 10MP Rebel, I get that great EF-S ƒ/2.8 "non-L but-really-an-L-anyway" zoom, and the quality goes up a little more. Lightroom comes next, and I am exposed to some awesome post processing possibilities...

Can we please just start making some art here please?

Maybe this first shot (above) is a start. A good location, nice warm tones in the woods in the room, a real good pose.. and it makes for an awesome inside CD jacket gatefold shot (and postcard they use to get gigs with). That's bassist Rick Crane and pianist Bob Himmelberger, two great guys and both excellent players. But more on that later...