jeff singer photography BLOG

Seems that I made the cut over at Rob Haggart’s A Photo Editor slideshow of photographers he likes. You can head over to the Fickr page or the slideshow website and check out a lot of great work.

Just remember to come back here and hire me.

This is a shout out to my dear friend and assistant Emily Merrill. Emily entered the above picture into APA San Francisco’s Something Personal Exhibition and was notified that not only was she accepted, she has in fact won best image of the show! So suck on that all you big time San Francisco advertising photographers… my assistant can kick your assistant’s ass… and yours for that matter… and mine!Yeah, I had my entry accepted into the exhibition as well, but clearly the truly talented are the ones that get the recognition.Emily, I will be submitting my resume to you ASAP. I hope you will consider me for any assisting positions you may have open. It would be an honor and joy to work for you. And remember, all those times I mocked you in front of the clients and locked you in the car… I was totally kidding! (Why have you stopped returning my calls?)Congratulations Emily I am very proud of you. Can I tell people I discovered you?Here is a shot of Emily I took on a shoot last week. She often makes my life difficult because its next to impossible for the real subject to be as lovely and graceful as Emily is in the setup shots… you try sticking a grumpy business man in her place and comparing the results!

They say you can learn as much about the photographer who takes a picture as you do about the person being photographed. I was never really sure about that, especially when it came to my work. What did my images say about me?Then one day my friend and assistant Emily Merrill said something that struck a chord with me. She said that I’m always trying to make people look cool. I never really thought about it, I just did what I did. But in looking back at most of my photographs, I can see some truth to it, for the most part. I’m not talking about some kind of ultra-look-at-how-cool-I-am kind of cool. To me its a subtle cool. My subjects tend to look like they don’t give a crap. And in particular, they don’t give a crap about being cool. Because, anyone who gives a crap about being cool, isn’t cool.If pressed, I would say that this subconscious desire to make people look cool stems from my lack of coolness. I mean, I think I’m cool, but doesn’t everybody think they’re cool? Unlike a lot of people, I can admit that outside my own head, I’m not cool. Usually it’s high school where people become paranoid about coolness. I wasn’t unpopular in high-school. I wasn’t one of the kids that all the cool people made fun of. I wasn’t one of the cool kids either. I wasn’t particularly anything. I was pretty shy back then and I had my few friends and that was about it. So, not a dork, not cool… just, there.Oh, don’t think I’m trying to pour my heart out here and get sympathy for feeling left out in high-school (who wasn’t… and I’m not talking to you Johnny Tango, we know you were cool in high-school). But if I had to pinpoint where my preoccupation (if you can call it that) for coolness began, that would be it.So now that I have this realization about my images, how will this affect the way I work? Will I now attempt to knowingly make people look cool, when before it was just the way I worked. If I do that, things may seemed forced. And anytime something is forced, it doesn’t usually work. Who knows. Maybe I should do the opposite, maybe I should make people look uncool or quirky. I just don’t feel like that would be me. So, maybe I should just get out of my head and do what I do.What I listened to last week:The Rolling Stones, Exile On Main St.What I watched last week:Mad MenWhat I read last week:Image Makers, Image Takers

I recently photographed a dancer at my studio. This was the first time I’ve photographed a dancer so wasn’t really sure how to go about doing it. I’ll admit I’m not the quickest at pushing the button, especially when shooting with larger formats. I generally like to work slow and methodical, so if something springs out of nowhere in front of my lens, chances are I’ll catch the tail end of it by the time I’m in focus and ready to push the button. If I were a sports photographer, I’d likely get “The Celebration” rather than “The Catch.”Having finished the shoot and gone through the images I already know what I’d do differently. I can see that I didn’t get enough movement in many of the earlier photos from the session. A lot of the images look like she is either posing or doing Yoga even though she was actively dancing. My favorite of the dancing shots is one above that showed movement. I like how the hair is covering her entire face and just one eye is focused right on the lens (although in the low res version it does look like her eye is closed). It shows movement and a connection to the viewer. I like a lot of the other images, but this would be my select for the dancing images.Let me know what you think of the images and if you have any tips for shooting dancers I’d love to hear them.Here are some more of the dancing images:Photo hair/makeup: Veronica Sjoen

I thought I’d post a link to a blog entry I read recently on John Loomis’ Blog about the bidding process and low priced photographers. It was a coincidence he posted about this subject when he did because not a week before his post I was confronted with the same exact problem he writes about and was discussing it with some other photographers. I guess all photographers who value their work and bid on projects accordingly run into this problem all the time. The problem of course being photographers who bid next to nothing for a shoot and give away all their rights to the images.

As a client, I would be worried about hiring the lowest bidder for fear that they don’t really know what they’re getting into. If you’re dealing with a larger production and someone says they can do it for a quarter of what an experienced photographer can do the job , chances are they don’t really understand the complexity of the shoot. Once you’ve hired this photographer, you may not know how badly things are going to turn out until its too late. Not only that, there is usually a reason the low priced photographer is low priced and even if it isn’t a big production you can’t be sure of the quality you will get.

Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world and quite often it is the lowest bidder, and thus lowest quality, that is chosen. Not only that, often times “good enough” is good enough as can be seen by the abundance of visual crap we see on a daily basis. I remember not too long ago, after i submitted an estimate for a job I was called by the potential client asking if I could come down in my price. They told me another photographer was significantly lower in price. I asked who the photographer was and looked at his work online. As politely as I could, I let them know why that photographer was so cheap. Clearly they would have been getting a lower quality photograph. The potential client’s response to this was… and I kid you not… “how much would you charge to take a bad photograph?” I laughed and told him I just didn’t think it would work out.

Here is to the clients that want to produce something better than”just good enough.” Thank you!

I’ve never really pursued having my work shown in galleries or exhibits. Its not that I don’t want to show work in galleries, it just hasn’t been my primary focus so far. However, starting on August 6th and running until Augu19th I will have four pieces in a group exehbition at the Space Gallery in San Francisco. The exhibit is being put in by Yelp and The Space Gallery. The theme of the exhibit is Reflections on City Life & Community. There will be an artists reception which is open to the public on August 16th from 7:30pm to 11pm. You can follow the Space Gallery link to find more information.

I was contacted by Southwest Airlines to do a shoot for the in-flight magazine Southwest Spirit. They were doing an article on “Vintage San Francisco” and they wanted it shot in B&W. It sounded like a great project and I was excited to get it. Then the Photo Editor said something I couldn’t believe… she said that it was ok to shoot digitally.

As she was describing the project I was already envisioning how I was going to shoot the project. Getting a request for a B&W shoot is rare enough now days, but a story about Vintage San Francisco that contains primarily architecture and wanting it in B&W is even rarer still. I thought there is no way I’m going to shoot this with a 35mm digital camera! (which was the equipment I had at time) Don’t get me wrong. I’m no “anti-digital” purist. I am a tech nerd through and through (yes, I got the iPhone days within release). Tech was even what I used to do in a past life before photography. I am fully digital, 35mm to Medium Format and Large Format. But if there was ever a project that called for using a large format View Camera and Polaroid Type 55 film, this was it. At the time i didn’t have a View Camera and had never used Type 55 film, but it was something that I’ve always wanted to use. So, I went out and bought the equipment and learned on this shoot. It was great traveling all around the city and looking at places I’ve seen every day in a whole new light.

The Photo Editor loved the results and I think the images were far better than a 35mm digital camera could have produced. I know its not the equipment that makes a photograph, but there is something a little more soulful to taking a picture with a View Camera and Polaroid film. For me, its like the difference between Vinyl and an MP3… sure there are pops and scratches on the vinyl but it gives a different mood and warmth that can’t be matched, even if it is just in my mind.

This week I’m shooting a series of image for San Francisco Magazine. Normally I’m hired to photograph people, but they liked my beachscapes of the Santa Cruz area. So, for this shoot I’ll be photographing Costanoa, which is just south of Pescadero. So, weather permitting I’ll be heading down the coast the next few days.

I’ve been a bit busy the last couple weeks. The most time consuming thing is my move to a new location and studio in San Francisco. I also shot a small campaign for the Franciscan winery. This image was actually the image that made them want to hire me. You can see the ad running in Esquire soon. Well, back to unpacking.