jeff singer photography BLOG

While setting up for a shoot in front of Moscone Center last week, I was greeted by a loud and dedicated protester.  Inside the center was the annual Mortgage Brokers Association Convention & Expo.  Outside was the lone protester.  He was protesting the government bailout of the mortgage and financial industry.  What he lacked in numbers, he made up for in heart.  The fact there was only one of him didn’t stop him from taking the opportunity to disrupt the mainstream media (I guess that would be me) from glorifying the mortgage industry and the government bailout (again, me?).

Unfortunately for him we weren’t quite ready to shoot and were only in the setup phase.  Sadly, he was ushered away by the time the shoot was ready to begin.  I didn’t want him to feel like he didn’t accomplish anything, so I went ahead and snapped this shot of him in action.

Fight on lone protester, fight on!

I was talking about my lack of blogging over diner with a friend the other day. She only recently has taken the time to read some of my writing and said she thought it was funny. I think she was just being kind. I thanked her in my typical uncomfortable with compliments kind of way. I stated the obvious and mentioned that I hadn’t really been blogging much lately, to which she asked why. I didn’t really know how to answer. I mean, I’ve actually been fairly busy with some interesting projects and there’s no reason I shouldn’t be writing about them and other things I’ve been working on lately.

One problem is, I usually think of how to write about something at the strangest or most inopportune of times. By the time I’m in a place where I can get my thoughts down, they’ve already left me. Even with this post I was lying in bed just about to fall asleep when I started thinking about what I should write. My initial thought was to wait until morning but I knew if I did I wouldn’t remember anything I was thinking. So, despite my quickly approaching sleep, I sat up, grabbed the laptop and started typing away…. and I know what you’re thinking… I should have just gone to bed.

I could take a que from other bloggers out there. Take Thomas Broening for example… he always has something to say… sometimes even two or three times a day. I know Thomas and I’m sure he knows I respect his work and blog so I think he’ll understand when I say this: His posts are a mixed bag from the long and fascinating to brief and interesting to the lengthy and mind numbing to the quick and useless. The posts mix his personal life, at times with no photographic content, to his professional musings.

Should I do the same? I’ve always thought that I couldn’t imaging anyone being remotely interested in what I had to say if it didn’t have something to do with photography (and even when it does, only slightly). Do I start talking about my personal life here? Do you want to know who I’m dating? With the exception of my mom, I seriously doubt it (I’ll fill you in later Mom). While my personal life is often the source of great amusement for some of my close friends, I doubt it has broad appeal. So, I think for now I’ll stick to the photography related posts (or blog writing related posts)… but who knows, if I get desperate again maybe I’ll let you know my plans for Saturday night.

Like I said, I’ve had some interesting projects over the last month or two… so I’m going to do my best to get back into the swing of things with this blog. But, that will have to wait for another day… I want to get to sleep now.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why there’s a picture of a bus at the beginning this post… This last weekend I finally came across one of the many busses driving around San Francisco with a recent campaign I shot for SPM Advertising for Brown & Toland.

So far I haven’t made any posts about the technical side of photography, topics like equipment for example. This is actually quite amazing given that I am such a tech/equipment dork. It had to happen eventually so here I am with my first equipment post. And in true tech dork fashion, its a complaint.

I’ve been shooting with the Phase One P25/P25+ for about a year now. Before that I was shooting with a Canon 1DS MkII, which I still have and use for certain shoots. I’ve been mostly happy with the Phase One back, with one major exception: backlit scenes. When shooting into the sun or an artificial light, image detail is lost on a “strip” of the image near the light source. Here is an example:

Here is Phase’s response to the issue:

“the light is hitting the ccd at such a strength that is goes way above and beyond the dynamic range capabilities of the sensor. The anolog electrical signal produced in the pixel is more than it can handle and it gets passed to the next photosite in progression, hence the straight line. A similar thing happens in silver hallide crystals of film with the exception that they pass energy in all directions.”

Not very helpful to someone who likes to shoot with heavy backlight.

The problem I have with the response is, I never experienced this with my Canon 1DSmkII. So, I’ve sent off an email to Leaf to see if their digital backs would exhibit the same problem. I fully expect an email touting how great the Leaf back is and that it will not have the problem. If that is the case I’ll blindly buy the Leaf back and live happily ever after… yeah, right. In reality, if I do get a response saying the Leaf back won’t exhibit the problem I’ll have a Leaf tech come to my studio and prove it does in fact work well in backlit scenes. I’ll keep you posted on the results.

If anyone reading uses a Phase, Leaf, or another MFDB and sees or doesn’t see this problem, let me know.

I just read a post over at Michael Surgre’s blog about traveling for work. This is something I think about all the time, but on the opposite side: personal travel. I find it hard to take photographs when I travel for myself. If I go somewhere for a job or a personal project I don’t have this problem. After all, that is why I am there. But if I am in a new location for personal travel I find I don’t take many photos. And I usually feel guilty about it. I feel like “Hey, I’m a photographer, I should be taking pictures!”I was in Prague on a shoot for Eleven Inc. The shoot only lasted a day, but I stayed in Prague for a couple extra days. My flight also took me through Paris, to which I had never been, so of course I stayed a few days in Paris as well. Outside of the photos taken on the shoot, I didn’t take many photographs of either city.Now, if I were sent to Paris or Prague on assignment to photograph the city things would be different. I wouldn’t be in tourist mode. I would be looking for locations, finding the right light in the right spot and going back to these locations at the right time for that light… even if it means getting up at 3am to get to the location and set up. But when I’m in a new place as a tourist, I want to take my time walking around, exploring, eating, seeing, and being a tourist… and I damn sure don’t want to get up at 3am (and in Prague, thanks to some of the client and crew and some Absinthe, we didn’t even get home until after 4am)Sure, on vacation I’ll take some pictures along the way. But to me, I have different mentalities when at a location for a job and at a location for a vacation. I don’t remember who it was, but I read a comment by a travel photographer who, when on personal vacation, doesn’t even take a camera. I don’t think I’d ever go that far because I do like taking pictures (I’d hope so, its what I do after all). But it’s nice to be at a location and not have to worry about getting the great shots and finding the perfect locations and being there at the perfect time.So, if someone wants to send me back to Paris for a job I would be more than happy to photograph the city for you and I won’t need to be a tourist this time. And if someone wants to send me to a city I’ve never been to, I’d happily forgo my personal itinerary to get the perfect shots for you.The photo above is one of the pictures I did take while in Paris.

The other day I was talking to someone about junk mail and I couldn’t remember the name of Greendimes. I knew I had mentioned it here recently, so I said something like “oh, its on my blog.” Right as I said it, I thought to myself, “how lame does that sound?” I mean really, who the hell am I to have a blog? Who in their right mind would want to read my blog (Hi Mom).Ok, if I constrain my blog to photography then I have some (small) reason to have a blog. I read other photographers blogs all the time and find some of them interesting. They range from the self aggrandizing to the completely pointless to the downright informational. I will say that I’m not that thrilled when “photography” bloggers start talking about non-photography related subjects (no Mr. Photog, I don’t want to know your opinion on the Republican candidates for the 2008 election). Admittedly, I’m somewhat guilty of this myself.Oh well, you know what they say: “opinions are like ass holes, everybody has one.”  Unfortunately, unlike ass holes, people have way too many opinions.I’ll try to keep things on topic… starting tomorrow. Bonus points if you know what the hell the title of this post means.You can stop reading now Mom.

I’ve been reading interviews with a few of the leading fashion/editorial/advertising photographers working today. These are the photographers taking the cover photos of the top fashion magazines. Photographers shooting the latest ad campaigns for top designers. These are the photographers that are likely known to people who know nothing about photography. Whenever one of the the photographers was asked about the extent of retouching done to their photos they would say they do no retouching to their images.I had to laugh at that. Are these photographers, who are clearly at the top of the photographer food chain, so vain that they can’t admit that their images have had work done to them? What is it about their ego that can’t let them admit that their images need work after the photo has been taken. I think that we’ve seen more than enough evidence to the contrary. I’ve seen images from great photographers before any work was done to them, and trust me, they all needed post production to get them to their final state. Why do some think this is a bad thing?Maybe when they say “they” don’t do any retouching to their images they’re playing a game of semantics. Because, I’m quite certain that they don’t do the actual retouching. These are photographers that have people to do things for them (one even seemed to take pride in the fact that he didn’t even know the type of equipment he was shooting with). Maybe the magazines/clients are getting the top retouchers to do it for them behind their backs.Who knows. Whatever the reason, its silly they don’t want to admit their images have had work done. Of course, none of my images are retouched at all.What I listened to last week:The Kinks, Muswell HillbiliesWhat I watched last week:Entourage Season FinaleWhat I read last week:Chasing CoolPhoto hair/makeup: Veronica Sjoen

I can’t believe its been over a whole year since my last blog entry. Well, time flies as they say. So, I think its time to start up the blog again. Like anything in life you just need to get into a habit and that is what I need to do to get back into the blogging mode (not that I was ever heavy into the blogging in the past). So, for my first entry in over a year I keep it short and simple. That way I can work my way back into blogging and have something to write about on those days where thoughts aren’t flooding in. The shot I’m posting today is from a recent personal shoot I did. I loved the retro look of the subject’s dress. So the makeup artist (Veronica Sjoen) gave Tina a look to go with the dress… trust me, if you saw the other looks we did you wouldn’t think it was the same person. I love the calmness on her face… which again, if you saw the other pictures you wouldn’t think it was the same person. Anyway, that is all for today, check back and I promise it won’t be a year before my next entry.

Anna was thrilled to see herself on my blog. And now, I’m sure she will be even more happy to see that she is here twice while her sister Sara is only her once.

So, I received a call from Anna’s Aunt. Apparently she was distraught at the fact that her sister Sara made my website and blog and she didn’t. So, without further ado, here is the Beautiful Anna.

This image was a shot for the Financial Post Business. The magazine was doing their annual CEO rankings and John Feltheimer, the CEO of Lions Gate Films was on the list. I photographed John in the back yard of his Los Angeles home, a very nice home as I’m sure you can imagine. John had just about the tiniest dog I’d ever seen. I wanted to photograph him holding the dog in one had. Unfortunately his “people” didn’t think it would be a good idea because they didn’t like the image of him with such a “less than manly” dog. Next week will be a busy week for me. I’m shooting a campaign for Country Wide. I’ll be spending a couple days at their Dallas offices and then a few more in Los Angeles.

For the Financial Post cover shoot we needed a Harley. A San Francisco dealer (Golden Gate Harley Davidson) provided the bike for us. Along with the bike the sent this guy to make suer everything was fine, and from the looks of him, he’s not someone you want to mess with. He was great… and for him, he was having a blast. He thought helping out on the shoot was one of the coolest thing he’d ever done. While setting up for the shoot I took a few shots of him… you couldn’t cast someone better for the part of “Biker guy.”

I recently shot a cover image for the Canadian magazine Financial Post Business. The shoot went well and everyone involved was happy with the images. Hair and makeup was done by Diane Catorc and styling was done by Patricia LaCava. This shot was an outake, my favorite from the shoot, but of course not the images chosen by the magazine.

I did a series of surfer portraits as a personal project. What started out as a test of my new camera (Canon 1DS MkII) turned into a little project for myself. I went down to a local surf spot in Santa Cruz California to take some pictures with my new camera so I could get to know it better. Once I got home and started playing with the portraits I took I decided I liked what I saw and started going back to take more.

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This was another shoot for Playboy magazine. They were featuring the artwork of an artist from just north of San Francisco in Petaluma California, Denise Leite. She was pretty crazy and fun to work with. I’m sure you can tell not only by her art work but also her outfits and hair that she is very unique.

As is usually the case, the magazine didn’t pick my favorite image. This was my favorite from the session.

I photographed author Peter Manso for Playboy Magazine at his home not far from San Francisco. This was the shot they used in the magazine. Peter has written many biographies, including one on Marlon Brando. The article in the magazine was about the war over Brando’s estate.

Welcome to my blog. Here you’ll be able to find news, updates and projects I’ve been working on. I’ll also frequently post pictures for past and current shoots. Feel free to make comments. Thanks for stopping by.