These are a couple pre-shoot shots of my assistants Tyler an Justin from a recent shoot.  A lot of times, the assistants are more photogenic than the actual subjects (but not in Justin’s case).

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This is a photo I shot for the article in San Francisco Magazine I wrote about the other day.  It was shot on location at the very cool restaurant Serpentine, which happens to be in the same building as my studio.  The photo editor for the magazine said this felt like an Edward Hopper painting.  Edward Hopper is a favorite of mine, so I liked that.

Here is the image in the opener for the article:

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Last month I photographed a project for San Francisco Magazine on “Reinvention.”  The article was about eighteen people who have recently reinvented themselves, most of them going from a more traditional career to something they are far more passionate about.  It was a great project to work on and I met a lot of interesting people over the four days of shooting.

I thought it was appropriate when I got called to shoot this project;  I did my own reinvention not long ago.  Before I was a photographer I was a network engineer in the Silicon Valley for six years after studying Computer Science in college.  In a long and not terribly interesting story I won’t bore you with here, I left my job and randomly ended up studying photography in Victoria British Columbia.  In 2005 I moved back to the Bay Area and was foolish enough to think I could be a professional photographer.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve  been a photographer as long I was an engineer.  Still to this day I tend to consider myself a tech geek more than a creative type.  It took a long time before I could actually call myself a photographer;  If someone asked what I did for a living I would say something like “Well, I used to be an engineer… but now I’m giving photography try.”  As if the technical background would somehow justify it if they really hated my work.  Now, if anyone asks, I say I’m a photographer… but there’s always a little thought in my head about my tech background making me wonder what the hell I’m doing posing as a photographer.

Check out the article in the June issue of San Francisco Magazine.  The article isn’t on their website yet, but here is a PDF copy:
Reinvention

Who else out there has reinvented themselves?  Leave a comment if you’ve got a story.

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Back in December I did a shoot for Wine Spectator magazine, photographing French Laundry’s owner and chef Thomas Keller.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to eat at French Laundry while we were there since it was early in the morning, but they did provide us with some of the best pastries I’ve ever had in my life.  And, the gift bag they gave us full of freshly made desserts was gone within minutes of arriving home.

As often happens, the magazine didn’t choose any of the pictures I actually liked.  I don’t have the entire article, but here is the opener:

This is another image they used in the article:

And, a couple more of my favorites from the shoot that didn’t get used:

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After the iPad was announced I wrote about the potential for using an iPad as a portfolio… Well now the iPad is here (yes, i was one of the loser dorks standing in line at 6:30am) and I did a quick test with a few images to try it out.

I’m writing this on my iPad, and let me tell you, after only a day of use it’s still a major PITA.  And don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about anything other than the iPad’s functionality as a portfolio… I’m quite certain there are thousands of iPad reviews out there by now for all the other stuff.

The main tools you use to get your images on the iPad is iPhoto (which I never use) and of course iTunes where you set up the syncing options for photos. Once the images are on the iPad, you’ll use the Photos app to display the images.  As of this writing there are no other photo viewing apps, but that may change assuming Apple doesn’t consider it “core functionality” and reject any apps that do something the included Photos app does (only better).

The Photos app is pretty straight forward: find the portfolio you want to view, select an image and swipe left or right to view the previous/next image and pinch to zoom in and out. There are a few slideshow options if you want an automated presentation.

One thing I was worried about was the way the images would be displayed.  On the iPhone, a vertical image when holding the iPhone vertically is displayed in the screen’s aspect ratio. So, an image that is not as “tall” would be cropped on the sides unless you “pinch” the image to see the whole thing (oddly enough, a horizontal image that isn’t as “wide” would be displayed properly when holding the iPhone horizontally).  This is not a problem on the iPad, the full image is displayed regardless of it’s aspect ratio.  I had visions (nightmares) of needing to add padding on the top and bottom of each image, so I’m glad I don’t need to do that.

Images look great on the iPad’s display; crisp, vibrant and sharp.  There is a three dimensionality to the images and color seems accurate.  I did have to make new versions of all the images I wanted on the iPad since most of my “web ready” images were at a lower resolution.  I made them about twice as large as the iPad’s resolution so a viewer can zoom in and still see a sharp image.  However, it looks like iPhoto reduces the size of the image during export because an image with 2000 pixels on the longest side zoomed in identically to the same image with 4000 pixels on the longest side.  I chose to make my images with 2000 pixels on the longest side. One gripe (beside the iPhoto compression) is, the iPad will still let you zoom to a point where the image looks pixelated.  I’d rather it stopped at 100% zoom.  The order of images on the iPad is the order you arrange them in your iPhoto album, so it’s pretty easy to get your images in the order you want.

Overall i like the iPad as a impromptu portfolio… Not a main portfolio at this point, but a portfolio you can whip out during a meeting to show newer work when your printed portfolio is a bit out of date (and aren’t they always).  But at this point it’s a bit simplistic to use as your real portfolio.  Maybe that will change some day when new photo viewing apps arrive.  But, personally i think I’ll always prefer a nice printed portfolio to images on a display.

And finally, for god’s sake, can we please stop using phrases like “game changer” or calling things “HD”! Enough already!

Everything in this post was done with an iPad or iPhone… Kinda cool. Although it did take about five times longer than normal and some things didn’t work as they should so I had to use slower more painstaking workarounds.

Here is a quick clip of my test portfolio being scrolled through:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHjWmEufPDM

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The above image was used on the cover of the January 2010 issue of Investment Advisor (as if you couldn’t read).

I’m not big on compositing.  I tend to like straight photography (although, now days you never can be too sure).  Whenever I see a photographer who does those big time 52 images to make one image, I’m never really impressed.  But, a lot of times I’ll go to the “personal work” section of their website and see straight images that I like.

Since I don’t do much compositing, I’m obviously not that adept at it.  The above image probably maxed out my compositing skills (and yes, I know there is literally no easier image to composite that than putting two people against the same backdrop together).  If I ever get called on to do some images that require heavy compositing, I’ll definitely be outsourcing to a retoucher.

Here are the two separate images.

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I often don’t like images right away.  Or, I’ll immediately like one image from a shoot better than another.  Then, I’ll come across a set of images from a shoot months later and realize I do like the images or that I like an image I didn’t like at first better than the one I originally liked.  This is one of the those images.  Last night I came came across the image in my library and decided I liked it.

The photo was shot for Psychology Today.  It was actually from the shoot I wrote about in my post “An Editorial Day.” For some reason this issue is the only issue not on their website, but someone did post a PDF of the issue here.

And then today, the morning after I re-discovered the image, I got an email from Psychology Today for another shoot.  Coincidence or fate?

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My series of guitarist portraits is up on my site.   Here is one of the other guitarists I shot back in December.  Not sure what to call this project… right now I’m just going with the obvious “Guitarists.”  You can see the full gallery here.

This is Reyka of the band Death Valley High.  He’s playing a Ibanez Artist from the 70’s.

I have a lead on a few more guitarists, so hopefully I’ll be adding more soon.

Styling by Tietjen Fischer
Hair/Makeup by Veronica Sjoen

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Great, someone else talking about the iPad this week… how original.

I haven’t decided if I want one or not just yet but I began to wonder if the freshly announced Apple iPad could be an acceptable portfolio to bring to a portfolio showing.  I’ll go ahead and say I don’t think it can beat a great custom designed and printed portfolio with current work… but those are limited to whatever prints you have in your portfolio at any given moment.  And as anyone who has a printed portfolio knows, keeping your book current isn’t as easy as one might think… especially if it’s a bound book.

My portfolio isn’t bound (I don’t use plastic sleeves though) and even though changing my portfolio only means unscrewing a few binding posts, the fact that I print on the front and back of each page, if I want to replace just one photo in my portfolio it can mean a lot of re-printing if I want to keep a certain flow to the book.  This leads to infrequent updating.

I would never even remotely think of a laptop as a viable alternative to a real portfolio because it’s so cumbersome and awkward.  But an iPad is anything but cumbersome (from the looks of it).  Just hand it over and the Art Buyer, Photo Editor, or whoever you’re showing your portfolio to can grab it and swipe from photo to photo with their fingers.  They can throw it into a grid view to see all the photos and go to the ones they like the best.  Very easy.  No keyboard, no mouse, no muss, no fuss.  Want to show them some work that’s a bit different than what you normally keep in your portfolio, open up a different gallery and  there are even more images.  Want to show off some cool new feature on your blog or website, open up Safari and you’re there (assuming you have wifi or good 3G reception… which if you’re on AT&T in San Francisco, then, you won’t!)

An image on a 1024×768 display, while not as big as an 11×14 print, still looks pretty good.  And, if the viewer wants, they can zoom in with the flick of their fingers and get to a level of detail a print won’t show.  A lot of people like the tactile feeling of holding an actual portfolio and flipping through prints, but the iPad provides the next best thing (although I don’t know if I’d be quite as giddy as the guys in this video).

Of course, I doubt you’re going to toss the iPad in a FedEx box the next time you have to ship your portfolio out… although, the lowest priced iPad is cheaper than my real 11×14 portfolio, so 4 iPads would actually save money and be easier to maintain than 4 traditional portfolios.  I’m sure there will be places making custom skins for the iPad soon enough so you can even custom brand your iPad.

Now, I’m not going to get into some nerdy tech debate about the features that are missing from the iPad… those have been well documented and are quite disappointing (and shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for anyone who knows how Apple does things).  I’m just focusing on the portfolio aspect of the iPad and I think it could be kinda cool.

Hmm, maybe I just justified the purchase.

UPDATE:
I did buy one, and you can see my thoughts here.

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As if regular guitar face wasn’t enough, here are a few out-takes from the Guitarists shoot I wrote about last week that made me laugh.  Now that is some serious guitar face (more below).

Still working on the images and should have the finals ready soon enough.

I’m also working on some images I shot of Thomas Keller of French Laundry before Christmas for Wine Spectator that I’m pretty happy with.  Unfortunately the magazine doesn’t come out for a while so I can’t show any just yet.  And it’s always nice to get a note like this from the Photo Editor: “Thanks for all the options.  My art director was over the moon.”

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