I photographed Christopher Hitchens a while back for the Village Voice.   I just read that Hitchens will be going through chemo therapy for cancer.  Love him or hate him I don’t think you could deny he’s an original and speaks his mind regardless of the trouble it may get him in (read the comments at the linked article and I’m sure you’ll find equal number of people wishing him ill as wishing him well). He’s been one of my most interesting subjects to date and did not disappoint with what I was expecting (among other things, rolling out of bed at noon with a cigarette in hand and a constant flow of cigarettes thereafter).  I hope all goes well with the chemo therapy for Mr. Hitchens.

Hitchens’ memoir, “Hitch 22: A Memoir” was just recently released.  You can read an excerpt on Vanity Fair’s website.

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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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Well here’s something I wasn’t even aware of until people started telling me the saw my blog featured in Photoshelter’s Blog Handbook.  So after thinking “Huh?!?!” to myself,  I looked it up and sure enough there I was on page 23 as a case study.  To my surprise the title wasn’t “Blog Case Study: What NOT To Do With Your Blog, Jeff Singer Is A Loser”

You can download your copy of Photoshelter’s Blog Handbook here.

What’s going on … not to long ago Adbase had a similar feature on my blog.  Maybe it’s not just my mom reading my blog.

Anyway here is what Photoshelter has to say about my blog:

Specialty:
Editorial portraiture

Goal:
To appeal to potential clients by showing them the personality behind the camera.

Audience:
Potential editorial and commercial clients who want to learn more about their photographer.

Key Elements:
• Personal, opinionated content
• Fully integrated brand presence from blog to portfolio
• Links to his social networking sites as well as a live twitter feed on the site of his blog
• Good presentation of images and videos
• Frequent references back to his portfolios

What makes it successful?
Jeff ’s blog is successful because you (and photo editors) get to know him through reading his posts. Jeff shares his many opinions, anecdotes about typing on his iPad, and about how his love of guitars lead to a personal project photographing a guitarist.

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If this is the future of publishing… we’re screwed.  Ok, maybe that’s a little over dramatic given the iPad has only been around for a couple weeks.  But, taking a look at the ratings and comments on the current crop of magazines and newspapers available on the iPad, people aren’t too impressed.  Obviously all of the magazines are still trying to figure things out… But I was hoping for something better than what we got for the iPad debut.

The biggest complaint in the user reviews… surprise surprise… was pricing.  Yes, as hard as it is to believe, people don’t want to pay for anything anymore.  It’s not even that they could get the same content for free on a website… I believe people would still complain about paying for things like news, photography, and media, even if all the free content were to go away.  It’s just the unfortunate current mindset.

I however don’t mind paying for content.  I would gladly shell out for an iPad subscription to my favorite magazines (or better yet, a combo dead-trees edition and an almost free iPad edition subscription… I still like physical magazines).  So you won’t hear me complain about paying for the content.

But, aside from price complaints there were just a lot of problems with the iPad magazine apps.  From bugs (Time), to low resolution content (Men’s Health), to confusing interfaces (Popular Science) to apps just not working at all (Outside Magazine, which has been fixed).  In the short term, things are just not looking good for the future of publishing (if you believe the iPad or tablets are the future).  Long term, TBD.

Another complaint is the iTunes App store itself.  Finding the magazines is a major PITA.  Some are located under News, some under Entertainment, and some under Lifestyle.  And, within those categories the magazines are mixed in with the many (mostly crappy) iPad apps:  Do I want the latest Outside Magazine or “Cat Fun for iPad“? (which by the way has a higher rating than any magazine app)  There needs to be a category just for Magazines/News.

I’m probably not your typical magazine consumer.  I have about 10 magazine subscriptions.  In addition to that, I’m always buying one-off issues of many other magazines.  At any given time I may have 10-20 current issues of various magazines laying around.  Aside from the countless wasted trees and coffee table real-estate these magazines account for, I certainly don’t want 10-20 iPad applications floating around my iPad desktop (yes, iPhone OS 4 will help with the new folders feature).  And from the looks of it, that is what will happen since every magazine is going to have their own app in order to have their own experience.  Worse than that, some magazines, as currently implemented, will put an icon on your desktop for each issue… Something I have no doubt will change since that is clearly a bad implementation.

Books have iBooks and the various other readers that contain all your eBooks, but books aren’t expected to be as visually rich and engaging as a magazine.  A one stop application or iMagazine format isn’t likely.  Right now there is Zinio, which allows you to download a wide selection of magazines and those issues are all contained within the Zinio app.  However, these are little more than PDF versions of the magazines and far from what people think of when talking about publishing on tablet devices.

Another problem is, how do we really want to consume our magazines on these devices?  For example, take a look at what Viv Magazine has come up with as an iPad concept.  It looks visually amazing and engaging.  But, do I really want to go through all of that just to read an article? (and, can a magazine really sustain the costs in developing an entire issue like that?)

I’m sure there are many great Art Directors designing some great iPad/Tablet versions of their magazines as we speak (I’m talking to you Wired).  But I think there is a long way to go before we see a good selection of well designed versions of our favorite magazines available on tablet devices… a really long way.  What we’ll have in the meantime will likely be a majority of magazines rushing out what are little more than PDF’s with a some interactive menus and video thrown in and a few well designed and thought out magazines.  Hopefully over time the well designed magazines will prevail.

Now, I’ve got to get back to “Cat Fun for iPad”… it really is the cutest damn thing.

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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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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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