haroula rose

Haroula is a musician. She's friends with a friend of mine in LA. The funny thing is that we were neighbors in Madrid for 2 years and somehow never met. So when she flew to chicago to see family and needed pictures for promotional purposes, I was stoked to meet this mystery woman. She was a pleasure to work with and I feel I got some incredible images out of the whole process. We used strobes, natural light from my windows as well and got quite a variety. These are some of my favs. Megan dodge on the face paint hair teaser once again.

fashion vs art

So i'm torn. I love shooting commercial and dabbling in fashion. But there's this hole that is only filled by doing personal work and I'm really wanting to escape the commerce side of photography and just to shoot for myself.







this is my home town at night in some intense fog the day after Christmas.





these two girls did a shoot with me, using megan dodge for makeup/hair and clothing supplied by Serpico.

Both were fun and fulfilling for different reasons, so it looks like for now, I'll keep on doing both.

Interview with photographers who work with the newyorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2009/01/12/090112_audioslideshow_portraiturenow

I love hearing about portraits from the point of view of the photographer. When it comes to shooting high profile sitters for editorial pieces there are always weird constraints. Almost no time, publicists, or unwilling sitters. Also, I really feel that portraits are almost more a reflection of the photographers at times and these two really push to get something out of the sitters, to get the pictures to show some sort of humanity. But in the end, the pictures still show the shooter. The light is theirs, the cameras they use, what they invoke in the sitters, as much as is shown about the subjects their remnants are still there, like a fingerprint on a crime scene. That's why they're hired over and over again.

leonardo

Leonardo Kaplan is an artist friend of mine. He just got a new haircut and wanted a new facebook photo. This is the result. I'm really liking this sort of light. I liked the fight between symmetry and asymmetry in his hair so I decided on using really symmetrical light.

whittier road at night

I was home for christmas in whittier, iowa. There was so much fog coming home from grandpa kluver's house my dad couldn't really see the road. Funny how in climate weather makes for great photos.

I really want to do more of this. I think i've found a new direction.

I'm thinking that I want to work more on personal work like this, and take my work in a new direction. As much as I love shooting people with studio lights, etc, the process of shooting "art" is fulfilling on different levels. The idea of working narratives came to me after reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. The stories are lush, every detail is described in depth and it made me really rethink how I shoot. Inspiring.

It just goes to show exactly how much inspiration that comes not from other people's photography, but rather other people's way of telling stories is important as a photographer. Its a way of being derivative with my work, or rather referencing something, but using my visual language to express what I'm absorbing and not being someone who just copies another's style. I guess also finding content worth talking about is half the battle, and then you have to figure out what you want to say and why you want to say it that way.

gina and marshall again

this is another few shots of Marshall and Gina. Enjoy.

this first one has a bit of post production done to it. I created a second image, desaturated it, made the tones the right texture and color of creamy white, layed it over the original, changed the transparency and then erased everything but the highlights on the second layer. Love Photoshop CS4. It's really easy to clone and the way the image adjustments work has been improved and is faster for sure.



This shot is just two adjusted shots as transparent layers on top of the original and then desaturated.


These two were purposefully underexposed to see how bringing them back to a normal level would affect the grain/noise. I like the texture. It would look good printed. Too bad the paper in the background wouldn't stay smooth...

Gina and then gina, marshall hanbury jr. and ryan adams

So I wanted to shoot a bit today and did some shots of my roommate Gina. Then Marshall came over to practice a couple of tunes with Gina and I did a quick setup and took some shots of the two of them. Here they all are.










and now the two of them



this was a quick setup with some black foamcore, marshall standing on the ottoman, two lights, no diffusion (my preferred method these days)...


and then this gem was found earlier today. I was talking about how me and Kate love Ryan Adams so much and then gina showed me this series of shots from a photo booth in NYC when her band the Blacks was playing there. Apparently Ryan Adams showed up (this was ten years ago when he first moved there) and hung out with Gina for the evening.

winter scenes and watertowers

I love these things. This is the first snow I've seen in years and watertowers always make me happy. I've always been fixated with them. When I was a kid I imagined jumping off them with a parachute. I still need to do that before I die I think.

These are all shot from inside a car, and most of them while moving. I think its my new criteria for a good way to make pictures.

kevin viol makes a video business card

Ingenious. Kevin Viol just got a new d90 that shoots video. This is a prime example how these machines are going to change the industry. His camera cost him only 1k, so he's no longer limited to a redrock lens kit or a red one camera to get this look. Of course he added some post processing, but people think that digital cameras made photography democratic, I think the d90 and 5dmarkII are both going to open a lot of doors for photographers/videographers and blur the lines between the two. Of course, as always it'll make things more complicated, add to the tool set needed to make it, and make it more competitive. In the end, it'll just keep on weeding out the mediocre and the cream will rise to the top.

I guess for me, it's exciting and inspiring. I love to learn new things and thrive on this type of change. It gives me yet one more medium to express myself in. Stay tuned for some videos by me soon. I'm going to give kevin's d90 a spin next week and see if it's right for me. Honestly, the way that video is always concept driven, that you need some serious intent and execution to go through with the hours of post processing and organization seems like a way to really take things up a notch.



My video business card from kevin viol on Vimeo.

"Immersion" video game players shot on video by Robbie Cooper

This is incredible. Look for the tear, its about halfway through. Moving, and makes you wonder what made this little boy shed a tear while playing a game. Did he kill or get killed? Break his old record?

self portraits are fun

I'm up late doing ridiculous things like taking self portraits and shots of my sneakers. Whatever. I'm doing light testing which is really important in my experimentation and staying on top of my craft so when the call comes I'm ready for action.


me+vintage raybans+5AM+lights+camera= fun


I got 99 problems but my kicks aint one. Thank you creative recreation for making amazing shoes and shame on you for making me pay so much. Oh well, Alec Soth says good shoes are essential for being a successful photographer so I'm off with my 4x5 and my walking shoes this morning...

david lam and larry johnson

So I was digging through old negs and found a couple of gems. Scanning 665 polaroid negs is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they're very thin so they don't lay flat. Then the negative holders for medium format film are too small and 4x5 holders are too big. So I mounted them on a clear 4x5 negative with tape and scanned them. There are tons of scratches on the clear 4x5 neg, so its gives the shots lots of character and I'm kind of into the look.





This is David Lam. He was the mayor of the town i grew up in. 100 people and the cool thing about this shot is the house behind him had been in 2 separate locations. It was being torn down so his neighbor could use the space to store more Fieros.



This is Larry Johnson. He's the man with the Fieros. He was my best friend's father growing up. At one point he bought a computer to be able to analyze fieros and is now a specialist tech for that kind of car. Kind of random and I love that he looks like he never left the 50's.

I love where my parent's live in Whittier, Iowa. I really need to shoot more of the people I grew up around. Just need to find the angle so they don't think I'm being condecending- they just think I'm some big city person who looks down on their small town life at times. Really all wrong because I feel like it only informs my personality and made me what I am.

craig's list actually gets me a real gig

So for the first time ever I've found a worth while gig on Craig's list. These are some of the shots I've done for a calendar of a few players on the Chicago Wolves hockey team. Its a fund raising effort to support a documentary film on a couple players from the team.














The idea I had about all this is to make the images at least entertaining and give some sort of visual interest to the project. I suggested just doing studio shots of the players vs multiple locations to give a bit more congruence to the project and making the logistics less of a nightmare. Its hard enough getting professional athletes to show up for something like this let alone dragging them around to a bunch of different locations. That would require some serious planning and much more time that I wouldn't have been paid for. I think it's working out.

Identity

My sister had some interesting thoughts about race and the double edged sword that being color appreciative vs color blind brings about.

"Bush makes a mistake and he's just considered stupid," Snyder says. "Unfortunately, Barack Obama makes a mistake and he's black and stupid. And it's not the same in the white world."

and then later I read this

"But if we judge Obama's performance as president as "how does Obama the person perform as president?" instead of "how the black man does as president"--wouldn't that be color blind? Judging him without factoring race? So we should ignore color when judging, but when we're not we appreciate it? I'm confused."

she ends talking about culture and it being the great divider and skin just how we look, a general identifying feature.

I love the complexity around all of this. It's not simple, and when you talk through it, dig deeper you see more than maybe what your initial reaction might be to such a subject.

Then I went to the conscientious blog and read about a new photography series that doesn't differentiate between the victims and perpetrators in Rwandan genocide. Basically it comes down to showing the humanity of everyone and the fact that regular people do horrible things isn't as safe a thought as being able to visually prejudge someone. People aren't always what they appear.

The subject of identity is one that I find particularly interesting. I know I partially make clothing decisions to show what subculture I fit into, mostly. And I'm also pleasantly surprised when I find people crossing boundaries, and being inventive and accepting of different concepts of identity. I was speaking with an acquaintance of mine who happens to be black, who tap dances in a pretty modern manner-but anyways, about people trying to win people over by not being themselves and how we attach race to culture.

There were 3 white kids trying to be cool in ways that the tap dancer and the bboy friend of mine would think acceptable and it was getting kind of annoying to my friends. Purposefully changing your speech patterns because of someone's race is silly, but I hear it frequently. I know my black friends value their education and speak in a way that reflects this, while a few have a different background or have always been a part of certain subcultures and have their accent deeply ingrained. So when my friends who may not have as much formal education hear a well educated white man changing his speech pattern to sound like them, it becomes surreal. Especially in the name of cool. I guess anyone not being honest about themselves and who they are becomes glaringly obvious at times and when is aspiring to be something different acceptable and when isn't it? When is it too far? Is that possible?

christopher anderson's advice on the magnum blog

Alec Soth asked magnum photographer's why they got into photography and what advice they have for young photographers here. I liked Christopher Anderson's advice best.

"Forget about the profession of being a photographer. First be a photographer and maybe the profession will come after. Don't be in a rush to make pay your rent with your camera. Jimi Hendrix didn't decide on the career of professional musician before he learned to play guitar. No, he loved music and and created something beautiful and that THEN became a profession. Larry Towell, for instance, was not a "professional" photographer until he was already a "famous" photographer. Make the pictures you feel compelled to make and perhaps that will lead to a career. But if you try to make the career first, you will just make shitty pictures that you don't care about."

I think that sometimes I've done things the wrong way around. I need to focus more on what I care about photographically, not try to make all my money with my camera and really just make what I consider to be beautiful pieces of art. Thanks Christopher, I was feeling this and just needed to hear it. Funny how that happens sometimes. Now just to figure out how to make the apple store hire me in the next week or so...