The Real Deal

Images of me assisting Photographer Al Lada (Flickr page HERE) in Chicago during the early 80's. FILM! You had to get it right the first time by knowing your craft and having the confidence in your professional abilities. A huge learning curve for a young aspiring photographer. After shooting all day on location you would see your finished photos a day or more later, no checking the back of the camera for an acceptable image. No photoshop. Time management, even then some shots required more time than others, but it was never a cookie cutter situation putting out mediocre photography (or what I call...Making Sausage), every shot counted. We were selling merchandise, big time. The image sells it. The books prove it. Today, most of your internet photography and a hell of a lot of your catalog photography is people making cheap, quick images, 20 maybe 30 or even more a day. And well, it looks like it. That will change. Thats why I love the current tough economy. "Making sausage" in your photo studio is not going to endure. The consumer demands a better product and will pay for it, if it is value oriented. The advertising needs to be professional and creative enough to spur that decision. Great photography is the single best investment a company can make to break through the clutter and sell merchandise. Glad I was able to work and learn from some of the best in a professional atmosphere when the value of commercial photography was taken much more serious. Thanks Al.

Photographer_ John C. H. Grabill

This is interesting, very little is known about John C. H. Grabill but his photographs exhibit a level of mastery of technique equal to the greatest of the frontier photographers. What is known is that he opened a studio in Sturgis, Dakota Territory in 1886 and had studios in Hot Springs, Lead, and Deadwood, Dakota Territory through 1891. He then moved to Chicago and operated a studio until 1894, at which point no other information about Grabill is available. Most of what is known about Grabill's career as a photographer comes from a group of 188 photographs he sent to the Library of Congress for copyright protection. These photographs document early frontier life including western town landscapes, Native Americans, mining, and exclusive photos in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Check out an excellent collection HERE @ the denverpost.com. Check out the full collection HERE @ the Library of Congress.

Tim Hetherington_Photographer

Award - winning war photographer Tim Hetherington was killed on April 20, 2011 while covering the conflict in Libya. In 2007 Hetherington began a year long assignment following American troops in Afgahanistan's Korengal Valley, this assignment turned into a documentary called "Restrepo" that was nominated for a 2010 Oscar. See a collection of Tim's photos for Vanity Fair HERE. See Restrepo Trailer HERE. New York Times HERE.

Wall Street Journal ad, Photographer_ John Pluska

Tooting my horn folks, this ad is currently running in the Wall Street Journal. Again my thanks to my stylist Linda Candella, and my AD Joy pontrello.

The New York Times Magazine Ad_Photographer John Pluska

I have been fortunate enough to have my images reproduced in the New York Times Magazine. This was not an easy task. I photographed many images over the course of two weeks to produce this final image that appeared the last couple of weeks in the New York Times Magazine. I am told that it is a huge hit, doing what it is supposed to do, sell merchandise. We have also been contacted by a professor from a university to use this ad in his teachings of successful advertising. A huge thank you goes out to my stylist, Linda Candella, and art director Joy Pontrello, and my assistant, of which I have had a few over the course of this assignment, you know who you are!

Portraits of a Protest_Photographer Kevin Miyazaki

Milwaukee photographer Kevin Miyazaki perched himself on the sidewalk outside the Wisconsin state capital building in Madison with a black background to photograph protesters of Wisconsin governor Walker's collective bargaining law. Check out Kevin's site HERE, and while your their make sure you take a look at "Camp Home" in his personal work. It is a documentation of a reuse of buildings from the Tule Lake internment camp where his father's family was incarcerated during World War II.

Portrait Of A Protest: Madison, Wisconsin from Kevin J. Miyazaki on Vimeo.

Time Lapse Photography_A Bridge Delivered

I first heard of photographer Steven Mallon after seeing photo's he shot of the "Salvage of Flight 1549" (see HERE). In this time lapse video Mallon shows us the delivery and installation of the new Willis Avenue bridge linking Manhattan and the Bronx. Mallon directed 9 camera operators working from various angles and locations capturing over 30,000 still images to produce this video.

A Bridge Delivered from stephen mallon on Vimeo.

TED Initiatives_Ads Worth Spreading

TED.com, Ads Worth Spreading is a competition seeking to reverse the trend of online ads being forced on users and instead produce ads so good that you will want to choose to watch them. These ads are longer than your normal 30 second commercial so there is time to make an interaction with the viewer, tell a story, make an authentic human connection. Here is an ad done by Target, it is a live fashion show promoting their brand while engaging viewers in a tangible experience. For more ads and to see all the winners of this competition see TED.com HERE.

Real HDR_Before and After

My son received a new camera for Christmas and we are in the process of learning its various functions and operations. Our first images were taken the other day and it was a miserable day for photography. The day was windy and very foggy, foggy to the point where we probably should have stayed home. But we came up with a plan and stuck with it. Because of the fog we already knew our pictures were going to turn out pretty bland, we would have no highlights and no darks, no contrast... just a lot of gray. So we came up with a plan to try some true HDR imaging to build contrast back into our images. We shot 5 images of each of the three shots and used photoshop's HDR pro to combine them. I was very impressed with the results and the easy use of photoshops HDR pro. The images look great and using up to five different exposures cut through the fog nicely. We shot both jpg and raw images, the jpg images did produce some color artifacting, the raw image did not, it was clean and sharp. I would only shoot raw images for HDR. After selecting images from photoshop's bridge, you go to tools > photoshop > merge to HDR, make your adjustments, (the "DETAIL", and the "EDGE GLOW" which includes Radius and strength are you most important adjustments) and then open in photoshop, at this point you have an HDR image, you now can treat that image like any other, opening this image in raw and making additional adjustments to fine tune your image before you output to a tiff. Our plan of learning the functions of a new camera actually turned into a lesson of thinking about your situational awareness and responding in an appropriate way to produce the best possible image. As you can see from these before and after examples it was a combination of camera technique and photoshop manipulation that that lead to a successful result.

Images of "Structures"...For Your Viewing Pleasure

Images of a Christmas Tree

“Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add a fortune to your Web site’s business value.”

For the most part, photographic images on the internet are poor and cheaply done, and they look like it. But as the internet matures I believe the photography will to. Its like years ago when everyone was using a 35 mm film camera and all of a sudden a little 110 compact pocket camera became available and everyone bought one because of convenience. But we sacrificed image quality for convenience. Same thing with the web, its convenient now and cheap photography is accepted, but it will become more competitive and mature and really good photography is going to be required. Generic photographs done on white paper are not going to cut it.
Jakob Nielsen, a web site consultant has concluded that random photographs and stock images for internet use online are completely ignored by users, add more clutter to a page and does not help from a business standpoint. His eye tracking survey found that these filler images of stock photos or generic people photos are intentionally disregarded by the consumer, while actual photos produced for a specific intention ( an actual photo shoot, professional photographer = $ ) and a picture is specific and real, users will engage with the image for an extended period of time. Jakob Nielsen also states that "most sites are full of fluff - of which there's too much of that clutter already on the web." Bottom line is this study concludes that people ignore generic images online. See full story HERE at New York Times. See Jakob Nielsen's "Photos as web content" HERE. Mr. Nielsen concludes with advice to those using the web to hawk products, services or content, "Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add fortune to your web site's business value." I guess you get what you pay for!

Photographer_Michael Kamber

Michael Kamber, a photojournalist for The New York Times has been working in Iraq since 2003. Many of his images have not been published because of censorship rules dictated by government, military, publishers and editors. " The reality of the war versus the war that people saw in the newspapers and magazines, it's a very different reality" said Kamber in this interview from BagNewsSalon. Michael Kambers website with a lot of great images HERE.

Horsetail Firefall

This interesting photo was taken on February 18th 2010 by Rob Kroenert. For only a couple of weeks in February, if the weather cooperates, the angle of the setting sun hits Yosemite's Horsetail Falls perfectly to make it appear as though they are ablaze with fire. Nice photo. Yosmite Horsetail Falls info for photographers HERE. Interesting story of how this shot was taken by Rob Kroenert HERE at his Flickr site.

Pre-Dawn Shuttle Landing

On Jan. 18, 1986 LA Times photographer George Fry captured the landing of space shuttle Columbia at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert after a Florida touchdown was cancelled due to rain. Fry used Tri-X film and his plan was to push process the film to 1600 or even 3200 ASA. He shot one roll as a test of a NASA jet simulating the shuttle approach. After shooting the Columbia approach and landing he processed the test roll first to determine the proper exposure before processing the real deal. The Columbia disintegrated over Texas during reentry killing seven crew members on Feb. 1, 2003. Check it out HERE.

Shoot It Now...Light it Later

Actually you still need a well lit photograph, you can always make it better but you want to start with the best you can, with that said this program from Oloneo "HDR ReLight" is really cool. The program uses merged images to control settings of individual light sources within your image. The program automatically detects each individual light source within your photograph and allows you to change intensity, color, tint and temperature for each light source in your image. Great for indoor shooting and architecture where you run into multiple light sources producing different color temperatures. The program is in beta form and is still being developed but it is free for downloading now! Check it out HERE.

Photographer_ Julius Shulman

VISUAL ACOUSTICS

The modernism of Julius Shulman

A documentary film by Eric Bricker

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman this film celebrates the career of architectural photographer Julius Shulman whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. He captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930's including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry. Check it out HERE.

Worlds Largest Digital Camera_1,400,000,000 Pixels

Pan-STARRS - Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (PS1) is operational and its goal is to look for asteroids that threaten earth while also investigating and mapping the universe and its biggest mysteries, dark matter and dark energy. It sits atop Hawaii's dormant Haleakala volcano.This sensitive digital camera was regarded as an unreachable dream just a few years ago, and was rated as one of the “20 marvels of modern engineering” by Gizmo Watch in 2008. Every 30 seconds PS1 snaps a 1,400-megapixel shot of a section of sky as large as 36 full moons—a view 3,600 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's main camera. One of these images would produce a 300-dpi print covering half a basketball court. The telescope gathers enough data to fill a thousand DVDs (nearly five terabytes) every night and maps a sixth of the sky each month.

Read more about PS1 HERE at National Geographic, and HERE at Pan - Starrs University of Hawaii.

Photographer_Andrew McConnell

I came across Andrew McConnell, an editorial photographer, but I really like the lighting and the interest generated by his technique, which seems to be a mix of editorial and commercial. Editorial subject matter posed and lit with a more commercial edge. End result is interesting and stunning. I thought I would share.
These images are titled "Last Colony", about politics and injustices of colonization in Western Sahara.

Check out more of his work HERE.

BP= Photographers Not Allowed_Photographs They don't want you to see

Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

British Petroleum, BP, a foreign company to the United States is now limiting access and totally in charge of our Gulf Coast beaches, airspace and our Gulf of Mexico water ways. They appear to be censoring our news coverage of their oil spill by not allowing photographers access to our public beaches and controlling the Gulf's airspace and water ways. They don't want us to see the destruction they have caused and the pictures like the ones here posted on my blog, you can see more HERE at the Boston Globe. News photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. The ability to document a disaster, particularly through images, is key to focusing the nation’s attention on it, and the resulting clean-up efforts. For more read HERE from Newsweek. And another good article from Mother Jones about a first hand account of a journalist trying to access the oil spill area_When I tell Chief Aubrey Chaisson that I would like to get a comment on Barbara's intimations—and my experience so far—that BP is running the show, he says he'll meet me in a parking lot. He pulls in, rolls down the window of his maroon Crown Victoria, and tells me that I can't trust the government or big corporations. When everyone saw the oil coming in as clear as day several days before that, BP insisted it was red tide—algae. Chaisson says he's half-Indian and grew up here and just wants to protect the land. When I tell him BP says the inland side of the island is still clean, he spits, "They're fucking liars. There's oil over there. It's already all up through the pass." Read the Mother Jones article HERE. Oh yea, one last thing I forgot to say, fuck you BP, and get the hell off our property.

A New Way to Fund & Follow Creativity

Here's a site with a new idea that was brought to my attention by my trusted assistant (and very good photographer, and friend) Nick. This site takes people's creative projects and creates a funding format to fulfill their dreams. I love the idea, although it is not just photographic in nature. Theatre, writing, technology as well as photography is produced here, and you can become a part of these projects and follow along as they are produced, and receive gifts for your involvement and donation to fund these projects. Check out kickstarter.com HERE.

Create Advertising and Enjoy it!

II came upon this quotation from "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller. It made me think of advertising.

"He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it."

It seems that much of the problem in the world today is that we're too smart, too professional, too schooled and too scared.

Liking something--and responding with a gasp or a chortle or anger or a laugh is like a fart or a hiccup. Liking something is involuntary and a reaction. Such things are not meant to be controlled by our intellect. However, in the corporate world brains rule and hearts are something you use on the weekend when you're pushing your kids in a $500 stroller.

In short, how many people do you work with--including creative people--who know everything about advertising or marketing, except how to enjoy it.

Maybe the difference between good advertising and bad advertising is enjoyment. Good advertising should be enjoyable. You should feel enriched by it. It should elevate, educate or amuse. It shouldn't just lay there like a lox.

source of this info is from: http://adaged.blogspot.com/2010/06/experts.html

Dennis Hopper_Photographer

He photographed most avidly during the 1960's. The self taught photographer again picked up the camera during the 1980's to capture mostly texture...the abraded surfaces of peeling walls and billboards. Read full story of: Remembering Dennis Hopper, Photographer, from the LA Times HERE. I also did a little searching for more of his photos on the web and did not find much, but a few did show up HERE at artnet.

Civil War Photos

A re-enactment of the civil war. These guys are serious and they look great with their civil war period clothing. I would highly suggest anyone to attend one of these re-enactments. Its interesting and educational and provides for a great photo opportunity. Enjoy...more to come.

j