Happy Birthday Theda
July 10th, 2020
Today is Theda’s birthday, so I thought I’d do a little tribute post in honor of one of the best models I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. Above is from the first shoot I did with Theda. We were shooting in a tiny room at the W hotel in mid-town Manhattan. At this first shoot I was immediately struck by Theda’s remarkable beauty as well as her great talent as a model.
Her talent and great figure were both crucial elements in making this photo above in the legendary Carlton Arms hotel in Manhattan a success.
I was never able to take Theda on one of my photo trips because she simply does not travel. But I was able to talk her into doing an outdoor shoot near NYC in spite of her many alergies. That resulted in the photo below. When she posted this shot in her portfolio she noted the location as “a pile of histamines.” This shot was published in French PHOTO magazine, winning me a few bonus points with Theda because appearing in that magazine was one of her goals for her modeling career.
I even talked her into going wading in this lily pond during that shoot.
Theda is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, way smarter than me. But she seemed to tolerate my limited mental abilities and was always a true collaborator when we worked together. That made her perfect for the first of my Nurse photos. This was taken shortly after I saw Richard Prince’s nurse paintings at the Guggenheim museum in NYC. I call it “Bend Over.”
Theda always seemed to be in tune with my weird sense of humor, which helped us make some fun photos. She once told me that I couldn’t photograph Theda’s soul because she didn’t have one, and besides, she had traded it to Satan for a mix tape years ago. That led to this photograph, “Theda Trading Her Soul for a Mix Tape.”
That wasn’t bad enough, though. We went on at that same shoot to do this photo: “Theda Cheating Death.”
OK…by now you are getting the idea of how my sense of humor works and how Theda seemed to enjoy humoring me. And that led to this last shot. The needlework was hanging on the wall in her apartment. She didn’t hesitate for an instant when I suggested this photo.
Happy birthday Theda. You have enriched my life and my photography. I miss working with you. I hope we can get together if I’m ever able to make it back to New York City.
Striped Tigger
July 9th, 2020
Tigger was also modeling for me on that day at the studio with lots of mini-blinds and lots of direct striped sunlight.
Of course I did some photos with both Tigger and Ayn.
And I was blessed with a third model at this shoot. Here’s Ayn and Athena in the striped light. More of Athena coming soon.
Ayn In Striped Light
July 6th, 2020
A while back I rented a studio for a shoot. It was a sunny day and there were a lot of mini-blinds in the studio, so I just couldn’t avoid shooting some photos with the striped light through those blinds. It’s been done a lot and I don’t really think I have anything new to add to the body of striped-light photos, but I did them anyway.
These all feature the lovely model, Ayn Kaethchen.
There are more photos to come from this day of shooting. Stay tuned.
Happy Fourth of July
July 1st, 2020
The July 4 Independence Day holiday is almost upon us, so I thought a few flag photos were in order.
You probably can’t tell, but the lovely model in these photos is the amazing Ayn Kaethchen.
I call the one below “Original Sin.”
So now just sit back and enjoy your socially distanced July 4 cookout.
Angie With the New Lens
June 28th, 2020
I did a second shoot to try out my new Panasonic 42.5mm lens, this time with the lovely Angie as my model. I shot all of these wide open at f/1.7 just to see how the lens performed at that aperture. The one above was shot at ISO 200.
Below is a shot at ISO 1250.
And here is one at ISO 2000.
I love the high ISO performance of my Panasonic GX8 cameras. The sensor is really sweet. This last one is shot at ISO 2500.
I don’t think there’s really much more one could ask of a camera than what the GX8 delivers. It’s going to take some major advances to get me to even think about buying another camera.
One last photo, this one taken with my little Olympus pancake fisheye lens with a fixed f/8 aperture. I had it mounted on a different camera that day. This was before I bought my second GX8. So I used a Panasonic GF-7 for this photo. That’s a little tiny compact micro 4/3 camera. It’s not quite small enough to carry in my belt pouch, and it’s the old 16mp sensor, so I seldom use it anymore. I also don’t take a lot of fisheye photos, but it’s easy to keep that little pancake fisheye lens in the bottom of the camera bag for whenever I get the urge, like I did here. Since it’s only an f/8 lens I had to crank up the ISO…up to 3200 for this photo…not too shabby…and remember, this is the old 16mp sensor.
Artistic Physique
June 25th, 2020
As you know and can easily see if you look at this blog, I’ve been neglecting it. To be honest, with all that’s going on with our plague, I’ve just not felt like putting any energy into this…or more accurately, I’ve just not really had any energy to put into anything. But maybe I’m starting to get back into things, even though it looks like the plague is with us for a long time to come.
Anyway, I did some editing today on photos I took a year and a half ago. I guess it’s about time. I was playing with a new lens and trying a few things out when I did this shoot with Artistic Physique. For the photo above I used my little camera that I keep on my belt all the time, a Canon G7X Mark II.
The photo above was taken using the little Olympus pancake fisheye lens. I don’t think it looks too bad for 6400 ISO. That lens is a fixed f/8, so I needed the speed. The camera is my main camera for years now, a Panasonic GX8, a truly great camera with a wonderful sensor.
In the photo above I started working on the main thing I was doing at this shoot…testing my brand new Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.7 lens. This was taken wide open at f/1.7. The ISO was 200. This is a lovely lens. The two photos below were also shot wide open at 200 ISO. A lovely lens coupled with a lovely model…how could I go wrong?
Of course I wanted to challenge the lens a bit, so I shot the photo below with a lot of backlight. Seems to handle that pretty well too. I did stop down a touch, to f/2.2 and upped the ISO to 400.
And, just for comparison, here’s a shot below with the lens I use for about 90% of my photos, another lovely lens that is quite versatile, the Panasonic 12-60. It’s not as fast as the 42.5, so this was shot at ISO 800, which really isn’t an issue with the sensor in the GX8.
Thanks Artistic Physique for letting me experiment with you in front of my lenses.
Photos de Femmes
May 1st, 2020
I’m very happy to announce that my photo “Lani” has received an honorable mention in the Photos de Femmes competition in France. It was selected for this honor in the “Wild – Sauvage” category. You can follow that link to see all the winners. I’m quite honored to be included in such great company. I understand there will be a couple gallery shows of the winners and honorable mentions in the fall in the south of France if the current pandemic will allow that to happen. I’ll post details on those shows when I know them.
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2020
April 28th, 2020
Sunday was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. As usual, I did some pinhole photos for the annual event. Above is the pinhole photo that I uploaded to the Pinhole Day web site. I call it “Self Portrait with Flamingo.”
The photo above is another pinhole photo shot on Sunday at a local park. And, below is the camera I used, my Panasonic Lumix GX8 with my Pinwide wide-angle pinhole lens. I used a tripod for the self portrait, but was able to hand hold the photo of the stone bridge, despite the constant rain that lasted all day. Pinhole photography is much easier with a mirrorless digital camera. You can actually see and compose in the viewfinder, and the high ISOs available on modern cameras often make it possible to hand hold the camera.
Here’s my photo on the Pinhole Day website.
The Class of ’69
January 23rd, 2020
It’s about time I made a new post on here. Way past time, in fact. I don’t suppose anyone is still reading this, but who knows.
Over the past 6 months or so I’ve been working on a new project I’m calling the “Class of ’69.” That’s the year I graduated from high school. Last summer I went to my 50th class reunion and, looking around, I thought there were some interesting looking people among my classmates. We show our miles. We’ve lived through interesting times. So I decided to try to make some portraits of them and this project resulted. All the people in this post graduated with me from Licking Valley High School near Newark, Ohio in 1969.
Above is my good friend for all these years, Pat Darnes Carmo. Below is another friend from my high school days, Charles Robert Wolfe.
Above is Mike Bishop, below is Walter Prince.
Finally, for this post, below is another of my friends from high school, Dan Loughman. Dan was not in good health when I made this portrait. He died a few weeks later.
I plan to continue sharing the “Class of ’69” here for the next few posts.
Happy Halloween
October 29th, 2019
To mark Halloween, here’s a classic: Theda trading her soul for a mix tape.
