Studio Ballet
March 19th, 2007
This is an early digital photo. I had just rented my current studio space and spent several months fixing it up and painting to get it to where I wanted it. When the painting was all done I looked at it and said to myself, “This room needs a ballerina.” So I went and found one, brought her to the space and just asked her to dance. This is the result.
This was shot with a 3 mp digicam. Back then it had cost me more than $1,000. It was about as good as you could get at the time without spending many times more than that much money. It prints fine at 16×20. Later I used that camera when I convinced a magazine I was shooting for to try digital. They were skeptical. When the job was done they used all the digital shots and soon didn’t want to see film, only digital. They ran photos taken with this 3 mp camera double truck, across two pages, on a regular basis. Soon I had packed all my film cameras away and was shooting only digital.
Ginny
March 17th, 2007
My friend, Dave Rudin, has been posting some of his older photos on his blog. I was going through a file drawer at my studio yesterday and came across an old print. It was, and still is, one of my favorite photos of one of my favorite models. The print has held up well since it was made. The photo was taken sometime around 1974 and the print made at about that time, or within a year or two, anyway. The camera was either a Nikon Ftn or a Nikkormat Ftn. The lens was my wonderful 85mm f/1.8. Film Tri-X developed in 1-1 D-76. I think the paper was Agfa Brovira…but can’t really be sure now.
I hope this isn’t too much of a shock to my photographer friends who have never seen anything from me except digital color. I worked in black and white for many years. My move to color was a decision about my direction as an artist. That happened long before I switched from film to digital. The move to digital was motivated at first by the desire to take full control of the process. Now, of course, digital quality has surpassed film.
The model, Ginny, was someone I photographed a lot when we were in college. She was beautiful and fun and up for just about anything to get a photo. I haven’t had any contact with her since we left school way back then.
It got me thinking about what a great time machine photography is. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) it only goes one direction. But here is beautiful Ginny. I’m pleased with how well this has held up as an image after all these years. She’s still as beautiful as ever and I don’t think there is anything about fashions or styles that really date the photo. Ginny is about 50 years old now. I wonder what she looks like today. I wonder what her life has been like and where she is today. I tried googling her with no success. I tried contacting her through our alma mater but the e-mail address they have for her isn’t working.
But, thank you Ginny for a fine photo. I hope you are well, wherever you are.
Catherine
March 16th, 2007
I don’t do much photography that isn’t nudes. But there are exceptions. Catherine is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. She is also a very talented professional model and an excellent makeup artist. And she’s a very nice person who I like. But she doesn’t shoot nudes. So I use her for the beauty magazine jobs that I shoot now and then to help pay the rent on the studio. We’ve been talking about some other possible shoots that we may be doing in the next month or so, so you may see more of her. This photo is just one of those moments that happen during a good shoot and can’t be posed or faked.
I actually have several projects that I’ll be working on over the next few years that do not involve nude models. My background is photojournalism and I’ve always been interested in documentary work. I also did quite a bit of dance photography “back in the day.” I’m looking for a good dance company that would like to have me shoot for them. I have a long-term documentary project that I’ll be starting this spring. I expect that project to take anywhere from two to ten years to complete. I plan to post these other projects on this blog as they happen. So I hope you won’t all be too disappointed if you don’t always see naked women when you visit. I have no plans to stop doing figure work, but these other forms of photography are drawing my attention.
Into the woods
March 14th, 2007
More Nemi through a pinhole
March 12th, 2007
Pinhole
March 10th, 2007
It’s a Stretch
March 9th, 2007
It’s a very busy day for me today catching up on all the things that piled up while I was out of town. So, I’m going to let you just enjoy Mandy and I’ll write more when I can.
Mandysickle
March 8th, 2007
Snow Queen
March 7th, 2007
This morning I drove up to the Ohio snow belt to try to shoot some nudes in the snow before it melts away for the year. Mandy was gung ho, ready to get naked in the snow. The weather forecast was close to perfect for this…cloudy with light snow and a temp around 31F. Of course, the forecasters were totally wrong, as usual. Clear skies, bright sun and a temp around 23F. Pretty damn cold. Colder than I really like to expose a model to.
But Mandy is a trooper and wanted to go ahead and give it a try. I had some heat packs to help warm up her fingers and toes between shots. She did a great job and we got quite a few good photos. This is one of them with a quick edit on my laptop in my motel room. More to come…
Slot Canyon
March 7th, 2007
