A Day In Chicago
February 18th, 2010
The day after the gallery opening Dave Rudin introduced me to his friend, Ted Preuss, who does wonderful Platinum/Palladium prints from his 4×5 and 8×10 format photos of nudes. His work is amazingly beautiful. It was a real treat to get to look at his lovely prints.
We started our day by going to the Art Institute of Chicago, something I try to do every time I visit the Second City. I think the Art Institute is the best art gallery in the country. Their collection is remarkable. That’s Dave R shooting a nude in one of the galleries in the new wing.
This time I got to see the new Modern Wing for the first time. It was not open yet when I was there last to see the Karsh exhibit. I have to say the modern wing is a wonderful addition to the institute. I do miss the room that used to be filled with Picassos. Seeing all those wonderful paintings all together was a remarkable experience. In the new wing the Picassos are scattered throughout the galleries, so the impact of the totality of their collection is somewhat diminished.
After the Art Institute we took a little walk around the area which, of course, included a stop at the “bean.” That’s the three of us being tourists at the bean. Well, Ted is a Chicagoite, so 
he’s too cool to act like a tourist. I love the way Chicago has developed the lake front area. It’s really a beautiful and fun place.
Next we walked across the river to visit the “American Gothic” statues and walk around the Tribune building looking at the stones from famous places around the world.
After we had gotten cold enough from all the wind (who would have thought it would be windy in Chicago?) Ted took us over to his new studio. He has just moved in and hasn’t even had time to do the first shoot in the new space. It’s a beautiful place and I’m sure he’ll be turning out some great photos from it. You can see Ted and Dave R in the new space in the
next to last photo down below.
Then Ted dropped Dave R and myself back at our hotel and went home to cook a valentine’s day dinner for his wife. We went to a restaurant that Ted 
recommended, The Green Door. It’s one of the oldest wood frame commercial buildings in the city because it was built in the very short time between the great fire and the passage of a law forbidding wood frame commercial buildings. During prohibition it was a speak easy. Today it is an excellent restaurant that proclaims with pride that the building is tilted to one side from age. The tilt is very obvious from inside.
So, that’s about it for the Chicago trip. It was a great time. I’ll look forward to my next excuse to visit there. I’m sure I’ll be up for the “Hank Carter” show that opens at the art institute in the summer…but I may well find a good excuse to make another trip before that.
Detroit, Detroit
February 17th, 2010
I’ll add a new post with more news from the Chicago trip soon, but first I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be at the River’s Edge Gallery near Detroit this Saturday night for “Meet The Artists Night” for the show I’m in up there. So if you are in the Detroit area come on by the gallery between 6 and 10 p.m. and say hi. Don’t wait until too late in the evening, though, if you want to meet me. I’m driving up and back on Saturday, so I don’t think I’ll be able to stay all the way until 10 p.m. Dave Rudin, who is visiting me this week from NYC, will be coming to Detroit with me, so it’s a chance to meet him too.
Hope to see you there.
Chicago, Chicago
February 16th, 2010
Yes, I spent the weekend in Chicago. It was a great time. So good that it’s going to take 2 or 3 posts to cover it all.
The main reason for the trip was to go to Carrie Leigh’s gallery show opening and meet her and her husband Gary. That’s them at the show with my great friend and model, Unbearable Lightness, in the first photo. They are delightful people and I was very pleased to meet them and get the chance to thank them in person for giving me the Arts for Humanity Award.
The show was at Gallery Provocateur presided over by the lovely Veronika Kotlajic. That’s her in the center of the second photo. She had done a great job promoting the show, which was obvious because the place was packed to capacity all evening. You can get some idea of that from the photos here.
It was a great evening, a lot of fun. I met some old friends and may have made a few new ones. One lovely model came to the show to meet me and I expect you will be seeing her here in the 
future, once the weather gets warm enough for more outdoor shooting. So, I’m thinking I’ll be back in Chicago sooner rather than later. If this gawd-awful winter will ever get over with.
That Old Time Feeling
February 11th, 2010
For one of my last shoots in the old studio Angie brought in some Victorian dresses that she once wore to her high school proms. We were just playing around with some ideas that are pretty far off from my usual work. That’s one of the things I love about photography: It’s fun. I always enjoy just playing with photography to see what happens.
This time I shot with my regular Nikon with several lenses using the studio strobe system. But I also pulled out my new Canon S90 and turned on its built-in sepia mode. Just to see what would happen. I’m pretty pleased with the way it renders sepia. A lot easier to have files like this one right out of the camera without having to sit in front of the computer for an hour trying different setups to get a good sepia rendition.
I just used the modeling lights as the light source, put the S90 on Program, which is where I always keep it now, and let the camera chose the ISO automatically. It chose ISO 1000 for this shot. 1/20 second at f/4.9 at the long end of the zoom. Hand held with the image stabilization on.
As I said, not my normal sort of photo, but who wants to be normal?
My friend Dave Rudin is coming in tomorrow night for a visit. We are going to be busy while he is here, starting with a trip to Chicago for the weekend. We will be going to Carrie Leigh’s gallery opening there Saturday night. Any of you in the Chicago area please come by the gallery and say hi if you can. I’m looking forward to meeting Carrie Leigh and her husband and thanking them in person for honoring me with the quite unexpected 2009 Arts for Humanity Award over there at the right of this page.
Dave will be here for a week and will be doing some shooting in the new studio while he is here. And we’ll end the week with a trip up to Detroit on February 20 for the Meet The Artists night at River’s Edge Gallery for the “Secrets Revealed” show I’m in up there right now. Hope to see a bunch of my Detroit area friends there.
Don’t forget the f-eleven book is still available. You can buy it here. All the profits go to a great charity. There’s now a website for f-eleven books. This is the link to it. And there’s an f-eleven books blog too. Those links will give you lots of information about the current book, news about the contributors on the blog, and announcements of future books.
Also, I still have my calendars available, but not for much longer. I’d probably have them off the market by now, but I’ve just been too busy to deal with them…so you can still get one if you want. Hurry. Here’s the link. You can get a 30% discount by using the coupon code TIMEFLIES through the end of February.
Moving On
February 5th, 2010
That photo above is literally an iconic image for me. It’s been my icon or avatar image on Model Mayhem since I joined the site. I moved in to that studio in 2000 and did quite a bit of work to fix it up. When it was all painted I looked at it and said, “This room needs a ballerina.” So I found a dancer and we made this photo. That was a long time ago. I was working with a new 3 megapixel Nikon that I’d paid $1,000 for.
That has been a good studio. But the rent has continued to rise every year and it has always been just too small, especially after accumulating ten years worth of photo gear and general junk.
I’ve been looking for another studio for some time. I wanted to get out of Dayton and find something in Springfield, preferably in a location that would let me walk to the studio from my home. That was not to be.
Instead I was offered a new space in the same building complex where I’ve been for 10 years. The new space is much larger, but it will be less rent because I’ll be sharing it with my friend, GaryM. There’s plenty of room for both of us and there’s a much larger shooting area.
So I’ve spent this week moving. It was exhausting work, even with a couple great helpers, Angie and _G_. But it’s done. Yesterday I finally got the last of the debris out of the old space and turned in the keys. I filled a dumpster with stuff I decided not to move in to the new space. And this morning I slept in and let my beat-up body recover from the week of physical labor. I’m getting way too old for this kind of shit. I hope this will be my last move and that my survivors can deal with getting my stuff out of this studio after my body goes to the local medical school.
Here’s Angie in the old space after most of the stuff was removed:
And below is the new place with both _G_ and Angie decorating it. That background cyclorama is 16 feet wide. But the previous tenants tore it up, so there are holes in the curved portion blending the floor into the wall. It looks like I’ll be able to fix that with a couple sheets of masonite.
Next week I’ll try to put away all the piles of my crap that I moved in, and then get to work on fixing the cyche. There will be painting and some more minor construction to get the place up to standards. But it’s ready for shooting right now. A new decade in a new studio. I’m looking forward to seeing what I’ll be able to do with this new space. You’ll get to see the results here.
I knew something was up…
February 1st, 2010
…But I didn’t know for sure what it was. Now I know and, well, Wow!…just Wow! I’m blown away.
Carrie Leigh’s NUDE magazine has given me their first annual Arts for Humanity Award for my participation in Free Speech Coalition et al v. Holder, filed in federal court in Philadelphia. That’s the announcement from the magazine preview above.
Angie Inside
January 28th, 2010
Yes, Angie is just as beautiful inside as she is out in the snow. We shot this on the first day we did snow photos, before we went out and froze her cute ass off.
Lots of changes going on. It looks like it will be Monday before I’ll be able to start moving in to the new studio. And then there will be lots of work to get it ready.
My long string of success with the annual photo contest at French PHOTO magazine has come to an end. Friends in France tell me that I did not get a photo in the magazine this year. So it goes. I’ll try again next year. This is the first time since 2003 that I won’t have at least one photo in that magazine.
But at about the same time I learned that I will have some of my work in the coming issue of Carrie Leigh’s NUDE magazine. Right now I don’t know exactly what photo(s) they are going to print, or what the article will say. I do know it will have something to say about the lawsuit I’m participating in seeking to have the “2257” law declared unconstitutional. I know that because the writer asked me questions about that lawsuit. And I also know that my friend, Stephen Haynes, will be featured in this issue for his blogging about 2257 and photographer’s rights. Way to go, Stephen!
As you may know, Carrie Leigh’s NUDE prints in black and white only. It’s a very high quality magazine with superb reproduction of the photographs. I’ve admired the magazine, but never considered submitting my work because, as you also must know, I work in color. A number of friends had encouraged me to send my work to the magazine, but I always declined for that reason.
Now I sometimes get a bit upset when someone comments on one of my photos to the effect that they would like to see it in black and white. Color is a very important part of what I’m doing with my work, so I usually would take such a comment as an indication that the person making it just didn’t understand what I was trying to do with the photo.
But, I realized eventually that I was being a bit obtuse on this issue. And violating some of my basic beliefs about photography to boot. I remembered what another photographer had said to me more than 40 years ago when I was about to do my first professional job with color film. I was worried because I had only worked in black and white up to that point. He said, “The camera doesn’t know if it has color or black and white film in it.” I guess you can’t really say that about a digital camera now, but the point is still valid.
And I remembered something Ansel Adams said that has always seemed true to me. “The negative is the score, the print is the performance.” I’ve always felt that the final print was what is important. How you got to that print, what process you use, is important to the artist, but not to the audience.
So, one evening while watching TV I fired up my laptop and did a bunch of quick and dirty black and white conversions of a bunch of my favorite photos. Some of them worked just as well, though for different reasons, in black and white. A few of them worked even better in black and white. And some didn’t make the transition to black and white at all. It was an interesting exercise and reminded me that the subject matter of all black and white photos is in color. Black and white is just a different rendering of a color scene. Sometimes an interesting composition with interesting light can work in both color and black and white. Showing some of my work in black and white was simply a different performance of the score I had captured in the original photo. Just as valid as the color version if it worked as a photo.
Well, I sent the successes from that exercise off to a friend and they eventually found their way to Carrie Leigh. And I’m pleased about that. I’m even thinking about producing some limited editions of some of my photos, printed in black and white on fiber silver gelatin paper. If I decide to do that I’ll let you know here when they are available.
The cold I’ve been fighting for more than a week seems to finally be fading. That is making me a little optimistic that it will be pretty much over by the time I have to start moving the studio next week.
All Good Things Must Come To An End
January 25th, 2010
This is the end of the snow nudes. Full circle back to Kelsey again. The snow is all melted here now. There will no doubt be more of it before the winter is over, but I think I’ve frozen enough models, for this year at least. Both Kelsey and Angie did a great job of putting up with the cold and looking beautiful. Thanks ladies.
And something else is about at an end. I’ve been in my current studio in Dayton for something like ten years. Yesterday I agreed to move into a new larger space that I will share with a good friend. It will give me a lot more room to work, and will reduce my rent, which is a good thing with the way the economy has been this past year. I’ll hate to leave this studio with so many memories, but I know I’m going to enjoy the new place. It’s in the same building complex, so if you know where I’ve been you’ll know where the new place is…just in the building next door.
Now, if I can just get this miserable cold I’ve been fighting since the middle of last week to end, that will be a happy ending. I seem to be on the upswing after having to spend the weekend pretty much in bed.
Lots more to post when I’m feeling better…and when I get caught up on all the stuff that hasn’t been getting done while I’ve been suffering.
Angiesickle
January 21st, 2010
After Angie froze her cute ass at our first stop, with temperatures at 5 degrees, we got back in the truck, turned the heater up, and headed for a second location.
The first place we shot was an easy hike. It’s actually handicapped accessible, with a flat, asphalt path back to the site. Not the case for our second destination. It has a steep, rocky trail along a cliff side. The trail had had a bit of traffic since the last snowfall, but was still completely snow-covered with ice on the rocks under the snow. Angie’s boots didn’t have real good soles for this kind of hiking, so she was sliding all over the place and having to hang on to me to keep on her feet as we hiked down to the spot.
It had warmed up, though. The truck thermometer was all the way up to 10 degrees when we started our hike down the cliff.
When we got there we found this wonderful frozen waterfall. This isn’t much of a waterfall most of the time and it often runs dry in the summer. But it had frozen up in a very beautiful way. Angie found spots to stand and I found a good vantage point to do the photos. We worked fast. Angie, as always, was a real trooper, hanging in there to get the shots.
There was water still falling down the waterfall, but, of course, we put Angie in a spot where there was no water falling on her. What I didn’t know because I couldn’t see it from where I was, was that where she was standing had just a bit of water standing on it, on top of the ice. She never mentioned it.
After a few minutes shooting these photos we went to another area beside the waterfall and found a few other spots where Angie could pose. But, as soon as she took one boot off I saw that all her toes had turned blue. She then told me about the water she had been standing in. That was the end of our shoot. I really don’t ever want a model losing toes doing a shoot with me.
Here’s that discount code to let you save 25 percent on my calendars. Use the code VALENTINE. The sale goes through January 31. Here’s the link.Playing Ball on Frozen Water
January 19th, 2010
I’ve written here before about the tricks Mother Nature can play on you when you work outdoors with the nude. You have to be prepared for the unexpected and able to adapt to whatever happens.
Well, Mother Nature really did a number on us with this shoot. After the day of shooting that produced the photos in the last two posts Angie and I were feeling so good about the work we were doing in the snow that we decided to do a second day of shooting. This time we would be up and on the road before dawn to make a 2-hour drive to a great location in southeast Ohio. The weather forecast for that location was reasonable. It was supposed to be in the 20s with an overcast.
When I got up at 5 a.m. it was very, very cold. But we had clear skies overnight, which always means colder temperatures. If the clouds had stayed over our destination overnight it should be a lot warmer there.
I picked Angie up and we headed off in the dark. At one point during the drive the thermometer in my truck read 1 degree. As the sun came up we could see that the skies ahead were clear. No clouds to have held in heat over night. Why do we even bother with weathermen anyway?
By the time we got to our first location the skies were clear and the thermometer was reading 5 degrees. That’s just too cold. But we were there and Angie wanted to give it a try anyway. So we hiked to the location. Angie had the heated insoles in her snow boots, “mega” heat packs to keep inside her coat, my expedition down parka and sweat pants. She was plenty warm enough with all that on…but, of course, to do any photos that would all have to come off.
Fortunately there was no wind, so it felt warmer than it could have. If there had been wind I would have called the whole thing off. But we worked quickly, with Angie nude for just short periods of time while I fired off a rapid burst of photos. Of course, my camera batteries started dying suddenly, always just after Angie had taken up a pose. But I switched batteries quickly and we kept working.
Angie is amazing. And tough. And determined. We got some good photos and she still has all her fingers and toes. More to come in the next post.
There’s a new discount code to let you save 25 percent on my calendars. Use the code VALENTINE. The sale goes through January 31. Here’s the link.
Don’t forget the f-eleven book is still available. You can buy it here. All the profits go to a great charity. There’s now a website for f-eleven books. This is the link to it. And there’s an f-eleven books blog too. Those links will give you lots of information about the current book, news about the contributors on the blog, and announcements of future books.
