Art

The Big Door Portraits

My studio has, among other nice attributes, a set of really large green barn doors. I am on the 4th floor, so if they opened, it would be quite a drop. Fortunately, they don't. I imagine that in the days in which this Western Avenue Studios building was a textile mill, this was a kind of loading dock door for raw materials in and goods out. Today, it's just dark green awesomeness.

I feel a portrait series coming over me! Here is my latest shoot with sports photographer, Liz Cardoso, who specializes in photographing runners.

There will be more to come!

2013-01-24-liz-cardoso-051.jpg
2013-01-24-liz-cardoso-017.jpg
2013-01-24-liz-cardoso-037.jpg

Things that I Like

My thing is People Photography. I think I give that impression anyway. I'm not a marketing professional, but I read and can follow directions. So, since I love to photograph people, that's what I emphasize. Any good photographer though, can do many things. Not necessarily all things. I don't do weddings, sports, I really dislike grip-and-grin shoots... I could go on. I do enjoy making photographs that please me though. I have found that those are most often subjects that I am attracted to in the first place. Here are some. (Make sure you click on some of the captions. They have links)

I like to eat. Slowly. Small portions that taste. Heaping piles of stuff annoy me.

Here are some dishes that are decidedly not in that category.

pizza on copper.jpg
2012-08-08-carolyn-grieco-101.jpg
This, and the previous shot are of some dishes by Chef Carolyn Grieco, of Haverhill, MA

This, and the previous shot are of some dishes by Chef Carolyn Grieco, of Haverhill, MA

Rainy days make great shots in the summer. So green. This organization and the fields owner deserve a lot of credit!

Rainy days make great shots in the summer. So green. This organization and the fields owner deserve a lot of credit!

There's a rumor that I had some work published in a special Home edition of a local magazine...

There's a rumor that I had some work published in a special Home edition of a local magazine...

flowers.jpg
The beautiful new interior of Lowell's Merrimack Rep (MRT)

The beautiful new interior of Lowell's Merrimack Rep (MRT)

Speaking of Lowell, Massachusetts...

Speaking of Lowell, Massachusetts...

Vendor preparing for Lowell's City of Lights parade

Vendor preparing for Lowell's City of Lights parade

A New Beginning

I love summer. But summer can be a challenge if you are trying to keep the ball rolling on your business. Clients go on vacation. Projects are sometimes put on the slow track until autumn. So even though I love the long, warm days of summer, I do look forward to the fall when things start rolling again.

This fall I decided to take my online presence and branding up a notch. Beginning today, with this blog, I am featuring my newly designed web site and logo. For the techies out there, it utilizes HTML5 to customize itself to whatever browser it happens to be running on. It also features really large images that scale to the size of the browser window. So make sure you maximize the window!

Because I have been working on this project for a while I have quite a bit of photography work in the can to show you. I will be doing that over the next several months along with a couple of surprises, including one personal project that I will be rolling out in November. Please watch for that!

To get things started I thought I would share some shots from a photo session that I had with the excellent guitarist, Alex Prezzano. He rented the world-famous Methuen Memorial Music Hall for the shoot, which features an amazing pipe organ that occupies the entire front of the hall. I hope you enjoy the shots and check Alex out! Please feel free to leave a comment too!

​
​
​
​

I Need to Blog More Often!

Well, I really dropped the ball. I haven't blogged since May 8th! In my defense, I have been working on many things, but several of them are long term projects or editorial photography, the latter requiring me to hold off showing until publication. So there will be several magazine cover stories to come, as well as a couple of personal projects, to which I can at least give you a sneak preview now.

I am really excited to be working with the United Teen Equality Center (UTEC), in Lowell, Massachusetts, on a summer-long project to document the great work they are doing, and have been doing since 1999. I am really looking forward to creating a significant body of work that will tell UTEC's story. My photographing and learning process has already begun and the plans are for the work to culminate with the Grand Opening of their new, green building, on November 13th. Stay tuned!

And yes, my project called After Hours Passions, with creative genius Suzzanne Cromwell continues!

And if you "Like" the Merrimack Valley Magazine on Facebook, you may have seen this shot. I had the pleasure of covering a two family home construction project in Lawrence that happened in an insane 6 days. I also found This Old House' Steve Thomas to be an inspiring and eloquent speaker on the subject of helping others to succeed.

What Not to Light

If you want to make something more interesting, it's important to know what not to light. I know that a great photographer said something like that, but I cannot remember who that was or what his or her exact words were. It's a phrase that I think about constantly though. One of my new favorite shadow creator combinations is a beauty dish with a grid. Soft, fairly large, but most of all, very constrained. I would say it is easily disciplined.

Here are a couple of my favorites from a shoot that my friend and client Ed and I did earlier this week. Ed is a retired accounting professor and an up-and-coming actor and singer. We created hundreds of actor headshots, but once those were in the can, we worked on some additional dramatic, less traditional shots.

An Artist and Her Creative Space


Susan Iserbyt

It seems like just a week or so ago, but in January I met artist Sus Iserbyt. She asked me to do some portraits of her in her studio. Web site environmental portraits. Her studio is bright and airy. Her art is beautiful, but arguably, sometimes dark. I prefer to do these kinds of shoots without assistance and without a schedule. This lets both of us create the look and mood of the session, which is different from every other session, just as is every subject.

If you are interested in her work, click here to visit Sus Iserbyt on the web.
(As of this writing, the photos on her site are not from our photo shoot.)

 ________________________________________________________________________________

If you like my work, please do "Like" my Facebook page, link to my web site and follow me on Twitter. And if you would like to set up a shoot, you can contact me here: http://www.adrienbisson.com/contact/

Check out more of my recent work too:

http://www.adrienbisson.com/blog/2012/3/5/interesting-people-in-the-house.html
http://www.adrienbisson.com/blog/2012/1/29/photographers-in-the-hotseat-creating-a-headshot.html
http://www.adrienbisson.com/blog/2011/12/1/just-some-photos-that-i-like.html
http://www.adrienbisson.com/blog/2011/11/21/a-western-avenue-studios-neighbor.html

Interesting People in the House

I really love working with people who know what they want from their photoshoot and who are into the whole experience of making photographs. Kimberly Burke, the upright bassist for the Austin, Texas based indie rock band Shearwater, is one of those people. Arriving right on time that evening in late January, she was ready to go. We did some portraits in my studio as well as around the old textile mill building in which my studio is located. Enthusiasm all around!


Kimberly Burke of Shearwater


Kimberly Burke of Shearwater

Professional Portraits vs. Happy Accidents - We're Making Photographs, not Taking Them

There's a term that applies to a certain type of photograph that you may be familiar with. The term is "happy accident". It's generally a pretty loaded term. It can be an insult directed at a photographer who may have created an image that is good, or even great, but the person wielding the phrase feels that the good image is an exception rather than the rule, based on that person's perception of the artist's work. It can also be used by a photographer to describe his or her own photograph, implying, not so subtly, that the image in question was acquired by luck, clean living, or some other reason not directly related to skill or artistry.

Hobbyists tend to thrive on happy accidents. I don't mean this as a criticism! If photography is something that you love, just for the fun and satisfaction that it brings, there is nothing at all to be ashamed of! For professional photographers, happy accidents are things that you will certainly take if they make themselves available, but cannot be relied upon to pay the rent. Its a little like winning the lottery; I'll take it, but lottery winning is not a livelihood.

As a professional portrait photographer, your goal is to 'create a photograph'. I really prefer that phrase to 'taking a photograph'. The difference is one of mindset. Am I showing up, putting up some lights so that the subject won't be in the dark and then snapping away, hoping for some kind of intervention? Not a chance! You need to walk into the studio or onto a location with a frame of mind totally focused on making a great photograph. You are creating a work of art, no matter how mundane or commercial the assignment might be. The location is sized up. A series of shot options is internalized, discussed with assistants and possibly the subject, any lighting that is necessary is set up, furniture is almost always moved(*). Then, photographs are made.

There are so many things to take in and consider when you are about to create photographs at a professional commercial level: how subjects or models will be portrayed, composition, lighting, style, props, distractions, etc.. You can't just walk in and start shooting, hoping for some happy accidents. You need a concept, and an ability to execute it. Once things are starting to fire on all cylinders in a given context, the shooting can commence in earnest. I make a lot of shots when I am creating portraits. But the activity is directed and intentional. Often, when discussing an upcoming shoot, the subject may ask, "how long will it take, a few minutes?". Um...no. It's important to explain to the subject that this takes preparation, must look great, both for the client and the subject, and while accidents happen, both happy and otherwise, we are making photographs. Really good photographs. Which is my job.