I recently shot a portrait of Maureen Lanigan, the Director of the Rogers Center, at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, for another magazine piece. The editor was really interested in getting a shot of Maureen in her office, which was nicely decorated, but very small. If you've ever tried to light someone in a small room like this, you know that it can be a challenge, especially if the walls are light. Fortunately, her office has a window, but on the day that we had scheduled for the shoot, the sky was cloudy and overcast; a typical Massachusetts day in early May. What to do?
I decided to set up a speedlight outside that window, with a shoot through umbrella. The good news was that there wasn't much wind, which was important because I was working alone, but I did have sand bags so I wasn't too worried. The bad news was that once I had the umbrella in place, it started to rain. Perfect! Unfortunately, a shoot through umbrella is not the right sort for keeping rain off the light. So I improvised with some cinefoil, making a little tent for the light. Another problem solved!
The result was a very natural, soft light coming from the side. I used a warming gel in order to give the light of the overcast day a little life, and I placed a disk reflector to the left, to bounce that window light back at Maureen. One light, a little available light, and a very natural look.
Business
People at Work - Part 10 - The Power of Flowers
When I started to think about this blog I felt my "People at Work" theme was appropriate, and that it had only been a short while ago that I had pushed the pause button on that theme. So this morning I looked back and found that installment number 9 was posted on May 19th, 2009! Not possible... Anyway, here goes with number 10. Finally!
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to photograph Joyce Bellefeuille, for the Merrimack Valley Magazine, along with some of her volunteers as they worked on her Power of Flowers project. Joyce is the owner of Belle Feuille Floral Design in Dunstable, Massachusetts. I would encourage you to check out the Merrimack Valley Magazine article, written by Anne Broyles.
You can read lots more about it on Joyce's web site, but the project delivers free flowers, donated from funerals, weddings, banquets and church services that would otherwise be discarded, to deserving recipients chosen through community outreach programs, friends, home care organizations, elder services, senior centers and cancer clinics.
The magazine went out to subscribers this week and will be on newstands on September 15th. See the magazine's web site for locations.
The Self-Portrait (or How to Deal With a Problem Subject)
I was speaking with the amazing Anya Downing of Engage Marketing Design (http://engagemarketingdesign.com/) last week and we were looking over my website. Among other things, she wondered about my portrait on my Info page, commenting that it was not my usual style. Well, I told her, my son took it. Considering the subject with whom he had to work, it's a great photo, as are others from the shoot. But she was right, the photo is his style, and although he is not (yet) a studio shooter, he creates exceptional photos in his own style.
I began thinking about whether I wanted to address this self-portrait issue. I do tend to internalize most anything that is said to me and about me from someone whose opinion I value, so off I went.
Self-portraits, as most anyone will tell you, can be difficult. I find my self-portrait subject to be generally uncooperative, and I have some difficulty having him not "pose". I've tried different things...
After using this shot (above) for a while, I did a semi-environmental portrait, in my living room (right). But after a while, my son informed me that this was not up to my usual standards. I am paraphrasing ;-)
Then there was the shot below that I created for a group art show in Lowell. I think I would call this a self-portraits [sic].
Or there is always the action shot...
So yesterday, I needed to do a shot of my studio for another purpose, and I decided to put myself into the scene... 
Whatever.
Ok. So what would I do for some other middle-aged guy who wears jeans and has no delusions about looking anything like George Clooney... Simple. I'd go with dramatic lighting, black background, no props, no chair, little to no retouch.
An Artistic Voice
Color, light, shadow and texture. The elusive harmony of form and composition. A look, a laugh, or a moment that draws you in. These are the things that compel me. This is why I create images.
I wrote this recently in an attempt to describe how I feel about what I do. What made me think of this was that I had recently photographed a young actor and college student and was trying to come up with a reason to show them off. She and I will be doing some conventional actor headshots for her portfolio, but I also asked her to be a subject for my ongoing Merrimack Valley People portrait project, and those are the shots shown here. In mulling over today's blog I encountered another blog, entitled "Your Artistic Voice - Do You Have One?", which you can read here.
I hope I have a vision and a distinctive style, or as the blog describes, "that work [that] couldn’t possibly have been done by anyone else". I also hope that my short statement at the opening of this post accurately describes it. The other article also says that a style comes from "life experience and mastery of material". In my 
Whatever I am seeking when I shoot, even if it is something that I've done many times, if I am not stretching, at least in some dimension, I am not growing and am not giving everything I have to my artistic voice. In a commercial photographic setting, the client may think, and verbalize, that they "just want" <fill-in-the-blank>, but giving them something more than that is what differentiates and what results in an artistic vision.
The Creative Process - A Constant State of Agitation
If you're like me, you enjoy the times when things are happening; those times when things are getting done and when you are creating things. But if you are really like me, you also have a tendency to look ahead to the quiet times that follow the storm. A little of this is OK, but I think being creative and productive, and interesting to others requires us to be in a constant state of agitation. We need to be thinking of what to do next, how to create, how to do something better than the last thing that we did, and how to continuously reinvent ourselves. That restlessness is what drives the creative process.
It's a little like brewing beer. Huh? Well, when beer is brewed, the wort (pronounced like dirt), which is the mixture of grains, hops and water, is inactive until the yeast is "pitched" into it. Soon after this happens, the wort becomes very active and "agitated". My analogy is about to breakdown here because the 
OK, so my analogy is a little out there, but I can feel the pulls in my own life that cause me to be creative and productive, or not. We all have times when we are doing things that we don't want to do and wish them to be done with. But don't wish away the good stuff. And don't avoid the chaos. Put yourself into challenging positions and places. It really took me a long time to get the confidence to ask people if they would pose for me, for no other reason than that I wanted to create a portrait of them. People almost never refuse. People are not going to come to you to create something for them until you create a body of work that demonstrates your ability to do so. You craft that by putting yourself out there, by challenging yourself, by getting restless, by thinking about the next thing to create. As tempting as it can be to be complacent and satisfied with your work to this point, don't. Pitch that yeast.
That Was The Week That Was
My apologies to the grownups of my youth for using that title (Google it ;-), but it was quite a crazy week last week. Last Friday, Amy and I attended the Westford, Massachusetts, Parish Center for the Arts Regional Art Event presentations. We were both informed during the week that we had both won a prize for one each of our entries. They don't tell you what place you may have made until you arrive at the ceremony and look at the program. When we did arrive, I looked down at the pro category to see that I had won 1st prize! Wow! This is the picture as it was hung in the gallery.
I have posted it before, but here is the original:
Then I checked the amateur category to see that Amy had also won 1st prize! She was already nervous, but that news was surreal to her. It was a fun night!
Here is a link to her blog where she shows her work and talks about that night: http://amybisson.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/traveling-in-my-discomfort-zone/
The week ended with a Tweetup, hosted by Kathleen Pierce, AKA bistrobroad@ (http://bistrobroad.com), and myself, at the La Boniche restaurant, on Merrimack Street in Lowell (http://www.laboniche.com). There was a nice group there and we all got to finally meet many people with whom we had only tweeted. Thanks to everyone who could make it!
But Tuesday was marked by a really big happening at Western Avenue Studios. The Mary Richardson and the WCVB television show, Chronicle HD, came to WAS to do a feature on the studios and several of the artists. I was one of them! It was a pretty exciting day. I was asked to follow the crew around and document the day.
I, unfortunately, don't have shots of myself being interviewed, but they did video me as I photographed Lindsey, who very kindly agreed to spend the day in my studio and participate. This shot is one that I took while being videoed for the segment.
I will post another blog as soon as I know when the show will air, along with any information that I have about the video on their web site. It is here, if you want to check: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/chronicle/index.html
One of These Things is Not Like The Other...
One of These Things is Not Like The Other...one of these things is not the same (Apologies to Sesame Street!) This bit was always a favorite at my house when my son was little. But I was thinking this morning about photography (there's a shock), and how applicable this verse is. When we get started creating photographs the normal path to learning the art is to focus on technique and to imitate and emulate the masters. When I was a teenager my parents bought that great Time-Life book series on photography for me. I remember waiting anxiously for each edition to arrive and would get inspired by every page. The contemporary photographers at that time had a huge influence on me. My mind is still firmly rooted in the look of images created by Arnold Newman, Pete Turner, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. But there's a time when you need to be yourself. Imitation, emulation and outright copying are fine for a while, but whatever your art may be it has, at some point, to stand out from the crowd; to be unlike the others.
I read a blog recently in which the writer interviewed Set Godin about his latest book (http://www.digitalweddingforum.com/blog/our-interview-with-marketing-guru-and-author-seth-godin). This quote sort of jumped up and demanded notice:
Seth: When everyone has a camera, and everyone thinks they are a photographic artist, it’s clear that access to the device is not a scarce resource. If that’s all you’ve got, I’m not going to pay you. The art isn’t in the taking of the picture. The art is in what you do the other 21 hours in a day.
If you don’t like that, you should become an amateur and do what you love, but don’t expect to get paid for it!
Independent portrait photographers who are consistently creating images that could be mistaken for those from a retail studio should take notice. Of course there are always clients who want a basic, "school picture day" portrait, but even there, it's really important to raise that bar. If some potential client is comparing a handful of photographers and, absent any referrals to or prior knowledge about them, they all present the same style and quality, and one is the Mall retail portrait store, then the only thing these photographers have to differentiate themselves is price and possibly location. Google the portrait store at your local Mall and you will come to a very quick conclusion as to which one wins on price. In fact, lowering your price will not even help, unless you make it $0. If this sounds familiar you are selling a commodity. Wikipedia, (which knows all :-), defines commodity as "some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is fungible, i.e. the same no matter who produces it." Sound familiar?
Seth Godin goes on to say:
Seth: Stop looking for more business! The most important thing is to reinvent what it is you sell and to overwhelm your current clients with the experience they encounter when they engage you. This is what word of mouth will come from. Not from better photos, not from a better brochure, not from a cheaper price.
I am not sure that I agree with him concerning "better photos", both because I think that is ultimately where you differentiate yourself, but also because I feel he is contradicting his earlier statement. But if he means better photos, technically, I would agree, at least to a degree. In some future blog I will go on a rant about photo gear and its relationship to great photos (or lack of a relationship...), but I would interpret "better photos" to mean all aspects of your portfolio, including your vision, body of work, consistency and style, and in that case I feel that it matters a lot. But bringing that experience with which you will overwhelm a client, along with your vision and uniqueness is really what will make potential clients want to hire you. If you are the same as everyone else, nothing will do that; not even price.
Plan, plan and plan some more
The great Boston photographer, Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr., known as Fabian Bachrach, passed away last week at the age of 92. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/arts/design/02bachrach.html)
He came from a family of photographers, most of whom worked and still work in the family business. His grandfather, who started the studio, photographed Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg!
According to the NY Times article, when John F. Kennedy was a US senator, he sat for a portrait with Bachrach. The results were what Bachrach considered unusable, which, in the words of his son, "ate on my father for months and months and months". Any commercial photographer can relate, although most not at the same level as that of photographing a US senator. But when Kennedy became president, Bachrach convinced his office to let Kennedy sit for another portrait. This time, Bachrach was kept waiting for 8 hours only to be told that the session had been cancelled. Pleading to be allowed to go ahead with the session, he was given 10 minutes, "from start to finish", as the Times article says. This 10 minute session resulted in the president's official portrait, which is arguably the most well known portrait of Kennedy. See the NY Times article and the gallery of Bachrach's work to see the photo.
There are so many lessons here, for people photographers especially. When you screw up, the first thing is to admit it to yourself and to your client, and then to get over it. Easier said than done. But you can! I have a quote from Joe McNally on my wall. You can find it in his blog post, (http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2008/09/10/cant-get-no-respect), look for the paragraphs that begin with "I’ve shot a lot more bad pictures than I’ll ever shoot good ones". That I read his quote periodically is closely related to one of my blogs from last week in which I talked about being the photographer you want to become. Even that phrase is a quote from another great photographer, Craig Tanner. But when you doubt yourself, step aside! Try to step away from your own person and ego for a minute and ask, what would <a photographer that I admire> do in this situation? Obviously, that person could be anyone that you admire, not necessarily another photographer.
Another lesson that I took away from the Bachrach anecdote was how necessary it is to plan. Plan, plan and plan some more. Try to envision what the situation will be like, how you will feel and how you will act and react. You need to be reacting to the environment and to the things that could not have been anticipated. You should already have thought about all of the things that you knew about beforehand. Clients don't want to wait for you to have a happy accident. The art, creativity and imagination that you bring to a commercial job begins where your technical knowledge and experience leaves off.
Nervousness and Photo Shoots
Everyone has it to some degree. Some people claim to never have it, while for others, it can be debilitating. But nervousness is often a very important participant in a photo shoot, for good or bad. Photo shoot subjects, unless they are professional actors or models, can come to a shoot bringing a suitcase for of nervousness; baggage in both senses of the word. People generally bring their nervousness to a shoot because they are unsure of what will happen, often feeling as though they will be responsible for knowing what to do.
As I have mentioned on a couple of occasions, I was a musician in a former life, and so thinking about nervousness has always been a part of my life. When you perform, whether it be musically, verbally, or some other way, you might have feelings of doubts or inadequacy, which manifest themselves as nervousness. I know that when I performed, especially when classical music was involved, I brought along with me the years of music teachers who had criticized my "sound" and technique. I still have the New Hampshire "All State" evaluation form from one of my auditions in high school which labeled my tone as "harsh". Yum! So in my typically defiant way, I went on to study the trumpet at Berklee, always putting myself into situations where my sound was of primary importance, eventually developing it to the point where it was the best aspect of my playing. But if you aren't aware of it, when you stand in front of an audience to perform, those old criticisms can come swirling back. Never mind that your audience has no idea that you have brought such baggage.
Getting back to the subject in a photo shoot though, it is often the case that the nervous person that arrives at your studio or location to be photographed has brought years of such baggage, but in this case, about themselves; their appearance, their behavior, etc. The absolute worst thing that a photographer can do is to have his or her own baggage on display as well. Your subject has to feel that you are in charge of the situation. You need to make the person feel that they will be told, every step of the way, what to do, where to stand or sit, how to do so, etc., and that you will be sensitive to their discomfort and will be certain to alleviate it.
That being said, there is a certain kind of nervousness that is good for the photographer to have. It's really important to leave the destructive, baggage kind of the nervousness at home. It won't help you, the photographer, or your subject to feel as though you are in control and know what you are doing. It will signal to your subject that their own feelings of nervousness are validated. When I doubt myself, I use the recommendation of the excellent photographer, Zack Arias, that you just need to show up at every shoot as though you are shooting for Rolling Stone or some similar gig. As I said, I used to get really nervous as a musician, when performing classical music because of my feelings of unworthiness, but I found it helpful to step out of myself and imagine that I was Maurice Andre. I think that experience has helped me a great deal as a photographer to do likewise. It's really important to realize that there is a positive kind of nervousness though that need not adversely affect your abilities to shoot well, nor the ability of your subject to be themselves, but will, in fact, enhance your performance. That "edge", which I always feel before a shoot, and don't suppress, helps me think in that same out-of-body way. Rather than getting bogged down in what to do and how to do it, I start to think as I imagine Arnold Newman, Richard Avedon, or even Joe McNally would be thinking in that same situation. The difference that I can see in the faces and the demeanor of clients when I calmly control the situation on a shoot is pretty amazing. If you are a photographer, use this edge! If you are looking for a photographer, I would urge you to find one who has it.
Business, Art and Dealing with Change
This morning I was reading a post on a Yahoo group that I follow, and I found it both interesting and disturbing. I don't normally contribute to these interest-group discussions because they usually bore me, to be frank. The photography groups often focus on photo gear talk (yawn), rants about how microstock is killing the stock photo business (stick a fork in it?), advice about legal issues in which you realize, in the end, if someone wants to sue you you're screwed anyway, and ones like the one that I read this morning that bemoan the state of the photo business today. Now being older than dirt, I think I have a particular perspective on some of this. When I first learned how to use Dektol, Ansel Adams was still in his 60s :-) [Use The Google Luke!].
But I had a bad reaction after reading this particular post, in which a very well-regarded photographer, whose work I like very much, announced that he was going to lecture to some high school students and inform them of the "realities" of photography as a career. The implication in his words was that he was not going to be very encouraging.
I think reality is a good thing. It's very underrated :-) My response in the forum was: please don't go overboard!
A little story... Out of high school, I was hot to become a musician. I attended a music school in Boston, one that is very well-known as a Jazz and Pop music institution. There was nothing out there waiting for me when I got out. I was a trumpet player, and the gigs consisted pretty much of playing in a road band, doing local society gigs, getting one of the much-envied NY studio gigs, or one of the 4 seats in a hand full of symphony orchestras around the world that payed. Each year, that school was graduating around 100 trumpet players. You can do the math! I never remember being bitter or feeling that what the school did was unconscionable. I ended up playing Boston society gigs for a couple of years until I realized that I needed, and at that point, really wanted a change. As it happened, a change in the music business was happening then that is very much like what is happening now to media arts. Rock was overtaking the music niche that once was occupied by that which required brass. And then, thanks to digital technology, the music business experienced a total upheaval, as we all know now, although this latter event happened well after I was out of the biz.
But today that school is larger than ever, turns out more graduates than it did in my day, and is thriving, but in a very different space than it did then. It's still a music school. It's still commercially oriented in its approach, which differs and always has from the more traditional conservatories. It has evolved.
But I never looked at it as a trade school whose purpose was to train me for a business. It is and was an art school. When did we become so focused on college being useful only if it trained one for a trade or the business world? But that's another one of my rants... What's wrong with kids studying the arts? Yes, please do tell kids of the realities, as you see them today, of the business of photography, but please do not discourage them from studying the art of photography! Please have a larger perspective on the art of photography. That photographers could build a business around this art can really be seen as a recent phenomenon; recent being the latter part of the 20th century. The early greats of photography were not making big bucks at this. It was the advent of photos in print publishing and the explosion of other visual media that led to what we have come to know as "the business". We are currently somewhere in the middle of another revolution, and hopefully, in some way, the art will survive and we along with it.