Photography

Trains Are Good For America

Inspiration, Locations,

Trains are good for creativity, trains are good for the economy, for America. Monorail, monorail, monorail…

I don’t keep tabs on American politics as much as I could, but the 2010 mid-term elections have sparked some interest in my brain. There were (and still are) plans in action in the US to install high-speed rail between various cities, and some folks have run in the 2010 elections promising not to waste money on such schemes. The short summary I understand is that Democrats and Obama want to pay for high-speed rail and a Republican backlash is attempting to block high-speed railroads from coming to the States. As an American living the past 7+ years in Switzerland (and a regular train traveler throughout Europe), I can speak volumes on the benefits of a train system integrated into a healthy society. The topic of job creation and immediate economic stimulus are the two least interesting and least important reasons to start a high-speed rail project in the States.

Good For The Economy

The short reason I hear for installing trains is that they’re good for the economy because they produce jobs due to the building of the needed infrastructure and also stimulate manufacturing in local areas. This may be true, but the reason the US should have high-speed rail and the reason I love train travel is that it simply makes society better. If you’ve never lived in a train-society, where the rails means of transportation is used by nearly everyone at some point to get from point A to B, then you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re missing. Trains are good for the environment. Trains are good for work productivity. Trains are good for relationships. Trains are good for writing, for creativity, for enabling communication, for the elderly, for the young, for business, for pleasure, basically they’re a no-brainier excellent way to improve the quality of life of a society. Why? Let me explain…

I lived my first 26 years in the United States, in Michigan. It’s car capital of the world, it’s Motor City Detroit. There was no real public transport to speak of when I was growing up (and there still isn’t), and communities were defined by urban sprawl (and basically still are). I’ve logged more hours driving between the years of 16 and 26 than some people in Europe will log in their entire lives. I’ve driven from Michigan to New Orleans, Michigan to Nevada, through the South West, Colorado, parts of California, and when I came to Switzerland I knew I was happy not to drive every day of my life anymore. One huge advantage of train travel is that it has the capacity to free your mind.

Trains Are Good for Thinking

Driving requires that a large part of your brain allocate attention to the act of driving. Some people think that driving is an easy barely-need-to-pay-attention task, but it’s really very involved. If you spend an hour driving, you’re concentrating primarily on just driving. You can talk on the phone (and distract yourself from not hitting the cars around you), listen to music or books (fun on road trips), and watch the road. You can think about things, but most attention has to be devoted to driving – and if you can’t drive, you’re basically fucked, your mobility is very limited in the States without a car.

Train travel requires that you buy a ticket, sit in a seat (you sometimes have to stand if it’s crowded), and then you can do whatever the hell you want. You can write a book, philosophize about the universe, sleep, read, talk on the phone, talk on the phone and write email on a computer and drink a coffee and once in a while look out the window, it’s awesome. Having more time to think means you have more time to ponder and develop ideas. Ideas motivate us in life to start companies, write plays, bake cakes, fall in love, etc. The amount of time I have to devote to things besides driving during the day when I travel means I have something like twice as much time to live and ponder my life in Switzerland and Europe than I do in the United States, and it’s awesome. I read more, write more, and think more on trains. I can honestly say that my writing, blogging, photography, painting, and creative projects would not exist if it weren’t for train travel. It just gives me more time to think about stuff.

Trains Help Communication

Train travel improves communication and idea sharing between real people. This is one topic I hear very little about when trains are debated in the context of the US. I have the impression that residents of the States sometimes think of themselves as American citizens, and that we’re all part of the same country so it doesn’t matter too much if you live in Detroit and haven’t seen Boston, but the US isn’t as homogenized as we’re taught on MTV, and the ability to travel from one city to another allows people to share ideas in real-time (instead of on Facebook) and opens up our minds. It’s incredibly cool to board the train at night in Zurich, and arrive the next morning in Berlin, or Vienna, or the South of Italy, or France, or Spain, Amsterdam, etc. It saves travel time because I can travel during the night and not be destroyed and sleep deprived when I roll into New Orleans at 8am after driving all night. This makes it easier for me to get exposure to people in different areas of Europe, visit museums, shoot graffiti, attend barcamps, etc. I travel much more in Europe than in the US because of the train system. I also spend more money in local economies in Europe because I travel, and meet more people in different cities. Trains help connect people in different geographic regions separated by distances, irregardless if they are able to drive a car or not. In a way, this means more freedom of movement and travel than in a car dominated society.

Not a Bus or a Plane?

Can’t one just take the bus? Why do we need to build rail when we already have roads? Yes, you can take a bus, but trains and busses are really very different. You can walk around on a train, you don’t get caught in a traffic jam, and it’s faster. Why not fly? This barely need mention but air travel sucks compared with trains. Plane seats are jammed, there’s little ability to move around, pressurizing cabins is uncomfortable, airport security in the US makes people want to not fly, weather has a greater influence on travel, and it’s hard to work on planes (I only fly coach).

Trains Help the Economy

Trains are good for the tourist economy and for domestic vacation. For example, I sometimes fly to California to visit friends. Last time I flew to San Diego to stay with one friend by the beach, and then took to the train to L.A. to visit another friend and we drove to the mountains to hike. There was another guy I wanted to meet in Arizona, but there’s no easy train connection to him and I didn’t want to spend 12 hours driving to Phoenix and back, so we didn’t meet up. If a high-speed rail were running between San Diego and Vegas, we could have easily met there, infused money into the Nevada economy, and then headed back.

It’s easy to be on vacation with the train. In Switzerland, many trains that go between cities have a kids wagon at the end of the train. It’s colorful on the inside, and has a large area with a slide and play area where the kids can go crazy. This is a nice contrast to driving three hours with a kid in the passenger seat who wants to run around and gets tired of sitting after 30 minutes on the road. You can do more on vacation because you don’t waste time driving. If a trip is more than 6 hours, you take a night train. You book a ticket, reserve a seat, and just let the train take you where you’re going. I travel more in Europe than in the States largely because it’s easier. From Zurich I can easily take day trips to four different countries. If I need a car I can always just rent one. In fact, the short-term car rental industry is very healthy in places like Switzerland. You travel to a city, rent a car if needed, and don’t rent one if you don’t need it. Easy, flexible, good for the local economy, good for the country.

There are many benefits to having trains integrated into a society. The short-term economic boost and industrial stimulus related to train infrastructure is just a very small part of why trains are awesome, and should be built to connect population centers in the United States.

Darmstadt Street Stickers VG10

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I had a few hours to chill in Darmstadt and took my Sony NEX-VG10 along and shot with the Mamiya M645 80mm f/2.8 lens. This is the fabulous combination of the latest consumer video technology (the VG10) with an old guard lens of the film days (the Mamiya 80mm f/2.8 N). I didn’t find much graffiti in the city but there are a number of stickers and street art. What’s it like shooting manual focus on the VG10 with an old guard manual focus beast? It could be better, but the Mamiya 80mm is a sweet lens, and now my favorite to take along on the streets with the VG10.

Yes, I am Indeed A Gear Whore

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I’ve been described as an equipment whore without brand loyalty. Or, I think that’s what I was called, in any event, it’s a completely authentic description. I thought about it for a second, searching for a witty response, but I knew Matt was correct, so I just agreed – and held my head high. But now with Photokina 2010 starting, I feel a desire to explain my compusion (for myself as much as for the reader). You see, the key to being a successful equipment fiend is to do it on a budget and with wanton determination. It should go without saying that you only buy things you’ll actually use. Otherwise you’re just buying crap to make yourself feel better, filling up a gear closet so you’ll always have the possibility (in the back of your mind) of doing something interesting one day with all the junk you’ve accumulated. For this reason, I rarely buy anything new at full price. Even my Sony A900 was bought used from a pro shop in Zurich. The Sigma HSM lenses I bought new, but most of the Minolta lens I own were bought used from MapCamera in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

I also have something of a bag fetish. Not hand bags (although I’m sort of addicted to the Scaramanga label) but rather all manner of MountainSmith, Pelican, Lowe Pro, Think Tank, random messenger bags from Ortlieb and Dana Design, but I’m not totally addicted, I’ve avoided buying any of the North Face shoulder bags. I have to admit to having two of their expedition duffels – however, in my defense, they “were” the ideal bags to pack mountaineering gear in when I flew to Bolivia. Walking through La Paz, I really felt like I was in one of those North Farce ads in Rock and Ice, (my favorite climbing magazine of the day) and I couldn’t resist buying some bags in the tourist shops. But bags are cheap, I would never lay a finger on a Louis Vetton.

How Many Cameras?

Cameras are a whole other subject. People are always asking me how many cameras I have, and I always need to recount in my head. And, should I say one for the two Holga/Woca cameras? They’re cheap enough to count as one. I’ve bought all my cameras used (with a few exceptions) and in today’s used market, when you find a Fuji GA645 here or there for $350, how can you say no? From Ricardo.ch I got a Mamiya 645 Pro, which goes great with the used Maimya 645 lenses I got from Keh.com to adapt to my A900. And there’s no point in buying just one Sunpak 120J, you need at least two to feel good about yourself. Flashes work best in pairs anyways, and it feels professional to have variety. Then come the eBay purchases. My first digital camera was a Canon D2000, I figured it was good to start with a DSLR with horrible medium and high ISO performance. Then I would learn how to handle digital noise. I bought one Contax G1 with the 35mm lens because it’s a badass fotoapparat, but then I wanted to get more lenses, and scored another G1 with the 28mm, 45mm, and 90mm lenses plus the TLA-280 flash for less than $800. When one of the G1 babies died (probably corrosion from shooting on a sailing trip in Greece) I had another to fall back on (that’s called thinking ahead). I have two Fuji GA645 cameras (one needs repair after too much exposure in the Alps) and one GA645w. I’m always lusting after a Fuji 670, 680 or 690, and thank God I never bought a Polaroid modified 4×5 handheld.

Function Over Form

However, no camera can be considered beautiful if it’s a useless paperweight sitting on a shelf somewhere. I have no desire for a gold-plated Leica. I’ve used all my cameras at one point or another, and fully intend to use them all again in due course. The Contax G1 has been sailing in Greece, all through Zurich, shot many pics in Berlin, taken mountaineering in the Swiss Alps, and the 90mm Zeiss is a fantastic portrait lens. I recently picked up some Fuji Natura to use with the G1 to make some awesome low-light shots. The Minolta 7 film camera was with me in Bolivia, and for a trip through Eastern Europe and Germany. I shot every day with it for a month and my backpack was filed with one extra pair of pants  and boxes of 35mm and 120 Provia. The GA645 series have taken some amazing landscape images in Switzerland, been up Mt. Fuji and also gone through Eastern Europe and naturally been to Berlin. The Canon D2000 was, and still is a great DSLR for studio shots and parties. The D2000 enabled my first self-portraits and peaked my interested enough in digital to buy a Minolta 7D when they were liquidated in Zurich at a sweet price. The Ricoh GRD and Canon G10 are great mountaineering cameras to complement the GA645, and they’ve all found their place (although I sort of busted up the G10 ski touring). Now I’m shooting graffiti street and portrait images with my Sony A900 and couldn’t really ask for more from a well-exposed image. The picture is tack sharp from my Sigma lenses and you can see the definition of my softbox grid in the reflection on the eye of a person.

Never Obsolete

Now, why don’t I just buy and sell on eBay? Once you have these things you have to consider that you’ll make very little re-sale on the used market, so like old college text books, it just makes sense to keep them around. Or, I consider it a small resale value as compared with what I could do with the gear if I need to use it again. Although I’m a gear whore, I have no brand loyalty. I love Apple, but never got an iPhone because they’re over-priced for what they are (ok, the new 4th generation is a step in the right direction). I still use a dual 1 GHz G4 PowerMac because I didn’t want to drop $2000 (or more) on a new computer (when I could buy some Elinchrom lights instead), and I was getting along ok till now (a new iMac is on the desk). I’ll buy the camera which fits what I want it to do. I have a Canon G10 because it’s an awesome camera for mountaineering and travel, but love to pull out my Ricoh GRD for wide angle shooting and it packs better for sport climbing. I like the idea of North Face but buy my jackets from Mountain Hardware (on sale) and pants from Haglofs (they fit amazingly well) to complement my Osprey Exposure climbing pack. I love the North Face packs from the ads, but the Osprey Exposure fits me like a fine-tailored suit. Nothing which is useless can be beautiful to the user, and I love products with great design and are useful in real life (I’m also a UX/UI prima donna).

Here’s the thing about being a gear whore, you’ll never find the perfect bag or camera, so I don’t even try. Above all else, I use what I have to the fullest extent possible (or so I believe). I use the cameras I have till they break and am still amazed at how far I’ve been able to push my Quicksilver 2002 PowerMac. If you don’t have the right tools you won’t get the job done. True, I have more tools than I need, but it’s nice having too many flashes on hand because I can do whatever lighting setup I want. I don’t used my ice tools every year, but when you want to climb a frozen waterfall, they’re essential. Now, the blowtorch nozzle is a little extreme, but it’s getting a lot of attention in my latest photo shoots, and if needed, I’m sure I can sell it – (but probably I won’t). An effective living space is one with interesting things to play with and discover. This was as true as when I was five as it is now that I’m pushing 33 years of age. Photokina 2010 is opening, and a whole new line of toys is coming onto the market to fuel my gear compulsion.

Related Gear Whore Articles

My Chainsaw: The Big Blue Beast

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The pertinent question is not why I’m walking around Bern with a giant fucking chainsaw in hand on a fine 1st of August Sunday morning. No, the question is, why are you empty handed? The 1st of August is the national day in Switzerland, like the 4th of July in America. I was in Bern for the famous flea market, on the hunt for a fine rusted chainsaw.

I’ve been in the market for a dilapidated old, rusted Texas Chainsaw Massacare type device for some time now.  I had actually found the perfect specimen back in May at the Bern Flohmarkt, and chocked on the price. The seller was a Turk who originally wanted 120 Swiss Francs for a rusted machine that probably didn’t even run. Upon hearing his offer (translated into German by his colleague) I instinctively laughed out loud and turned to walk away. I knew the price would be absurd, because the guy who was translating could barely keep a straight face when broached the offer. After I stopped laughing we bartered and I got him down to 80 CHF. However, I tuned the final offer down on principle and had regretted it ever since. I ended up spending my money on some Hunter S. Thompson literature from some hippies instead. So, with this regret in my mind, this time when I found my precious I paid the 80 CHF without hesitation and got two vintage 80’s walkie-talkies thrown in for free (that’s the way I see it). This time the seller was Swiss, and I think he was surprised that I bought the Beast without haggling over the price.

The Beast

The Beast is all metal, light blue on the outer frame, grimy like the village drunk and heavy like a life filled with regret.  It could be a bit more rusted around the chain, but otherwise it’s perfect. It even leaks oil and has an exposed spark plug on the top.

Why do I need an old chainsaw you ask? I’m developing on a new photo project I’m calling ArtDeath, KunstTod, ArtMord, or some variation of those. I’m not sure on the exact naming yet, but the vision is clear. The central point is that the artist needs to destroy his creations to set her soul free to create new pieces. I do 1m x 1m square paintings, and it seems like destroying these with a giant chainsaw is the thing to do. Naturally the event will be photographed, and I’ll need to organize some models and hire a cool MUA like bPerfect. Plus, the Blue Beast will be perfect to pair with models like Demari or Jurgita.

Now, for model shoots I’ll have to remove the motor of course. We can’t have people dropping the Big Blue Beast on their toes or fingers, or not even being able to lift it to start with. Even I have some problems swinging the thing around, and I see now why loggers are such beefy, burly men. It’s got that certain tank-like build where you know it’ll take whatever beating you subject it to and still run like an well-designed piece of machinery.

A Person is not a Subject

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It’s been a fun year of photography so far, and running the Web Portraits Zurich project has given me reason to reflect on the process of making cool portraits of interesting people. I’ve contrasted my findings with the ramblings of professional photographers and teachers of the internet (where I learned a lot abouot photography), and have come to the conclusion that most internet sources don’t really have a handle on the portrait process, or they simply like to focus more on gear and dehumanizing people into subjects with gear talk rather than having a conversation on who is in front of our lenses.

Now, understand, it’s not their fault. It’s not embedded in their DNA. It’s just part of the mystique of this easy-lazy-art-form called photography. Cameras and photo gear became popular because it’s easier to click a shutter on a device than painting a canvas or doing a detailed sketch of what ever it is you’re looking at. When you shoot with a big camera it makes you feel important, but there’s a reason I don’t take myself too seriously. There’s this romanic ideal of photographers being like painters and artists delving with their whole soul into the artistic expression of the portrait. Photographers are expressing the inner soul of humans for all to see in the printed or screen viewed image…however…

A person is not a subject

Simple, and to the point. A lot of folks get into photography because it’s cool – like I did. I drew things in math class because it was interesting, I started with photography and Photoshop because the gear makes it easy. There’s a romantic notion embedded in the collective history of photography of capturing emotions and elements of people, which would otherwise be lost forever as the second-hand ticked over and the present becomes the past and that look is lost forever (unless captured by the photographer). But a person is not a subject. Even models have names and personalities, but photographers sometimes like to ignore those humanizing notions and instead focus on the technical process of focusing light onto an image capture surface (like film or a digital sensor).  Afterall, we’re all engineers and poets, painters and scientists. But I like photography because it opens a door to the non-technical side of life. Models are not Barbie dolls. I know of what I speak, for I shoot pictures of Bratz dolls when I just want to photography plastic people. However, this gets boring quickly, and is a subject best suited to those moments when you’re looking for a way to till time but don’t want to sit in front of a television.

Photographing people is distinctly different than taking snapshots of Bratz dolls because with people you now have the opportunity to interact with the person. If you’re into photographing people, then just think of the process as an extended conversation with some visual elements thrown in. When you start saying things like, “I lit my subject with this and that camera and photographed them with an 85mm f1.2 lens…” Well, you’ve lost the point of the conversation. If you listen to professional photographers they’ll tell you to talk to your subject. Get to get to know them, make them feel comfortable. But here’s the thing, small talk like, “what do you do” “what’s your favorite color” “where are you from” is just filler talk. You’re probably doing it so the person doesn’t feel ignored but not because you really want to know who they are. This type of small talk simply says, “I’m just interested in my camera and making an image and you’re just a body…so smile.” This technique can be effective given the right situation. But is that the more interesting way to shoot? Is it more interesting to shoot a Bratz doll (who can’t speak) or to listen to a person and make a picture of them as well?

A Portrait is just Conversation

A photo session is just an extended conversation in my mind, and if you start out talking with people with an authentic voice, then the photo session will just be an extension of that initial, real, emotional connection. If you starting shooting like a pornographer and only start talking when you notice your subject is looking uncomfortable, then the whole positive momentum of the conversation has already been lost and you need to sort of start over. Tripping the shutter is the  shortest and least important part of a portrait photo session. But it’s the part that defines the final image. The question is, how does one get up to that point? I Think of the photo session in this way:

Conversation – Lighting/Set – Picture

The more time you take in getting to know a person before you light them with a million-gazillion photons, the more natural the resulting image will be. Or more unnatural, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve, and sometimes every photo session is full of suprises. Once you understand something about the person you’re planning to shoot you can design the lighting (some call this subject driven lighting), build a set or pick a proper location, and then being planning a post-processing philosophy, all before taking any pictures. I like to spend the least amount of time possibly on actually shooting and setting up lighting. The reason is simle, the shutter trip is the most insignificant part of the process if the process was done correctly. Now, maybe you’re going for the whole Stanley Kubrik, make-the-actors-feel-uncomfortable-to-illicit-emotion-from-them deal, but that’s a whole other level of person-photographer interaction. An authentic portrait session starts (and ends) with a conversation.

Most of the technical things about photography I’ve learned from the internet. It’s been a fun time and I’ve learned a lot about light control and lenses and cameras and strange terms like gobos and brolley. But my mind became exhaused and bored with this conent, and I’ve started wondering what else is there. However, when I watch things like creativeLive with Zach Arias or attend a Strobist workshop, I’ve started to notice how technology and lights are always at the forefront, and the whole emotional connection thing is thrown in afterwards, even though people generally admit it’s one of the mose important aspects of the whole process. Those conversations are there, but they’re not focused on in blog articles like David’s article On Assignment: Caleb Jones. Technical side of the shoot is all there, but what was the emotional connection between David and Caleb?

That’s a key element that a photographer like Joey L communicates extremely well in his DVD tutorial (Sessions with Joey L). In his tutorial Joey Lawrence pushes the ideas of trust and emotional connection as being primary, and lighting and camera technology as the secondary elements of a photo shoot (or photo career). This isn’t meant to be a negative critique of Zach Arias or of David Hobby (but it could be viewd as an encouragement or suggestion). The latter two (and internet icons like Chase Jarvis) are just responding to what sells. People love the technology of photography, the lenses, bodies, radio triggers, flashes, etc. People drop big bucks on technology and then wonder why their pictures look lifeless and ordinary when they know the person has a soul and interesting story to tell (like we all do). The thing I love about the Vincent Laforet CreativeLive workshop is that he started out talking about the philosophy behind movies, the story telling and emotional elements, and then got into the gear talk. It sets your head in the right mind-set, to tell a story and to make a connection to the viewers or consumers of the media product you’re producing. That’s not to say I miss the gear talk, it just gets boring after a while.

I love photo gear. I have more cameras than Onitsuka tigers and picked my last apartment based on how I could setup a photo studio. One reason I started the Web Portraits Zurich project was to do emotionally-driven portraits of people (I know that sounds a tad pretentious). I wanted to setup a process of including the emotion of the person in their portrait. I wanted to portray people including elements of how they perceive themselves. I shoot the web portraits based first around the person, and then as a secondary condition around lighting and Photoshop. For each portrait set we start out with a concept meeting, the people I’m shooting get to know me and I start to understand how they see themselves. This is the grounding for the whole photo session, and I see the whole process as one long conversation with some camera equipment and photoshop thrown in as an after-thought.

A person is not just a subject

A photo shoot is just an extended conversation


Amazee Gothic – First Cut

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The latest participants of the Web Portraits Zurich project were Dania and Gregory, the folks behind Amazee.com and help organize events like Web Monday Zurich and the Swiss Startup Camp. Before the shoot I sat down with Greg and Dania for a brainstorming session (after presenting some ideas to them online), which included Amazee Gothic. The purpose of Web Portraits Zurich is to give people a platform to be photographed, to challenge their ideas of themselves and be a part of how their images are created and portrayed.

Amazee Gothic

There’s an iconic image from Americana called American Gothic. It’s an image of a man and woman standing beside one another. The basic interpretation is that they’re married and have labored hard to build the barn, which dominates the background of the painting. The man holds a pitchfork, and you get a sense that hard work and family come together to build a life for the two of them and for the future. I love thinking philosophically about images, and tracking the origins of ideas. With Dania and Greg, the analogy was perfect and obvious. The two are married and have labored hard in the startup land of Switzerland to build their barn, Amazee.com using the tech tools and business sense of modern times. This was the central theme I presented during our brain storming session, and then we exploded out in a couple different directions, and settled on a Tech-Flesh Jungle analogy to represent the internet environment of startup and internet companies in the new net universe – but this one will take some time to digest and to present coherently.

Raw Shoot

Before jumping into the Tech-Flesh concept, we did some basic portraits in my apartment studio. Dania and Greg dropped by one fine Tuesday night, and after a raclette dinner we set about shooting some portraits. Part of the Web Portraits project is to give people who don’t know much about photography and lighting the opportunity to learn. So we started out with Greg shooting after I’d set up the lights. Then I shot sets of Greg and Dania separately and together, getting a nice pool of images for the Amazee Gothic concept.

I wanted some nice, not-dark-and-moody lighting for the two of them. Greg has one of those fabulous near-bald heads that draws up from his body into a sort of classic form which almost demands a gridded softbox. I had one on hand and put an Elinchrom BxRi 250ws into it (a Creative Light 60x90cm gridded softbox). For Dania, and to balance out the sharper light hitting Greg I setup a white Elinchrom beauty dish with a diffusion sock, and inside I added a gold reflector element to give a warmer tone to her. I added some Lastolite Trilite reflectors in front of the two of them and we ready to shoot.

First Cut

I put together a quick first edit of images from the shoot. I had just picked up a flame thrower for a future ProtestLove shoot and it seemed perfect to pair a pregnant Dania with a destruction device I originally saw when the Watchmen promotional posters were released. Basically I was looking for a retro-styled flame thrower like the one the Comedian used to light his cigar, and this one with Dania has the perfect look. The device I found is simplistic and is the perfect size, not too long and not too short. We were sort of thinking of compositing in a bomber in the background dropping a payload of blossoming flowers from the sky. All I need now is to hook the thing up to a propane tank and shoot the flame and do some photoshop magic.

Greg found a pair of those cool 80’s glasses in my apartment I bought on the boardwalk in San Diego, and he wears them extremely well. I shot him with my large Creative Light softbox, and I guess he’s staring into the internet future, and with his smile, sort of reminds me of Max Headroom, I dig this look immensely. In the previous projects, I focused on a grungy look with Mathias, a cleaner look with Lukas, and now with Greg I wanted to do something lighter, so I worked up a composite of Greg with a summer sky shot in Berlin. I wanted something with a lot of light, but to maintain the texture of a painting canvas, some lightflare was added in Photoshop and I sort of want a hint of the awesome flare seen in Star Trek: where J.J Abrams used an anamorphic lens to get wicked flare, you also see this feeling in the Transformers movies, it gives you the sense of sitting in a desert.

A Person Is Not A Subject

When photographers talk about their photographs of people (like portraits), when I read comments on photo forums and on blogs from popular professional photographers it’s popular to use the term subject when referring to the image capture of a person, as in…

“I photographed the subject using a gridded octabox to feather the light off of their nose and give depth to their cheek bones…blah, blah…”

I like to call the humans I photograph people. After writing about subjects and lighting a lot of photographers then say something like, “but you have to make a connection with your subject.” I think that if you treat people like people instead of subjects, then it makes everything easier and natural to start out with. I think of a photo session as just an extended conversation. If you lose the human element in the photograph or image, then you also lose authenticity. And when you lose authenticity you have a picture which is worthless, without emotional impact, and is a waste of time to look. It’s tempting to say subject because it implies that you’re doing something grander than tripping the shutter on a camera during a conversation, but the truth is portrait photography is just about being a human talking to another human. When you get caught up in lights and gear and subjects you might not ever learn that simple fact, and end up treating a person you’re photographing like a science experiment – and I like photography because I’m not in the lab.

Lukas – Movement DJ Portrait

Web Portraits Zurich, , ,

I shot Lukas for the Web Portraits Zurich project some time ago, and I’m finally producing some finished portraits from the shoot. Lukas runs Guzuu and is a fixture in the Swiss web community for his unique visual style. Like many people I meet in the web/startup scene, he’s not just into launching companies, but also has a creative side. In this case, Lukas likes to DJ in Luzern and runs an internet music label (LittleJig.com).

I thought for a long time about how create images of Lukas, I could have just composited in some graffiti and called in a wrap, but then the images would have looked too similar to what I created for Mathias, and my sense for photographic exploration was honed in the academic research world. In Academia the key driver is to do something different, start with what you learned from the work of Bent and Hagood on Active Fiber Composites (AFC) and do something slightly different, evolve the idea a bit. Similarly, I wanted images of Lukas which have more movement and motion elements in them than with Mathias. I wanted to take some elements from my experience dancing in clubs and other DJ images I’ve seen on Flickr, and combine it with the visual style I’ve been developing. This meant light trails, streams of light created from the headlights of moving cars and night scenes of the streets. So when I went to UXCamp Europe 2010 in Berlin, I took some extra days and walked around Berlin, shooting long exposures at Rosenthaler Platz and other locations to generate the necessary texture images for Lukas.

When I’m dancing in a club I like to loose my mind and let my body get connected to the music and the vibrations in my soul. It’s a very personel thing, rather hard to commuincate visually, but I figured I should at least try. A key here was to let the light trails and night scenes move around Lukas, not dominate his image or allow key elements to be lost in the shadows. I’m getting back into painting at the moment, so I had an eye for adding abstract visuals from the night which are probably more like brush strokes than elements from Berlin, but in my head it seems to work.

Yes…I Also Shoot Landscapes

Photography, Vision, ,

Yes, I also photograph boring landscapes. It’s true. In between Web Portraits and Barbie Hunters and Bratz dolls I shoot landscapes and views of cities. My first dance with the photo mistress started with Women’s Rugby at the University of Michigan (my sister was a star player) and continued in Alaska and then Bolivia with views of the land and my travels. Why don’t you see them? Because there’s a perverse notion in the mind of many photographers that light painting is art, and that you should put up every great image on a webpage called a portfolio and allow casual visitors to get lost in random images of flowers and sunsets. But what is the message?

Now, landscapes are good places to start out and a wonderful place to end. I love them, everybody loves a sunset and I’ve shot some fucking amazing shots of flowers. But one night in a cramped Tokyo dormroom I was watching a video from Photoshelter with Chase Jarvis showing his Ninja images, and I think he said something like, “shoot what you love to shoot, and make a concept around that.” Or…that’s the message I took away from it. Well, I’m in agreement with this mentality, and have decided I want to shoot things with a touch of the strange intermixed in the madness. Strange from the perspective of normal people, it’s all very normal for me to put a Bratz doll on a street in LA and start shooting away. And that’s the vision I’ve been developing in the past year, so you don’t see images from Chaco Canyon or the islands of Greece or views from the high camp of Huyana Potosi in Bolivia on my website or online profiles. It’s easy to make a great landscape image, just go to an interesting place and snap the shutter release. I’ve been of the opinion that I should challenge myself and instead try to go to interesting places in my head, and then translate that somehow into a digital image. But the truth is, I was looking back on a few piles of developed Provia, and decided that I should at least see what was there.

It turns out, from reviewing the evidence, that I’ve trekked over a collection of interesting places, and amassed a nice collection of interesting images, and it’s time to post a few for the world to see. I’ve sort of always been into exploring. It started in the basement of the house I grew up in when my mom brought home old toys from rummage sales. Then I started climbing trees in the backyard and now I ski tour in the Swiss Alps. Sometimes I travel in my mind, sometimes in Science, but always the pull of the world, undiscovered from my eyes, has drawn me to various parts of the globe. Along the way I started shooting with a Fuji GA645, because 35mm was too small and the rise of digital make medium formate affordable to the masses of people like myself with more drive than money-sense. The Fuji GA645 and GA645w make amazing images with film like Fuji Provia. However, for the longest time I didn’t have a scanner (like for four years) to actually get the images onto my computer. About a year ago I rented a Nikon LS-9000 and spent a weekend scanning film like a hermit-mad-man-artist-wannabe.

There is something about the landscape, it is exploration. It is also isolation, and the reason I got away from it is because shooting people is just more interesting. You can not interact with a landscape, can not ask it why it is or what it sees itself as. The best you can do is to stay mobile, to experience the landscape by walking into the sunset and not back to the car. That’s why I have a small GA645 and not a big 4×5 large format camera. I like to move through the world and record it as I saw and felt it. I don’t take myself too seriously, it’s the hubris of the photographer to believe that their pictures have any real value. I don’t want to be one of those guys who goes into the fetal position, hurt and sobbing in tears when you ask them if they used a filter for that landscape of the Grand Canyon…

“It’s NOT the camera, it’s ME, the PHOTOGRAPHER!”

We all want to be loved (the only thing really worth feeling in life). The photographer (like any “artist”) wants to be loved for who they are, not what they produce. The beauty should exist forever on a canvas or print. The scientist is humble, and wants to remove emotion from their creation – but technology is developed my mortal humans, not cold computers. So it’s a hard pill for a budding landscape picture snapper to grasp, that their camera is the soul of the medium, and no one person is so special. We grow up with so many stories of being special, that it’s hard to comprehend our ordinariness. You see, probability is on your side, if you shoot one thousands frames, at least a few are going to be “good.” I think everyone is a capable artist, you just need to find your medium and your audience. You’re not talented, you’re not special, you’re just chasing a vision with determination. That is what makes the difference. We are all empowered to create beautiful things in life. It’s like when you head to the Picasso museum in Paris, yes, some of his stuff is interesting, but when you consider that he produced something like 50,000 works of art in his life, it makes statistical sense that some of it will be good. Now go to the Picasso sketches gallery in Luzern – which is full of nothing but crap paper scribbles he did for no reason. The place isn’t worth the admission fee to see – because it’s not any better than I would do if I felt like sketching large forms of voluptuous females all day.

I use landscape images to remember a time. They often tie together with pages from my moleskin journals and the words are one with the colors and shapes of the land and cities. But I’m not hurt when no one else makes that connection, and only sees a sand dune instead of an expanse of my soul warming in the morning Colorado sun. It is the communication of an emotion which we respond to. Make it real and authentic – allow the audience inside, allow them to connect to the vision, and you’ve created something timeless. I don’t create timeless, I take snapshots of places I go and people I meet.

If you keep chasing that vision in your head, good things are bound to happen. I got away from landscape photography and turned to portraits of people because it gave me a way to interact with my fellow human beings in a new and fulfilling way. I don’t have landscape images on my website because I wanted to focus on something else – there’s been a vision in my head and I couldn’t figure out what it was, but it was coming through in the self-portraits and abstract Lazy Art and in the Barbie Hunter and the Web Portraits. There were (and still are) shadows of understanding you see – in the grunge, in the shadows gradations, and I feel a need to chase it.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. You’re no more special than the idiot adolescent standing next to you. Just because you made one nice picture doesn’t mean it will happen again. Everything has already been photographed and every idea has already been thought of in a another place and another time. The details change but the vision stays the same. We want to be respected and loved, and if you see that reflection in the photograph you’re holding, then it’s a good image.

Self-Portraits: Reflections of the Ego

Vision,

There are many foolish and inconsistent reasons for the serious idiot photographer to take self-portraits of himself. Some say every piece of artwork is another iteration in the evolution of the self-portrait. Just like some say that every new lover/boyfriend/girlfriend is just a step further in the same direction or that each each cruel joke by a comedian is simply a commentary on their own depression. Some use the self-portrait to test lighting setups, others because they didn’t have any models on hand and were bored and thinking that they need to continue and create or be left to the wayside on the creative-evolutionary road of artistic development.

I say the self-portrait is there to know thyself. Love thyself, to get to know the only subject you have first-hand experience with. Are you trying to get inside the soul, to view the subject from behind their own eyes and imprint it on the canvas of the world? The self-portrait is the easiest way to go. You know yourself, your aims and goals and depressions and fears and twisted nature of self-discovery. It makes sense in a very authentic and innocent way to set a camera on a tripod and click the remote shutter to take your own picture a hundred times to get a feeling for the visual elements of your person. Take that view from the bathroom mirror and save it in a time capsule. But do it with determination, execute it with style, and don’t flinch when the strobe pops in the darkness.

I started shooting myself simply because there was no one else at the start. Then I got bored of it and now  I make images of model and of normal people – people I know and those I just met. With the self-portrait you get a sense for the isolation in front of the camera. Of that feeling of standing naked on a stage and revealing something inside of yourself, presenting it to the world and holding it up for scrutiny. You can become an actor in your own skin and play out the part of you being you in another personality. The lights and shadows make you whoever you wanted to think you can be in another time and place in between rising and setting sun or moon.

In the self-portrait you are the director and producer and the one wrote the script. This makes it easy to know everything at once and not get distracted at a brainstorming meeting. But there also exists the boredom. It’s more interesting to work with other people because it’s a challenge and you see sides of yourself you didn’t know existed. A photographer is someone who is interested in people – they must be. Hide behind the camera all the time and you’ll never know what’s on the other side. Design everything in CG animation and Photoshop all day and you’ll connect with nothing but shadows of emotions from imagined people on the screen.

It’s Good to Know Photogaphers with Weapons

Urban Ninja, , ,

It’s good to know other photographers. It’s good to meet, and to discuss things like life and vision and get some perspective from other creative people. It’s good to do collaboration shoots, the two of you decide on an idea/subject to shoot and work to make it a reality. And lastly, it’s good to know photographers with weapons. The conversation went something like…

“Ummmm, do you want to do a creative shoot in your studio?”
“Yeah, sure. Just come over with some stuff and we’ll do a martial arts shoot.”

Ethan from Zurich did just that. In addition to being a photographer he’s also into martial arts, and in addition to a ThinkTank rolling case he walked through my doorway with bag of fun including numbchucks, short swords, and an Onitsuka Tiger jacket. From my side I provided the studio space and lights, along with a Katana. It was the perfect time to add to the Urban Ninja series I had started last year. First we decided on some lighting and then I posed with a pair of my green and white Onitsuka sneakers and the white jacket.

As the night wore on I switched from the Katana to posing with numbchucks and short swords. Posing like a comic book ninja isn’t easy when you’re at it for a few hours, and it equalled a night of climbing in the gym. Plus, when you first start posing with nunchucks you’re careful and timid, then you swing them around a bit, channel the spirit of Bruce Lee, get brave, and start accidentally hitting your head and elbows. When the temple gets hit, that’s when you know it’s time to switch up the model-photographer role in the shoot. After shooting me for a while we switched, Ethan took to posing with deadly blades and I took up my Sony A900 to shoot with.

Authenticity is Key

Posing with weapons is probably the hardest thing I’ve done photographically speaking. It’s easy to think up a cool image (Urban Ninja Concept to Photo), but finding the right model to pose authentically is harder than you might think, and in the end it’s easier to be model and photographer. I mean, as a guy with a childhood American Ninja fantasy, it’s natural for me to bust out a Katana attack pose. I’m always bewildered when the female models I shoot don’t do the same. The thing is, unless the model is really good at taking direction and is athletic, they probably won’t know how to pose with a sword with any authenticity. The worst thing you can do is pose a guy or girl with a sword and expect it to look good just because…

“ummmm, you know, hot women and dudes with and swords are cool!”

Right, just like adding a gun to shoot makes a woman “sexy” and “dangerous.” Think what you like, but I’m of the opinion that an attractive woman who doesn’t know how to hold a sword will just look awkward, and the resulting image will look like crap, unauthentic, and generally be a waste of time to look at (but only if you were going for authenticity in the first place). For example, when I did a shoot with Alexandra, it was obvious that the Katana was too heavy for her, but since we were shooting the Barbie Hunter concept, it fit – because Ninja-Authenticity wasn’t the subject of the shoot. It was awesome doing an authentic martial arts shoot with Ethan. He knows the pose and understands the form of the body and how this all relates to the position of the sword or other weapons. Ethan could probably kill me five different ways with his pinky finger before I realized I was standing in a blue tunnel and as a bonus he has a sweet look.

The Urban Ninja

For the Urban Ninja look I gave Ethan a mask and a pair of welding goggles to wear while he stabbed the air with the short swords. For lighting I used my Creative Light softbox (60cm x 90cm) with a grid from the side and my Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobe. I had a Sunpak 383 in a Kacey Beauty Reflector high from the opposite side, and there was fill coming from a Lastolite TriLite reflector kit. I post-processed this image with a couple of texture layers, creating a color transition from top to bottom and gave it some grit.

I also shot Ethan with numbchucks wearing the Onitsuka jacket, lighting him only with the gridded Creative Light softbox and added fill from the opposite side with a large silver reflector. With his bald head and muscle-memory knowledge of martial arts, the images of Ethan are just fantastic. This will sound strange, but I love shooting guys with bald heads. You can really focus on the features of the face without getting distracted by the hair. Without the hair your attention is drawn so much more to the eyes and I think this makes for interesting portraits.

More Info

To check out more on my Urban Ninja Concept here are some other posts.

To see more of Ethan’s work check him out on Flickr or his website.

Wallpaper to One Another

Model Shoots, ,

Sometime ago I was on vacation around Detroit and while chilling in an internet cafe I got a contact from Arctica, via ModelMayhem. She was going to be in Switzerland and was wondering if I wanted to set up a shoot date. After some time I figured, “sure, why the Hell not?”

For this shoot I put together some concepts for ProtestLove imagery, and also wanted to do some straight-up portraits. Easy things to filter through the camera lens and fill the imaging sensor with smooth skin and textured eyes. I was also geeked to use my new Creative Light softbox. It’s a decent size, about 60 by 90cm and I picked up a grid to go along with it. After all, a serious photographer needs serious gear. directional light, place it where you like and sculpt out an image from the darkness. The setup for the above image was this…

An Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobe in a Creative Light softbox (60x90cm) (w/grid) from camera right. Sunpak 383 in Kacey Beauty Reflector above and slightly left (with diffusion sock), and Lastolite Trilite reflectors setup in front.

I was sort of screwing around at this point, I’d paid her to stand there and give off some sort of radiant Architecture of the soul. Lets take a moment and peer into the unknown. The element which draws you in and holds the gaze in an awkward embrace and the mind fades off along visionary walkways through tangible (but untouchable)  elements of the imagination. That’s what I was looking for in her.

Within this construct, the shoot was a success. There are many different types of models. Many varieties of photographers, and once you buy a camera you might tend to think. “Well, fuck, I paid so much for the damn thing, everything else should be free.” That’s why people start looking for TFP models and become consumed with getting make-up artists for free and buying the cheapest flash gear possible. There is a notion inside my head, and it is that the camera and lens are the least important. The light and image are all that is relevant, and no amount of gear masturbation will bring a vision into your head, it comes from the deranged depths of humanity, and no Photoshop God can render even a minute contribution to your vision.

The model: Arctica MM# 1356612
The photographer: MM# 879737

A Web Portrait – Lukas Uncut

Web Portraits Zurich, , ,

Lukas from Guzuu agreed to do a Web Portraits Zurich shoot at my studio just before Easter. Lukas is interesting on many levels and was one of the reasons I started the Web Portraits Zurich project. He’s got a web startup (Guzuu.com), he has a cool style, and he’s a DJ on the side. Lukas was the inspiration for the web portrait project. I met him at the Amazee booster party in 2009 and it was after a Web Monday meeting that I decided to start the web portrait project on Amazee. The reason was clear, people in the startup community have a cool combination of brains and style, making for excellent portrait subjects.

Pre-Production Concepts

After Lukas agreed to do a web portrait we met for a brain storming session at Cafe Spheres in Zurich and from there we developed some visual direction for the shoot. I used Cacoo to work up a mindmap of the brainstorming meeting and used that in the pre-production lighting setup. Like Mathias, Lukas has a strong identity to music and the associated visual imagery. This is sort of a dream for the concept portrait photographer, because the person already has an opinion of what they like visually. This makes the whole portrait process way cooler, because it’s then a coming together of the minds and visual direction. Lukas knows the imagery he likes, it’s my job to work with him to create it virtual reality (digital imaging, photography, whatever you like to call it).

The Shoot – Respect the Image

Lukas dropped by with a bag full of cool clothes and after popping open a beer we talked for a bit and then started shooting. The interesting thing about the web portrait project is that I’m shooting real people in their own skin. When you shoot with models you’re often times shooting someone acting out a scene. They retain certain traits of their personality, but the image and concept comes from the photographer, the shoot is produced, the final image a result of pure direction. When I shot Demari Vi Syth her “psychotic sister of the girl next door” vibe is evident, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect who she is in real life. But that wasn’t the point of that shoot. A good model knows how they look, how to best portray their body, and it’s the job of the photographer to use that and make it look authentic with respect to the image concept. In general, real people don’t know how to pose, and as a photographer I’m not so motivated to tell them exactly what to do. I know this is what photographers are supposed to do, but if you direct 20 different people the exact same way you end up with 20 nearly identical portraits.

Respect the Person

The faces change, but the form of the body basically stays the same if you direct everyone the same way. How boring is that? Oh sweet, another picture of a band in front of a brick wall. Think outside the cookie cutter softbox. The goal of Web Portraits Zurich is to give people a platform to be themselves in an artificial environment, to create portraits which present their personalities as they see themselves. Naturally I add a lot of interpretation through shooting, lighting, and post-processing, but only so long as I can maintain that authenticity of the person in the portrait. I’m not saying I’m succeeding in this respect, I’m just saying I’m doing what feels right. Be true to the integrity of the image, and all the details will fall into place.

Fin?

By the end of the shoot we’d gone through a variety of looks and killed a few beers. We had the idea of following a certain combination of color and jackets. Lukas had a shirt from Guzuu in Yellow with a tape on the front (one of the most popular items) and I let him borrow my version in red. Near the end Lukas brought out the DJ headphones an I switched to a wide-angle setup, shooting him like he was leading the crowd of a fanatic music rave calling out to the Gods of nights. Of course, the images aren’t finished, I’ll now move into the abstract stage and start putting together some post processing concepts for the images.