Mark

Mark is a guy from Michigan who lives in Switzerland. He's a photographer, occasional writer and trained research engineer. His free time is sometimes monopolized by mountain touring or travels. On occasion he attends and presents at BarCamps and blogging events.

The Gods Envy Us

Creativity, , , ,

lazy art number 3Editor’s note:

Please excuse the logic from the following piece. The tortured author was locked in his apartment for a rainy Sunday afternoon and took to watching the great classics, Troy, Clash of the Titans, Basquiat, and began pondering a simple philosophy of art as ancient religion, and if artists are Gods giving birth to their creations, will it kill the creator when it grows up?

“The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.” (Troy: Achilles)

I just want everything to be clear, uncluttered and obvious without reproach when I get it all wrong. The fear is to get it all wrong in the end – to drop the bomb to stop the war and end up in a toxic arms race for the next 30 years. You don’t know in the conception stage if the creation will turn out evil and rebel against you like a the son of a Greek king. Will it kill you in your sleep and renounce the love you thought existed. We are masters of ourselves, and the watchful beings above are there to make sure we don’t get out of hand.

What do mortals do when the creativity Gods continually fuck with our minds? Do you turn to drink and drugs like a cliche creative sob-story ready for a TV docudrama regurgitation of a plotline? Is it acceptable to sit back and let it all play out as they like? Let the images from our paintings and photographs bully us into self-loathing and despair. The abstract painting demands red instead of blue so I sit there in front of the canvas and do as it commands. Then when I try to sleep the demon beast invades my thoughts and dreams, taunting me with shapes and colors I can’t translate into reality.

“We can do it,” says reason, we can renounce the Gods and bring them to their knees. We can destroy the Mona Lisa and set fire to every painting we did, crush the statues and delete all the images. I close my eyes and almost feel the Nirvana of an Art free, madness-not world. Then faith opens a doorway to fear and we kneel before the darkness, praying for protection and salvation. Save every picture and each stupid sketch. Nothing can be lost – for it means that nothing ever mattered.

The Gods need us, they need us because we enable their existence. Because without us to imagine their lips and lungs, they would have no breath to take. A symbiosis is always existing, one feeding the other and taking life somewhere else. Hope, fear, and faith. Love, philosophy and hate. I’m going g places in my heads. The painting doesn’t exist without the painter, the picture needs the person to exist.

Images suggest stories and colors with shapes, and they demand a symphony of understanding – creating a clear flow between each other and giving the viewer a sense of intuitive understanding. No thinking is required for faith in art. No emphathy is need to kill the creation.

Even the creator doesn’t understand it
No need to look for a deeper meaning, for none exists
I was just fucking around, there is no genius here
The creation and the conception are not the same

The Gods envy us. They envy us because they can not create, but only observe the creator of their beings. The painting hangs on the wall and wonders what it would be like to build a human from DNA fragments and bits of bio-paint.

lazy art number one

UXCamp 2010 – Bad Blogger Back in Berlin

Berlin, Web Events, ,

Why am I here? In the overall-until-I-die life sense it’s obvious – to fuck and reproduce. All these fools looking for a deeper meaning in life are wasting their time. You’re just here to reproduce and/or help increase the world population at a rate greater than those souls who are dying. Why complicate your head when the answer is simple, straight forward, and dialed into your DNA sex-drive/maternal/paternal instincts?

Oh, why am I in Berlin? Also an easy question to answer. I’m back in Berlin for the 2010 UXCamp Europe. It’s the premier gathering of UX/UI people in Europe, a venerable nexus of smart minded brains focused on developing user experiences in software and applications. In the past half year I’ve gotten interested in designing user interfaces and user experience strategies, partially because I want to develop Revolt from the Singles Table into an iPhone/Android app, partially cause I just find it interesting how humans interact with technology. I want to talk about the UX of books at the UXCamp. Books…you know, the things we read, with the words printed on paper that open up and can be put on shelves or burned? Books…those things that we are now reading on electronic devices like ebook readers or maybe an ipod, iphone, ipad, Android phone, or whatever. But my question is why?

What are the essential elements of the printed book user experience, which should be transfered to the ebook concept? This all started when I finished my first short story/micro novel titled Revolt from the Singles Table. I was thinking up spoken-word viral video marketing ideas for the book and then I was like, but what exactly am I selling? A printed book? An idea? I’m selling the book, which is just a container for ideas. Some books are turned into moving pictures, then the movie is the container for the idea. How does this all fit together when we design a mobile application, turn the printed book into a program which immerses the user/reader with pictures and sounds and words, which together better communicate the ideas contained within the book than a printed medium would be able to communicate.

Maybe I’m not really qualified to talk about this at this premier nexus for UX/UI people of the world – but one time I tried to climb a 6000m peak in Bolivia. Hyuana Potosi is billed as one of the easiest 6000m peaks in the world. However, it was my third attempt to climb a mountain and only the second time in my life that I’d been above 4000m. At the time I was living in flat-land Michigan and had little first-hand mountaineering experience. Now I live in Switzerland split my time between climbing/ski touring/mountaineering. In Bolivia I got up to about 5000m and told the guide I was finished. So why not put myself out there again and try to do something I’m not really qualified for?

I figure that, since I’ve written a book, read ebooks on my ipod and now want to market and sell Revolt from the Singles Table in printed and electronic forms, I can at least lead a discussion on the subject.

Web Monday Zurich #14

StartUp, Web Monday Zurich, ,

One of the coolest things about the Web Monday Zurich meetings are the cool locations. Every Monday it takes place in a different place, and after a while you get the feeling of exploring the unique office spaces of the Zurich tech scene. One month you’re sitting in the cozy office space of Amazee, the next you’re chilling on the comfortable couch of Wuala, I took a ride down the rabbit hole slide at Google and on May 3rd, 2010, I got to check out Big Blue, the IBM European headquarters in Bahnhof Altstetten in Zurich. IBM is famous for being (historically) the Evil juggernaut of Silicon Valley (my feeling via Steve Jobs), the beast which Apple and Microsoft rallied against in the early days of the personal computer wars. But now that Apple is the old skool corporate entity – well…IBM sort of feels like the nimble innovation-minded corporation reborn from the ashes of the Silicon computer wars. The people there seem energetic and free-minded – like tech-prophets marching into the future with their heads high and without the corporate giant stigma you see when watching the Pirates of Silicon Valley.

The IBM building has a fantastic atrium, where you can mingle and enjoy an apero before heading into the auditorium. There’s a giant sort of aquarium with blue lights and a couple of huge serves on display, it’s an interesting place to have a beer, and IBM beer surpasses the offerings at Google. I enjoyed a weissbeer while getting my head slightly twisted for my presentation on Web Portraits Zurich and mingled with folks. But before I got up on stage and tried to make a fool of myself, we were treated to talks and thoughts from IBM, Dein Deal, and Kooaba.

IBM

Siddhartha Arora (from IBM) was our host for evening, and presented the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program. Basically, IBM is interested in working with startup teams to build a smarter planet. This is an awesome higher purpose to hear from giant company like IBM. So what do startups need when starting out? They need to be low cost, they need mentoring and networking, and then they need marketing and sales. And if you’re accepted into the program, IBM offers it’s project support, people, and marketing strength. Teams would have access to IBM servers and technology support to allow the growth of new ideas and startups. What’s in it for Big Blue? The intellectual property stays with the startup, but I think there’s the belief that helping technology grow is a good thing. If you have a sweet idea that works well on a small startup scale, at some point you’ll need to scale toward the sky, and you need IBM for that. So, basically IBM is enabling new ideas for a smarter planet by supporting startups, and hopes to benefit from the eventual resources required for cool startup ideas to turn into killer companies. I think that this approach is what big companies like Big Blue should be doing to foster and encourage the spread and evolution of ideas, and the higher purpose here, “To build a smarter planet” sounds authentic and is highly inspirational. If you’re interested, you can apply for the program at www.ibm.com/isv/startup.

Dein Deal

There are a number of cool social marketing ways to form new selling opportunities, and Dein Deal is basically taking the idea of grouponworkes.com and putting it in practice in Switzerland. The concept is as old as supply and demand, if you pool the buying power of people, you can reduce the price of a product. Dein Deal focuses on providing deals on “experiences” in Switzerland. What’s an experience? Going out to dinner, a massage, wellness, whatever can be offered. It’s good for deal providers because they get a lot of people using their services, and encourages people to come back after trying it out. It’s good for Dein Deal, because the concept has already been proven successful in a ton of other countries. It’s a copycat concept, but who cares? If something works in one place (like America or Germany) why not see if will downscale to a small country like Switzerland?

Kooaba

I’ll be honest, I love the idea of Kooaba, because as a photographer and visual imagery junky, it’s the technology I was always excited about. And since I live in a cave, I also didn’t know the technology already existed and felt like an idiot in a crowd of brainiacs. What does Kooaba do? Image recognition. That’s it. That’s what I love to learn about. The Kooaba technology recognizes objects in images. If you can identify these elements and then link it to something (like Amazon) you have a very powerful tool for image searching and monitization of online imagery. Why is this important? Because you can’t search for images on the internet. You can only search for tags and text associated to imagery, but you can’t draw a house and find images of houses on Google (not that I know of at least). The idea is that you have an iPhone, Android, smart phone, take a picture of something, and then you get buying info on that object (online stores, Amazon, etc.). Google has a similar application called Google Goggles, which is now the main competitor of Kooaba. The old competitor used to be a startup called Snaptell, who was bought by Goolge (see how the circle of life works).

Kooaba isn’t able to recognize everything though. If you have a picture of a cat, it won’t know what to do with it. Basically the technology works by querying a database, recognizing an object in the image, and then sending the user to buying services. They also have some applications like Paperboy, which is used to take a picture of a magazine article, and then you get connected to the electronic version online on your smart phone. They also have Shooting Star, a photo management app with flickr integration, and using the image recognition technology your image is instantly tagged based on recognized objects. Very cool I think. At the moment it looks good for tagging according to landmarks and scenery, which is great for travel photography. However, this is really just a very small part of what image recognition has the potential to do for retail business and advertising.

Why is imagery recognition so important? Because we love celebrities because of who they are in our minds and love to buy the shit they pose with in magazines. So companies pay advertising agencies to develop ad campaigns with famous faces to sell stuff like Nespresso and clothes. But with image recognition all you would need to do is have a picture on an Android/iPad/iPhone/internet tablet, and in an online magazine and click on an object that Lady Gaga is wearing in some random article about music and then using location based information technology your device could be connected with the closest store offering ghastly latex shoes or you instantly get One-Click link to an Amazon store. Of course, this sucks for the advertising photography industry because it means that any image can be used as an ad, not just those that have been licensed to ad agencies. Imagine my Urban Ninja photos on Flickr being used to sell Katana Samurai swords in Austin, Texas when some kid is looking for cool martial arts photos on his lunch break at school? My images would have aided in selling a product, but I get no split from the sale. But that’s the future, and it’s already here.

Web Portraits Zurich

The last presentation of the night was me and I went low-tech as I presented the Web Portraits Zurich project that I started on Amazee. I went over the concept, explaining why I started taking photos, and how I got bored with self-portraits and started taking to women on the internet to setup model shoots, and then came to the web portrait project idea. I stared the portrait project because I’m continually inspired by the thoughts and visual style of the people I meet in the startup scene. Then it was the most natural thing in the world to start a portrait project, the higher purpose being, “to create cool imagery of people in the startup scene around Zurich and Switzerland.”

I presented images from Mathias Möller and Lukas Fischer, and then talked a bit about the brain storming process and online tools we’ve been using to develop portrait ideas like Google Wave and Cacoo. The next portrait will be with Dania and Gregory from Amazee, and if all goes well a giant Tech-Flesh jungle portrait of the Amazee team will find it’s way onto the net.

Web monday zurich 14

Zurich is an exciting place to be if you’re into the startup scene. For more info on what’s happening check out the Web Monday Zurich group on Amazee.com or UX Chuchi or Marketing Chuchi, or just walk the tech streets and explore the possibilities.

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.

Schmoolz Indoor Dry and Ice Climbing Tools

Climbing, , ,

I received a pair of Schmoolz a few weeks ago to tryout by the inventor in the UK. I’ve since spent a few trips to the gyms around Zurich with these interesting ice or dry tools for indoor climbing, getting a feeling for how they work and how useful they are. If you want to know the answer before getting to the end of this article, I’ll just tell you, I think they rock.

What are Schmoolz?

Ice climbing is really a special sport. With normal rock climbing it’s already enough of a hassle finding a partner. They need to be reliable, push you when needed and understand your limits. Plus they need shoes and a rope. With ice climbing and dry tooling you now need a partner one step up on the “alternative” sport ladder. You need one which has money to accessorize with ice axes, decent crampons, ice screws, the equipment list starts to explode a bit. And you need to find a climber who likes the idea of climbing sheets of ice. Then factor in the fact that you can’t generally climb all the time. Routes have to be in the right conditions, at the right time of year. Ahhh, but when you’re out on the ice, the details dissolve. But what do you do when you want to train, to go to the gym?

Climbing gyms are generally not the place for ice tools. Steel picks destroy resin holds and the crowded nature of many gyms makes it dangerous to be tooling around with a pair of axes in your hands. There is actually a dry tooling bouldering area at Kirche Fluntern in Zurich (part of ASVZ, the university sport division). Basically they took a bouldering area and replaced the resin holds with little blocks of wood. It’s a sweet place to train, but I don’t live around there anymore. There have been some attempts to develop ice climbing indoors. Grivel  offered an indoor pick at one point (if I remember correctly). However, unless you build your own bouldering area or set wood blocks in the wall of your basement, there are few ways to train for ice climbing in they gym. In Colorado for example, some gyms have fake ice, but it’s a rare gym you can find this stuff in and they generally won’t let you lead climb. The Schmoolz is an answer to the question of indoor ice climbing training.

The Design

The Schmoolz design is very simple, place an industrial strength rubber loop on the end of a well-designed wooden shaft, which is cut in the contoured form of an ice tool. The contours of the shaft are perfect to grip and hang on, while the rubber loop hangs on climbing holds in the gym. Now you have the feel of an ice tool in the training environment of a traditional climbing gym. You can train your ice technique when you like and don’t have to worry about the ice conditions outside. This mean you can maintain and develop your technique throught the year.

How do they Work?

The concept is simple, the rubber loop is similar to a climbing shoe, which means you generate a lot of friction when placing the loop on a gym climbing hold. As you pull down, tension is created in the loop and it conforms to the surface of the hold, and you climb up like normal. When placed correctly the Schmoolz are very secure. The design is an excellent adaptation of the ice tool experience to the climbing gym environment.

Now, as you might imagine, not all holds work with the Schmoolz. The best are small knobs that are usually meant to be foot holds. The loop grips very well over these knobs and the placement is totally secure. The most problematic holds are those which are larger and slopping downwards, it’s sometimes impossible to get a secure placement and you run the risk of falling off. One alternative is to turn the Schmoolz upside down and use the contour to hook on to small features of holds. For this reason, it takes some time to choose a route to climb with the Schmoolz, and you’ll probably need to climb on holds from two or three routes when sending a line.

The Schmoolz Experience

Is the Schmoolz experience like dry tooling in a parking garage? Well, no, just like climbing in a gym is no substitute for navigating alpine sport climbs in the Swiss Alps. You use different techniques for ice, dry, gym, sport, and trad climbing. The point of training is to develop your mind and body to meet the challenge of whatever route you decide to climb. The thing I love about using the Schmoolz is that it’s really another subset of the vertical experience. I don’t know if that was the intention of the inventors, but the thing about technology is that you never know exactly what people will do with the thing you give them to play with.

The way I climb with the Schmoolz is possibly not exactly the way I would dry tool up a similar route. But I don’t see that as being a problem. I love that it’s a combination of ice and rock climbing. You have the free feeling of using leash-less tools and also the dancing form inherent in climbing. I see routes in different ways with the Schmoolz, and that new challenge is the thing I love about climbing with them.

I often hear people describe rock climbing as a puzzle, a delicate balance between toeing a rock edge and falling into a void. The same person might describe ice climbing as a masterful battle with the frozen world, the assumption being that you have to hack the hell out of an ice sheet to climb it. I think this latter stereotype is complete BS. I enjoy ice climbing much more when I use movements developed from sport climbing, rather than imagining myself as some new-age superhero wearing black tights and sporting two axes fashioned after the claw of a Raptor skeleton. Obviously, with the Schmoolz you can’t develop your swinging arm strength as would be used in waterfall ice climbing to get tool placements. Instead you focus on the placement of the tool more as you would be dry tooling. I think a lot of emphasis is always placed on the arm strength required for ice climbing, but if you do it with finesse and focus on secure tool placements, you end up using less energy, and that’s a very important technique which is pushed when climbing with the Schmoolz.

What I Love about the Schmoolz

Since you can’t swing like an ice maniac indoors, the Schmoolz forces you to climb elegantly with ice tools. I think that is the best reason to buy a pair. It develops your ability to rethink routes and plan your tool placements instead of just swinging into an ice wall. When you rethink your routes on the wall an easy 4a might turn into the equivalent of a delicate 5b using the Schmoolz. Unless your gym is rearranging the routes once a week (I don’t know any which do) it’s easy to get lazy in a comfortable gym while always doing the same climbs. But with the Schmoolz, you’re challenged to rethink the routes, as well as climbing using tools instead of fingers. Naturally you balance differently with ice tools than when you’re rock climbing, and this technique is developed with the Schmoolz. This just adds a lot more to a climbing evening. My favorite thing at the moment is to climb normally for 3/4 of the night, and then boulder with the Schmoolz after my finger strength is gone from attempting 6b routes. In this way I’m able train my legs and balancing skills even after I’m too tired to climb with my fingers, and I’m forced rethink easy routes – and to find new ones on familiar walls. All in all it’s a fun way to climb. The Schmoolz adds another dimension, they challenge me, and additionally I get a lot of looks from all the other climbers in the hall.

If you’re looking for a way to train to ice or dry tooling in the gym environment and are tired of trying to get your tool fill on wood blocks and buildings, I recommend checking out the Schmoolz.

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Web Monday Zurich #13

Web Monday Zurich, ,

Web Monday Zurich #13 was held at the offices of Wuala in Zurich (I took a sticker for my laptop), and covered such lovely topics as why companies fear Facebook, the history of the music industry and the visual searching tool I always wanted but never knew existed. I had a headache during the presentations, but that didn’t deter from the coolness of the tech evening from settling into my neuron flow. To join future Web Monday meetings check out the Web Monday Zurich project on Amazee.

I can’t say where the pain in my head came from exactly, some combination of being sick last week, finishing a review of a new electroactive polymer paper, ski touring towards the Wildstrubel (before recovering) in a snow storm and building up an image of a beautiful woman next to a nuclear mushroom cloud is bound to put pressure on essential areas of my neural networks. Plus I think I need new glasses.

According to the book “Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click?” (which I read for the last UX Book club Switzerland ), people love stories, and if you start one everyone will be captivated. This explains why iMusicianDigital AG was my favorite presentation of the night, because it was mainly a story, that of the music industry from the 1990’s till today.

The 90’s were the golden age of the music industry. People went crazy buying over-priced CDs and more money was made in this time than at any other time in the history of the industry. Then, around 2001 broadband hit along with cheap CD burners and P2P networks, and all the consumers who were pissed off at paying $20 for an album on CD with two good songs and a lot of crap on it were all too happy to pirate as much music as possible (this last part is my own take on the history). CD sales dropped and there was a 20% sales decline per year. Discount CD sales were pushed by big retailers like Media Markt and Best Buy (in the US) who lost money on CDs but made a killing on other stuff (first get them in the stores). While this all went down the local retailers and cool CD shops where put out of business…and now where are we?

Now it’s estimated that 60% of the music we consume is pirated in some way or another. Why? There is a theory, purported in books like “Free” and “Economies of Abundance” that the value of things like images, music, movies, and other media will always tend to zero in the long run (like your survival rate). So how does one make money on something with a declining perception of monetary value like a music album?

Well, first off, in the traditional model of the music industry there was no real-time accounting and the administration of selling music was very inefficient. In the new model, such as with iMusicianDigital the content is user generated whenever possible. An artist creates an account, uploads the album as uncompressed audio and that music is distributed to iTunes, Amazon, etc. The musician sees real-time stats for where the music is bought, what countries, how much, when, and is paid in a timely manner.

How successful an artist is financially is dependent on much more than the distribution system. The savvy musician needs to build a fan base, often through live shows (connect the poetry to the reader) and now through social networking tools like Facebook, MySpace, etc. It’s like anything else, you need some way to connect to the fan base and develop a community.

iMusicianDigital is attempting to fill that niche, that area of the music industry which is in flux. Artists upload their album and a little while later it’s available on iTunes, Amazon, etc. It’s interesting for me to learn about this stuff, because I want to the a similar thing with self-published books. Seeing how music is distributed and promoted online is similar to the publishing-on-demand business models for books, putting the promotion and marketing of the material in the hands of the creator.

Raphael Briner from HyperWeek gave the first presentation of the night about developing online social networking communities (think Facebook) for businesses. Why do businesses need his company? Because it’s too hard to build the platforms up from scratch. A few examples were shown including stackoverflow.com and it’s cool to hear about the development of this stuff. However, since I’m a consumer and am now overloaded with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, my blog and Flickr, I stood around wondering when I’m going to actually start shooting pictures again (yes, my mind wanders, the result of too many social networking sites).

The last presentation was for Oskope, the visual search and find design I’ve always new was possible, and continually frustrated when it didn’t exist. The concept of Oskope was originally presented two years ago, but this was the first I’d seen of it (I’m often oblivious to the world, I admit it). The idea of Oskope is to present products as images, allowing you to search visually and have the image products grouped in a certain way that you can better find what you were looking for. Ever tried searching for “Shoes” on Amazon? I’ve even tried using eBags to find a cool leather bag, and ended up going to Scaramanga in the UK. To be fair, Scaramanga sells some of the coolest vintage bags I could imagine (perhaps I’m just shallow) but the point is that sites like Amazon are really a cluster-fuck to search through unless you specifically know what you want (or just accept what they want to see to you).

For me Oskope is a window into how online shopping should be done. But the technology is distributed in a licensing model, and till now I never knew it existed. So where is the value in it? Promote it, get in online stores, revolutionize my online buying experience. If Oskope gets ported to Android (and as well the iPhone and iPad) I think it will really take off, as it’s the exact type of shopping experience a touch device consumer will love.

Jurgita – Informal Photo Sessions

Model Shoots, ,

Probably the most frustrating thing about shooting with someone is that you generally only get to do it once. You notice things during a shoot and afterwards, and often time I wish I could shoot more with folks like Demari Vi Syth, Margarita or Arctica, but one lives in England, the other is based in the Ukraine, the third is in Germany, and being models, they’re often traveling to different shoots anyways. So if I were able to shoot with any of them more than once a year, it would be a miracle.

That’s why it’s always awesome to have a local model to shoot with, and to develop a body of work with. When a model is living right next door you have the freedom to plan and re-shoot concepts as needed. You also come understand one another in a way, the shooting style, the posing methods, and this can bring a greater depth to a shoot and concepts. That’s why I’m eternally grateful that Jurgita lives next door.

I met Jurgita over the summer while shooting with Margarita, and we’ve since met to shoot on different occasions, either with a specific idea or just to produce some more imagery. We shoot in the studio and I’ve shot Jurgita around the Sulzer-Areal of Winterthur, that fabulous urban location every photographer in Winterthur and Zurich knows about. You go there on a sunny day in spring or summer and there’s always a wedding shoot, skate shoot, urban portrait thing or another going on.

Having access to the Areal is like having access to a large urban movie set. There’s a large parking garage to shoot in, which is mainly empty on the weekends and after 5pm on other days. I seems like you can basically do whatever you like there, including dry tooling (but probably you’d better not). There’s also a lot of small areas in the Sulzer-Areal complex including parking spaces, walls, staircases, and an illuminated bridge, all of which gives a vast canvas for the nimble photographer and model to play within.

On location and in the studio Jurgita is open and easy to work with. She has a certain look, a subtle shadow of knowing in her facial features and cheekbone structure which give a certain something to the images. Shadows curve around her eyes like the the old songs of a mystic fire dance. She also has an eye for style and posing, which makes the shoot all more natural and authentic (sometimes difficult to find).

Since both Jurgita and I like to shoot and model around, it’s been fun playing with lighting gear and concepts. For example, using an Orbis ringflash to add some shadow texture to the face, in a poorly-lit parking area. Or perhaps using a gridded octabox to define a lighting poem for the whole image, or just stepping out of that constrictive Strobist-Mindset and shooting with the natural street lights.

If you stagnate, your creativity and drive dies with your indecision and only the mediocre sentiments of lonely idea will sit upon your mind for a second before flying off into eternity. So stop hesitating and shoot, develop something and challenge yourself to be something which society has taught you that you’re not. My mind is a blank and the words have run on into obscurity so that I’ve forgotten the point.

If you’d like to work with Jurgita she’s on Model-Kartei…

Jurgita on Model-Kartei

Web Portraits Zurich – Mathias Shoot

Web Portraits Zurich, ,

The first willing subject for the Web Portraits Zurich project was Mathias Möller, Editor and Community Manager at Amazee who agreed to have his portrait taken.

The shoot was relaxed, the way a portrait shooting session should be. We had had a concept meeting a few weeks before, and organized some ideas on Google Wave, so there was a clear direction for the shoot. Grungy and not too bright, a little counter culture and gritty. This wasn’t a high pressure shoot, Mathias just dropped by the apartment studio and we talked about random stuff like the Spores (a band out of L.A.) and imagery from Joy Division. An observer might call this “connecting with the subject” but I just call it a fun time talking with an interesting person. There were two main looks we went with during the session, Mathias had a vintage Swiss Army jacket and a cool band denim jacket. I was shooting on white seamless with a few lights and reflectors.

Lighting Philosophy

Mathias wanted some darker sort of photos, which is what I’ve sort of developed a style shooting, so our expectations worked well together. For me this meant creating lighting with shadows and darkness, while allowing the main features of Mathias be revealed. This meant some directional lighting on the face, casting dark shadows across his body, and a grungy post-processing philosophy. I worked primarily with my Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes and a Sunpak 383, with Lastolite Trilite reflectors and a large 5-in-1 silver reflector.

For the portrait with a Swiss Army jacket I put a BxRi in an extra small Photoflex octabox, and used this to create a large contrast on his face. A sort of Yin-and-Yang, darkside/lightside sort of lighting. A reflector and Orbis ringflash (with Sunpak 383) were used to maintain lighting detail of his cool vintage jacket. For post-processing I used some industrial grunge, including compositing Mathias into the old abandoned Packard car plant in Detroit, Michigan. Other background images and textures were shot around Zurich and Winterthur in Switzerland.

For a cleaner look, I shot Mathias with a BxRi flash in a large Creative Light softbox (60x90cm) with a grid, and added some fill using the Photoflex extra small octabox. The Creative Light softbox was placed on the side, and gave a lot of bright directional light, which works well for creating defined shadows with smooth but small transitions.

Visual Results

The idea with Mathias was to create images with a certain grungy darkness to them. This was accomplished via lighting and post-processing in Photoshop using layers of concrete and industrial scenes. Overall I think we accomplished the not-to-bright and not-to-sterile look without making Mathias look like a grungy gangster from the Zurich hood.

I’m always looking for new faces to shoot, if you’re interested in the idea of documenting the people from the Zurich startup and web scene it’s easy to get in contact with me to set up a concept meeting. More about the Web Portraits Zurich project can be found on Amazee.com or the articles here:

Web Portraits Zurich – Amazee Project
Web Portraits Zurich on the blog

Mathias Web Portraits Zurich