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.

Shooting the Psychotic Sister of the Girl Next Door

18 Feb ’10Model ShootsDemari Vi Syth, Model, Shoot

Demari Vi Syth describes herself as the “The beautiful girl next door’s psychotic little sister!” on her ModelMayhem page. So when she contacted me to see if I was interested in booking a shoot date, I found it hard to resist. She was in the Zurich/Winterthur area for a week, so it was just all to convenient for her to stop by my place to shoot.

I had a few goals for this shoot, one was the development of Protestlove imagery for my book, “Revolt from the Singles Table” and the second was the Barbie Hunter theme, which I originally thought up for Alexandra, who I worked with earlier in the year. Demari came with some Goth-styled latex from Jane Doe Latex a cool latex designer from London. Latex and fetish is the type of stuff I had never really desired to shoot, but figured it would be cool to experiment with (cheaper than going to art school).

Demari actually had the honor of being the first model I’ve paid to shoot with. If you’ve moved beyond the initial stages of photography, tooled around on Strobist for a while, and decided to setup a ModelMayhem account, then you’re probably looking for models to do Time for Prints (TFP) or CD shoots with, as I was (and still am). But I’m now sort of the opinion that dropping money on a model isn’t such a bad way to go. For many projects, unless you know the person before hand it’s hard to know what to expect. Pro and semi-pro models bring a certain level of professionalism and self-awareness, which is extremely valuable when time is of the essence (like if you’re taking the afternoon off from your job to shoot). You can get this from new models as well, but there’s also the question of art direction and motivations. With a TFP shoot there’s generally two motivations, that of the photographer to get their shot, and that of the model to get their look. Maybe the photographer wants head shots while the model wants full-length body shots, etc. But if the model is there on your dime (as a photographer) then it’s all about you and your vision. What can I say, I’m egotistic in this way, I want the shoot to be about my vision.

Demari also offered a new visual direction for me. Her portfolio has a lot of Goth imagery, and when you’re defining a style for yourself (which is a constant for me), then it pays to experiment with different shooting concepts. Goth is something that is actually very hard to do well and too often executed poorly by photographers who think an image will be cool and alternative just because the model is wearing skin-tight latex. Just like the misguided visionaries who think that posing a sexy woman with a gun will automatically make a strong image (they’re usually weak and lack authenticity). Good Goth imagery is hard and requires a lot of attention to detail. I wasn’t out to make these images (through my direction), but rather let Demari do her thing with posing and just shot away with different lighting setups.

I shot Demari primarily on a white seamless background, using a pair of Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes coupled with a Sunpak 383 in a Kacey Beauty Reflector, and a large silver reflector. I was shooting with the Elinchrom Portalite softboxes (well why not, they came with the lights). These are my main lighting tools of choice at the moment for things in the studio. Lots of light shaping ability, and easy to position without an assistant. This was the first time I was using my now favorite camera-lens setup, a Sony A900 with a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 HSM lens. Naturally, I used Elinchrom Skyports to trigger the lights, they’re integrated in the BxRi strobes and make like oh-so-easy when fine-tuning the exposure.

The A900+Sigma 70-200 combination really leaves little room for improvement for portraits and sharpness. Focus is spot-on, and you can see the texture of the skin better than in real life. This is the reason I like the A900, I never have any problems with the camera and can focus on getting the exposure I’m looking for. I focus on the eyes, press the shutter release and know the results will be tack-sharp.

Shooting with Demari was a cool experience. She knows how to carry herself, and is aware of her pose. For me one of the most important things with a model is that they have a good awareness of their body and form. Without this awareness the images can come out looking fake, without that certain element of truth and realness which makes a portrait look real. It’s a certain talent some people have and others learn to develop, and is essential for models to have. Of course, someone is bound to say the images look contrived, but nearly every photograph is.

If you’re interested in working with Demari Vi Syth, she can be contacted via ModelMayhem (#748253).

Web Monday Zurich #12

21 Jan ’10Web Monday ZurichAmazee, HowToPedia, Memonic, StartUp, UBS

My mind is still bleeding with inspiration from Web Monday Zurich #12. I sometimes paint and at some point I get into a sort of trance with the colors and shapes that paint themselves on to the canvas – the madness takes over and I think I’ll crawl out of my skin. I admit this is an overly dramatic way to describe my reaction to a Geek gathering about web startups, but I don’t watch much TV, and never got into drugs – so it stands to reason that I have to get my kicks from somewhere – and in die Schweiz, there’s no Route 66. I keep thinking that one day I’ll get bored at these web gatherings but my mind is always on fire by the end of the night and I count the days till the next one. There were three topics at Web Monday Zurich #12 including, Memonic.com, the UBS Web 2.0 contest winners were revealed, and HowToPedia.org got my neurons moving. It was held at the offices of LIIP/Nektoon, and drinks were sponsored by UBS.

Memonic

Dorian Selz from Nektoon presented Memonic – a website where you “keep the essential” of your web journeys and save only what you need. I first saw Memonic at the UX Chuchi where we discussed their user interface and overall design. The current site looks a lot tighter than the initial offering and is serious competitor for a site I will actually use day to day. Basically, with Memonic you save elements of webpage you visit, and then organize those elements on your Memonic account. It was developed based on the needs Dorian and his colleagues saw as well as their experiences in their own web travels. Basically you go to a webpage, then click on a bookmark for Memonic, and you then can pick paragraphs of text, pictures, make multiple selection, basically click whatever is on the webpage, and these elements are saved to your account. Or you just bookmark the site as well. The point of course is that you just take those pieces which you need, and then can access that information quickly. You can also export that information in an email, to a twitter account, facebook, and also to a smart phone. This is great for traveling and really takes information storage beyond bookmarking, and therefore much more useful in daily life. These saved elements can be organized into sets on your account and that way organized. It’s similar to tagging, and then clicking on a set and getting all the saved information. Naturally you can have multiple sets, as pieces of information rarely fit in only one category, which is more how we store and access information in the brain.

“But, how do you make money?”

The business plan is always the first question at Web Monday during the question and answer session. Basically Memonic currently offers a free service, and later will offer a paid service with more functionality. These models are on a Business to Customer (B2C) design, but they also have ambitions to do Business to Business (B2B) to fulfill the needs of companies. Also in the future there are plans to actually use the information you’ve stored on Memonic as a search filter while you surf the web. So, it will be possible to analyze the stuff you’ve saved to Memonic, and use that as a filter to direct internet searches, which means a user should end up with more relevant search results (relevant to their needs) – very cool. When I think of competitors to Memonic I think of Zootool, but there’s also a US site called Evernote (which I had never heard of). I like Zootool because it’s based around saving imagery (the downside is that it doesn’t do text like Memonic), and is more of a visual-media/micro-blogging/almost-like-Flickr service, which also reminds me of Tumblr. Zootool operates very similar to Memonic when it comes to saving content and in my opinion currently has better social network integration (easier to share stuff) – but I see a lot of potential with Memonic for the future.

UBS Web 2.0

So, basically UBS sponsored a contest to learn about Web 2.0 and banking applications. Andreas Hoffman and his colleagues awarded 5000 CHF for the three best presentation of ideas concerning what UBS should be doing with web 2.0 to connect with their customers. Winners included Go beyond ebanking today (Roland Studer), Collaborative Filtering (Amancio Bouza), and UBS Super Trader (Martin Moser and Roger Singer). To a certain extent, the presented ideas were not ground breaking in the sense of new technology, but rather applying existing ideas to the question of Web 2.0 and UBS banking applications. But this is how many great shifts in technology occur, not by totally new inventions, but by interpreting existing technology in new ways and applying them to new areas (Idea Generation and Development – Startup 2009 Basel). Overall many ideas were similar to what is currently being done in other places like Amazon.com or other websites which focus on customer interaction. The point was to apply those principles to a UBS business model. In my opinion the main idea is to give more freedom of interaction to the client, and not keep them fully dependent on the client advisor. I sent in a entry as well, basically I said they need to empower the Web 2.0 client, but I don’t think I was really able to communicate the concept I have in my head. Roland posted his entry to his blog in a post titled, Go beyond ebanking of today.

I think UBS should be awarded some sort of uber Web 2.0 Technology award for their efforts and I’m happy to say I’m a UBS banking customer, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. The banking world is generally seen as having linear thinking and business practices. I’ve been reading/listening to “Break from the Pack – How to succeed in a Copycat Economy” and I’m really impressed that UBS is taking initiative to educate themselves on the Web 2.0 opportunities. They’re helping to define the future of banking instead of waiting for someone else to do it, but without knowing what the eventual outcome will be for their profits. This is the exact type of dynamic, non-linear thinking companies should be doing to break from the pack and lead their industries. Plus, Andreas Hoffmann came to the Zurich web community and partnered with Dania Gerhardt (Amazee.com) to setup the competition. It’s good for UBS, good for the participants, good for technology and idea development, and there’s more to come. UBS also plans on putting together a small consultancy team from three of the competition participants to do a business study and presumably help develop their Web 2.0 platform, really awesome initiative – they should get a write up in Forbes.

HowToPedia.org

It was the last presentation of the night that really set my mind on fire. As my first beer was wearing off and before I had time to grab another one, Maud Châtelet talked about HowToPedia.org, a non-profit website with the goal of empowering people in developing countries and enabling for autonomous, sustainable development in their lives. Maud started by showing two world maps. On the first was plotted the areas of poverty. On the second, the number of languages within a certain geographic region. If you superimpose onto the other, they more or less match up perfectly. The basic conclusion is that difficulty in communication is a significant factor in the development of people and technology in their lives. So how do we empower people to change that trend?

The goal of HowToPedia is to manage and distribute practical knowledge to people throughout the world, which they can use to improve the quality of their lives. To me this is like empowering the engineer in all of us, no matter our educational background. I personally think everyone is a poet and an engineer, an artist and a scientist, and that you don’t need to study in a university to practice these things in your life. So, through the website, practical knowledge is presented such as, purifying water, how to build a windmill, or even making sandals from old tires. To reduce communication barriers a goal is to translate this information into various languages, so that a maximum number of people can use it. This type of information exists on other sites, but the point is for howtopedia.org to be the main place for knowledge management, so that various organizations aren’t duplicating their efforts and wasting resources. The information is for free, but the site needs money to work, so at the moment there’s a focus on fundraising. I’ve been interested in getting into a program like this. I know a couple people doing Engineering Without Borders in the US, but I haven’t been able to find EWB in Switzerland, plus I love the idea of empowering through knowledge distribution, so it looks like howtopedia could be a good way for me to give back with my engineering skills.

So, Web Monday Zurich rocked hardcore. If you’re interested in more info on the Startup scene around Switzerland check out :

StartWerk.ch (their German reporting on Web Monday #12)

Think of attending StartupCamp Switzerland 2010 on Feb. 13th in Basel

Check out Web Monday Zurich on Amazee.

WPZ – Mathias Concept Meeting

18 Jan ’10Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, Cacoo, Google Wave, WPZ

The Web Portraits Zurich project is moving forward. This was a project I started on Amazee to integrate photography with my interest in web technology. The first portrait shoot is with Mathias Möller, who works at Amazee and freelances for laut.de, a German music blog. The Web Portratis Zurich project is as much about exploring creative collaboration tools as it is about creating excellent portraits of people in the Zurich Web/Startup Scene. During the concept/brainstorming stage we’ve been using Google Wave, but at some point it makes scense to sit down for a face-to-face.

Face-to-Face

So, on a fine Friday night Mathias and I sat down at Cafe Sheres in Zurich discuss and get a concept direction for his portrait. I took along a sketchbook to make a mindmap while we talked. All in all it was an excellent meeting…coffee, free-flow of ideas, the stuff that brainstorming dreams are made of. The goal of our face-to-face was to throw ideas around, see what we like for the main shoot and make sure I don’t show up with a suit of Medieval armor when he imagined being photographed like a punk-rocker. A portrait is really a delicate thing, you are not making an image of a person, but rather taking an image of an idea (at least, that’s my view on it). The person is the idea, and their physical body a changing representation of only the outer shell. The key is to meld the elements of the person with the shadows of the outer shell. Maybe I think too much, but an image is usually not just a picture, and a portrait is rarely an accurate represenatation of the person in front of the camera.

The Person

During our meeting, I was sort of interviewing Mathias and the other half of the time he was talking out aloud about his ambitions and elements of his personality, which is exactly what should be going on during just such a meeting. What I learned is that Mathias is totally down with doing a cool concept portrait. Just to be safe, we’ll do a nice clean one as well (like Jill Greenberg/Platon), because it’s possible the concept fails (but it won’t). Among the various questions, I asked things like,

What movie do you see yourself in, or identify with?
What type of imagery do you like from music and album covers?
How do you want to see yourself?

These type of questions tell you a lot about a person, and I see it as more or less essential to get this background information, otherwise how will you know what elements fit the personaility of the person. Also, I don’t want to put Mathias into a concept he’e not comfortable with. The elements all have to flow together for the image to work. I learned that Mathias identifies with the Punk rock movement, doesn’t own a pair of Doc Martens, likes the dark and grungy tones in my photography, is interested in the skinhead culture, counter-culture, often sees things in a political context, likes the imagery of Sonic Youth and Morrisy, is interested in the connection between Pop and Art, wants an image that isn’t too sterile, and also not too bright.

Most importantly I found out that Mathias is interested in taking elements from himself (the person) and melding that the concept of the shoot (the idea). This was awesome to hear as it’s the way I go about developing portrait shoot concepts.

Online Collaboration Tools

One goal of the Web Portraits Zurich project is experimentation with different online tools to help the brainstoriming process and…let’s call it: Creativity Management. We started the brainstorming process on Google Wave, which worked ok to throw up some initial ideas and concept images, but it’s not about to replace the face-to-face meeting anytime soon. In the future we’ll use Wave to throw around some basic ideas, and then meet at a cafe for a sit-down brainstorming session.

For organizing workflow and mindmaps, I’ve been using MyMind on my G4 Powerbook and Cacoo, an online diagraming tool. First I took the notes from the meeting, wrote them all up in MyMind for visual organization, and then cut and pasted the main ideas to Cacoo. Cacoo works very well for making mindmaps and workflow diagrams. Since it’s online I can access my documents from any computer. These can be exported as png images to be embedding in webpages, and the maps can be shared via a url link to the online document, which makes it a very nice online tool. Above is the mind map I made up on Cacoo for Mathias, something I do for every photo shoot now. It’s an easy way to view and arrange elements of a portrait shoot, mixing concepts with the shooting requirements.

The Resulting Vision

At the moment I see Mathias standing in front of some old TVs looking a bit like Ian Curtis from Joy Division, the background is gray, layered with a bit of industrial grunge. On the TV’s are images of static and protest. He sports an awesome pair of framed glasses (the ones he wears). Part of the visual style will be influenced by Control, the definitive Joy Division flick. The point here will not be to make Mathias into Ian, but to take some visual points from that music style, and layer with Mathias, sort of like adding a grunge layer to a portrait.

The next step is finalizing the concept and doing the shoot.

Photo09 Zurich – Rejection Stings for An Instant

11 Jan ’10Photography, ZurichPhoto09, Vision09, Zurich

There’s a cool photo exhibition in Zurich each year. Depending on the year it has a new name, in 2007 it was called Photo07, in 2008 it was Photo08 and this year they’re calling it Photo09 (although it’s taking place in 2010). The concept is sort of the year in review, present the body of work of different Swiss photographers in one big show. Basically, each photographer presents their work from the past year in a giant old industrial hall. The images are the focus, and you walk through the visual menagerie stopping to check out interesting images and passing on others. It’s in the Maag event hall in Zurich, the cool thing about the show is that it features anyone, pros, amateurs, fashion photographers, hobby photographers, it’s just a really cool collection of visual imagery. All in all it’s a cool night out to attend the show. I checked out Photo07, was in Detroit during the 2008 show, and decided to submit a portfolio and image concept for Photo09.

I went about the submission process like it was an engineering conference, which means that as long as you pay the registration fee and present some work, you can show or talk about whatever you want. I figured, based on the Photo07 show that it was the same concept, present my photos of the past year in a layout which I think best represents my Vision09. The organizer of a conference like the SPIE Smart Materials get-together doesn’t know what will be ground-breaking research and what is worthless crap because they can’t predict the future and progression of science, and therefore generally won’t deny serious work (although to be fair, some conference organizations just want to make money and will take anything).

So long as the organizers think you’re on the level, you’re free to display your vision. I figured it was the same thing at Photo Zurich – and maybe it was at some point, but that was before the show got popular, and this year they had far more submissions than space to display them. So naturally, people had to be cut from the list. I submitted a portfolio and concept presentation to Photo09, which basically encompassed my year in photography for 2009. This was an interesting year since I had a nice combination of income, travel, and free time to think about life. My Vision09 includes images from Bratz in Rome and California to portrait shoots with Jurgita, her cousin Margarita, myself, and the Barbie Hunter Alexandra was there as well. It seemed like a cool collection of images which couldn’t be denied, but it was – and I’m fine with that.

It’s sort of discouraging to get a rejection letter for your first photography show, my first journal submission was accepted by Smart Materials (IOP Publishing) with barely a correction request. The divide between Art and Science is nonexistent for me, so I figured I would at least get in to Photo09, but on the other hand, I’ve had an equal number of articles rejected as published in scientific journals. It was actually a very apologetic rejection letter I received, so well-written in fact, I had to ask my girlfriend to confirm that they had indeed rejected me. The German was so eloquent to my non-fluent eyes that I didn’t know if I was being asked to not attend, or if I had gotten in and they didn’t want me to feel too good about myself. On the one hand this sucked, but on the other hand, it meant I wouldn’t need to pay the 250 CHF entrance fee plus the costs associated with printing out my display images. Which, in the end means it’ll make paying the credit card bill for that Zulu shield I ordered from South Africa much easier to rationalize (yes, it’s for a photo shoot).

Rejection from Photo09 stung for an instant. I’ve never been actively interested in what people think about what I shoot (not to the point that I would cry for not getting in a show). Each image is a failure in my mind, to accurately communicate the emotions and visions from my brain, so I wasn’t hurt that the editors at Blofeld Entertainment GmbH didn’t want to show my pictures. However, since I went through the editing process of putting together a presentation concept for Photo09 in Zurich, I figure I should display it somewhere. Since the web is one of my main platforms of choice to display imagery, I figure I’ll do it here (Vision 09 on Issuu). I’m slightly scared to see what the Vision will bring in 2010.

[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fdark%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=100111205313-4caedf8cc7714e0e846ea819535be68b docname=vision09 username=Boltzmann loadinginfotext=Vision09 width=500 height=225 unit=px]

Web Monday Zurich #11

21 Dec ’09Web Monday ZurichAmazee, Web Monday, Web Monday Zurich, Zurich

The days after a Web Monday Zurich (01.12.2009) is always hard on my head – still exploding from the tech-inspiration from the night before. On nights like this I need to find a dim place with mellow music and down a beer, sometimes with a chocolate brownie to calm my mind (this often happens at Alltag in Winterthur). The 11th Web Monday Zurich took place in the Zurich Google offices, that alone was enough of a reason to attend, the technology insight was just a bonus. There were three topics; Panoramio, UBS Web 2.0, and Mathias Vogel. Then I got a chance to tour through the Google offices.

The Panoramio presentation wasn’t so much about the software, but more of a how-I-woke-up-and-found-myself-successful talk by Joaquin Cuenca Abela. Joaquin sounds like the type of startup personality everyone imagines it should be like. A basic idea, applied to a certain technology, you keep pushing your ideas, and for some reason you get a call when you’re in the mountains to hear that your one server has crashed and your idea is becoming a success. Joaquin tried a few different ideas before thinking it would be a good idea to allow people to post pictures on Google Earth (the purpose of Panoramio). Basically they did that, eventually Google got interested in it and added it as an option on Google Earth. Then the server crashed and they knew they had arrived. It’s the feel-good type of story that makes a person want to quit their job and sit around an apartment drinking beer and programming. However, the real essence of the talk was that one should just keep trying with their ideas, many successful web startups are by people who are not necessarily super smart or unobtainably talented. Just do what feels right, respect you decisions and try different things to find out what works.

Next up Andreas Hoffmann gave a presentation on a challenge/contest from UBS. Basically, UBS wants to know how to use Web 2.0 in the banking business. All they want is 4-5 PowerPoint slides by Dec. 24th explaining your concept (details at the Web Monday Zurich project on Amzaee). The top three winners get 5000 CHF each. Sounds pretty sweet, pretty basic, straight-forward, everything you always expected in an idea contest. Since I’m an idea man I’m planning to brainstorm some ideas and send it in. After all, I’m a UBS banking customer, and if I can tell them how I want Web 2.0 in my banking life and they’re going to take me seriously, well, that’s worth a few nights at the coffee shop combined with some scribbles on a piece of paper on the way back from a night out in Zurich.

Last up Mathias Vogel talked about the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW). The FHNW school is interested in applied research, which means creating prototype technologies, serving industry partners, as opposed to basic science and writing publications (like at ETH Zurich). The program is currently after woman and industrial partners at the moment, with one goal being making computer science more attractive to women. I like this idea, and I can understand the motivations but generally dislike programs which separate one group of people from another at this level. I sort of felt excluded in many ways from the research communities in the United States because such a great push was made in universities and companies to recruit everyone who isn’t a white male (and that would be me). I decided to do research work at ETH Zurich largely because they seemed to be interested in results and ethics more than looks or gender. I think the best way to get more woman into the tech fields is to do more outreach at the lower levels and preschools and teach children at an early age not to exclude colleagues because of their gender or skin color. Pushing for women at the professional level, after they’ve already gone through a male-biased system and are already taking a research carrier direction (already succeeded despite the roadblocks) seems like a good start, but I think that giving support to tech-minded girls so they realize they could become startup-creating-women could have a greater influence (hmmm, sounds like a cool Amazee project idea). But now I’m interjecting random commentary where it might not belong (or does it?).

As part of the FHNW program two projects were also presented. Amazee is included in one of their partner projects, one goal being the creation of a sort of Karma Index into the Amazee system, which will include a recommendation engine so that new users are quickly connected with other users with similar interests when they join. I find this to be fantastic, because the first thing you wonder about when joining an online organization like Amazee (or Stylished, or Talenthouse, or Flickr) is how to find the people you want to work with. My mind had become a tad befuddled by this point from the free beer, but it was able to coherently listen to the presentation of the Galaxyadvisors.com website. It’s basically a connection engine, trolling through networks picking out connections between different people, creating connections between them, and then displaying this as a giant web. I’m more or less smart enough to appreciate the full value of it, as were most people in the room. I’m going to keep tabs on Galaxyadvisors, as many great things could come from it.

After the talks I walked around the room enjoying two quick glasses of wine talking with cool people, and then took a tour of the Google offices half buzzed on vino. The experience was…fantastic. You don’t need to be half buzzed to enjoy the Google offices, but it does enhance the experience. Just walking around you feel drunk, wondering if it’s possible, or if you’re simply hallucinating, can it be possible for offices be this “cool?” No, this is madness, surely I drank a bottle of bottle of Jack at my apartment and am simply losing all functions of my mind, and as a last gasp before dying my brain has created this fantasy land for me to enjoy before I cease to exist. But this actually happened, and I have pictures to prove it, as well as a video of my shoes sliding down a pole instead of taking the stairs.

Google Wave – Photo Project Brainstorming

16 Dec ’09Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, Google, Wave, WPZ

I’m running a project on Amazee called Web Portraits Zurich. Basically it’s about creating cool portraits and images of people in the Zurich/Switzerland web and startup community. To try and be a little innovative, I started the project not just as a way to gather a lot of cool subjects to shoot with (like any selfish photographer), but also as an experiment in the online creative process. I usually do a lot of pre-shoot work for any portrait project I engage in, and I was thinking to myself, “what web tools can be used to improve the creative process?” I’ve written a lot about my Concept to Photo workflow here on the blog, and basically this includes initial brainstorming, shot logistics, and lighting design. What I was wondering was, “how can we do this online, so that multiple people can participate and really make it a community project?”

The biggest problem with brainstorming a photo shoot online is the lack of interactivity on most web platforms. Wether we’re talking about Flickr, Talenthouse, Amazee, etc. we’re always basically talking about posting messages and responses to a message board. The flow of dialogue is then static, and one has to read through the whole post of messages to figure out what was being said. That’s why I was excited to try out Google Wave and use Web Portraits Zurich as a test case for online brainstorming and as a photo shoot organizational tool.

My expectations are that we post a new Wave for each new portrait project, then people start brainstorming how to do it. Do we shoot in my studio, on location, how will the startup company play into the portrait? Do we want dramatic lighting, soft, are there example images we can use to illustrate our ideas? Can we keep the dialogue going, with people commenting on certain parts of the conversation and can we replay how the how project evolved? In short, all of this is possible with Wave – and it’s fucking awesome.

With Google Wave you have the ability to create posts, and have people add and respond to different parts of the dialogue. You can upload files like images, which is important for brainstorming a photo project, where the concept is always the most important thing (I think). The concept of the person being photographer, the concept of who they are, how they are perceived by the world, etc. With Wave a person can sketch out an idea (for posing for example) and upload it directly to the Wave. Everyone can then visually see what they mean and thereby we maintain momentum in the brainstorming process.

I started out with an example Wave to illustrate the process. This was an attempt to recreate the brainstorming process I went through to create my Urban Ninja images. With Wave I can upload sketches, concept images from Watchmen and 300 (a significant inspiration for this set), and you can see all right there on the screen how the idea evolved. People can then discuss about the concept for a portrait, post example images (like a scan from a magazine) to illustrate the type of look they want, and then we can directly discuss how to create it in reality.

The Future

Google Wave is an awesome product. I don’t say this often about we technologies. Often “new” are just regurgitated copies of a copy of a copy of an old idea. I feel that Wave is more innovative than the common “new” web thing (like Facebook), but what I see in my head is even better than what I’ve described so far. Think Android and Chrome for a second. Android is the open-source mobile operating system Google has developed for devices like smart phones. There’s the Droid, the HTC, that run on Android, and that’s only the start. Android can be used on netbooks, and soon on web tablets. This is the perfect combination in my mind for the creative professional who want’s to network.

Imagine a touch phone or net tablet running Android with Wave as an application, allowing you to interface directly with other people on your creative team anywhere in the world. Imagine creating and changing lighting diagrams intricately and posting concept sketches and having a creative director on the other side of the world adding notes. Imagine doing this on your computer at home, on the move running around during the day, and doing online conference calls to shore up all the detail. I think the possibilities are fantastically awesome for Wave and the future of mobile computing.

Web Portraits Viral Intro

4 Dec ’09Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, WPZ

The Web Portraits Zurich project got a viral presentation today. I put it together and uploaded it to SlideShare to act as a viral type of device to embed in other pages and visually communicate the main idea, inspire people, etc. The design includes a bit of the grunge look that I like, as well as a few mottos like,

“…the net is also human.”

“the web is also mortal.”

Afterall, the whole point of this project is to make that emotional connection between the creator and the users of web technology, so the mottos seem proper to use in this context. Over the past month since I launched the project I’ve been going over the organizational themes in my head before gathering people to start shooting with. The main question is how to handle the creative brainstorming. I would really love to use Googe Wave for this purpose. The main project flow will be as described in the diagram below (unless someone has an excellent alternative). Basically we’ll brainstorm some ideas for cool portraits based on who is being photographed, organize the concept, location, etc. and then produce some sweet pictures.

WPZ_Workflow

I’ve been experimenting with Googe Wave to brainstorm a portrait. It would be sweet if the Wave could be embedded hereWith Google Wave you basically have a mad-scientist cross between a forum posting, a time machine, and a normal conversation. At least, you should have all of that once it’s out of the Beta stage. At the moment I can’t upload photos, which will be pretty important when brainstorming ideas for shooting and production. I want people to be able to sketch out and upload their ideas to the discussion, and from there we get ideas on lighting and stuff, and then we have a cool tool for creative portrait brainstorming online. A person from Tokyo could suggest the makeup, one from San Diego the lighting, someone from Zurich suggests a location, etc.

Another option is to use the Wall on the Amazee project board. However, there are some limitations here, and it’s more like using a forum to post and discuss ideas, which works for some things but isn’t the idea brain storming platform in my opinion. Well, part of the project is exploring how to organize a creative project online, so whatever happens, I’m sure we’ll all learn something.

Here is the Intro Presentation

A Tourist in Detroit – the Real City

24 Nov ’09Detroit313, Detroit, Tourist

Editor’s Note: The following words have been writing themselves for over a year, but the author is a lazy one and finally we had to shackle him to a coffee shop table in a location just out side Zurich, Switzerland and beat the sentences out of him. This is the first in a series (which were promised us), and who knows what we’ll have to do to get the last installments written.

I’ve been to many cities in the world. Zurich, Berlin, Tokyo, Barcelona, La Paz, San Diego, Paris, Geneva, Budapest, Krakow, and the one that always sticks in my mind is Detroit. I love cities that inspire me – they stay in my head and energize my being in ways that other places just “don’t”. Each place is different and everyone is special, but Detroit is the one which sticks in my mind. Detroit inspires me. Detroit feeds my soul. I’ve been living in Switzerland for nearly 6 years now, but I was born in Detroit and I grew up in Michigan, in the suburbs of the City. As such I lived in a State with a divided society. When you grow up in the suburbs you spend your days in strip malls and communities like Birmingham, Royal Oak, Ferndale and all the satellite metro areas. These places aren’t bad (although down right evil from a city planning standpoint), Royal Oak was a cool alternative area during the 80’s with punks in mowhalks standing on the street corners. The place got “civilized” in the 90’s and the cool alternative scene eventually moved to Ferndale, although the “feeling” remains.

The perception of Detroit is one of failure and vulgar fear for the suburbanite. Many who live in the burbs work in Detroit and head out to the occasional Tigers, Lions, or Red Wings game, but the city is not a central part of the Michigan experience – which is sad. Detroit is one of the few beacons of real idea exchange and thought evolution in the suburban urban-sprawl hell of Michigan. In general Detroit invokes fear – fear of the place. After living in Switzerland for five years and visiting Michigan a few times here and there I realized what a pathetic connection I have to the city, so during Dec. 2008/Jan. 2009 I decided to be a Tourist in Detroit, and started filling a Moleskin journal with scribbles and impressions.

Winter probably isn’t the best time to vacation in Detroit, but it was one of the most fantastic trips of my life so far, and I’m going back for more. I stayed at my parent’s house in the burbs and tooled around Detroit during the days and nights for a week. I was at an advantage, my friend works at the Detroit Free Press and she introduced me to Jeanette Pierce, who helps run INSIDE DETROIT. In short, I was hooked up. INSIDE DETROIT is an essential doorway into the coolest parts of the city. The biggest problem with tourism in Detroit is that no one from the outside knows where to go or what to do. Detroit was developed around the automobile as a mode of transportation, and for this reason, the city is very spread out. If you don’t know where to go, it’s a little hard to just tool around and explore (although I do as that’s my “thing”). INSIDE DETROIT was setup to fix that, and it is very effective in communicating what to do and giving alternative tours of the city.

I generally hate generic city tours. I’ve been on a horridly boring group tour of Florence, and despise the spoon-fed cultural education of listening to someone lecture to me in a city square. The coolest city tours I’ve been on were in Berlin and Detroit. Fat Tire provides an excellent bike tour of the city and Berlin After Dark gives the ignorant night seeker an excellent experience of Berlin nightlife and clubs (including free shots on the trains). I got the same sense of alternative expression and unplanned for inspiration and adventure on the Inside Detroit tour I did. Basically I spent New Year’s Eve on a Detroit bar tour. We hit up three different places and ended up at the Filmore Auditorium to ring in the new year. I Never had to find the Real Detroit. You stand in greatness here, not the shadow of what was (like in Paris) or what will never be (like in Tokyo), but stark and undeniable greatness (as in Berlin). I don’t say this of every city. Geneva is beautiful, but it doesn’t carry the same weight as Detroit. Tokyo is full of eye candy, but lacks the soul I feel in the Motor City.

What does it mean to find the real city? I once had a horrible pizza in Sienna, the little city in Italy where they have the horse race in the city square, now even more famous from the opening scene in Quantum of Solace. People tell me I should go to a local place, not a tourist restaurant to eat. But what do I know, I’m just there for a few hours. I never have to worry about finding the real Detroit, it’s all real, and out there for the tourist to experience and be inspired by. Where is the Real Paris? The Real Florence? Is the Real Milan defined by the churches no one really prays in any more? Search hard enough and you might find the real Prague between the hookers and gelato stands. You can visit some cities and never find the real place – just the manufactured tourist areas. In the real city you don’t have to worry about being fleeced with tourist prices for a coffee or being annoyed by professional beggars. If people ask for money on a street corner in Detroit, it’s probably because the genuinely need it.

You can write a lot of vile things about Detroit, you can cite the riots of 1967, just like you can cite the Final Four riots at Michigan State University. I don’t really understand it. In Zurich there’s the occasional soccer riot, sometimes the fans get crazy every other weekend. The police come out, the tear gas is launched, the crowds are dispersed. Are riots a bad thing? Yes, they happen anywhere and everywhere and like avalanches it’s just best to get out of the way when they’re coming down on you and move on with your life afterwards.

I’ve been through many parts of the world, sometimes I get the feeling that I have no center, no place that calls back to me and that I always feel 100% comfortable in. But that’s the point, to take yourself from your comfortable living environment and place your body and mind in a new sphere of experiences. I’ve aimlessly wandered the corridors of Europe, I’ve walked around the peaks of Bolivia, slept on the White Sands of New Mexico, watched the sunset and then the sunrise from atop Mt. Fuji, jumped off cliffs in Greece and ate tempura in Osaka. But Detroit, this city is a special place in the world.

There is a feeling of determination when I walk the streets of Detroit. I get a sense of enlightenment when I look up towards the sky. The music, the people, the bars, the buildings, the food, it all comes together and floors me when I drive down Grand Blvd. I’ll take DEMF over the Zurich Street Parade and the pastisio in Greek Town over the offerings in Athens (I’m not the only one). The only other city with such a sense of ghosts and recent history echoing the streets is Berlin. The inertia I feel in these two population centers sticks with me, it inspires, it invokes philosophy, and it gives me a center in the world.

Editor’s Note: This was only the first installmet, Detroit City of Inspiration and a Tourist in Detroit articles are being written and rewritten, the photos are being edited and publishing deadlines have been set in limestone.

Web Portraits Zurich – The Idea

23 Nov ’09Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, Portraits, WPZ, Zurich

A few weeks ago I launched a project on Amazee called, Web Portraits Zurich.

The project is simple, easy to explain and painless to promote. I want to combine photography with the interesting people I’ve met in the Zurich web scene. While heading to events like the Swiss StartUp camp in Basel, barcamps in Berlin and Switzerland, as well as the WebMonday meetings in Zurich, I’ve met a lot of interesting people with interesting ideas. Then, after WebMonday Zurich #10 I brainstormed some lighting setups for an upcoming photoshoot – and then an idea was revealed in my head. The idea is to use Amazee to organize portraits of the people in the web and startup community around Zurich. Right now I’ve cut a few videos in my head explaining the Web Portraits Zurich concept and will cut them for real this week. These will both present and explain the Web Portraits concept and organization. This seems the most effective way to give people an idea of what to expect and to promote to interested parties.

But as a prelude, I’ll reveal some personal motivations behind the project. Why Web Portraits? Why organized on Amazee? After all, to just do some portraits of the web people in Zurich, I can just contacted people and shoot the portraits and than would be it. You see, with Amazee I see some inspiration to experiment with Creative Production.

The Web is also Human

The Net is also Mortal

If you shoot a portrait it might all be done by the photographer, setting up lighting, choosing a location, organizing things and then doing the shoot. In my experience the process of creating a portraits involves a few steps (or non at all): Concept Creation, Production Design, Shooting, Post-Processing, Distribution.

I want to give back, to give the opportunity to people to participate in the process of creating these portraits. Why? Because I’ve found that exercising your creative tendencies outside of your normal interests (or jobs) makes you a better, more flexible thinker and enables you to improve your ability to view the world in different ways, and that improves your ability to come up with new solutions for different problems in life.

Since the project was launched on Oct. 29th there’s been a healthy interest on Amazee, including a feature on the main page. Now it’s up to me to build on the momentum and release these videos and start shooting. If it all works out in the end there will be a sweet collection of portraits from the Zurich web scene, we’ll integrate the interesting personalities with their cool technological achievements and see what trouble we can get into along the way.

Ricoh Camera Evolution – GXR System

10 Nov ’09Ricoh GXRRicoh GXR Camera Red

po1_img3 Ricoh has announced the GXR system, essentially it brings to reality a concept some people have talked and dreamed about since the digital imaging revolution began, a system with swappable sensors. Ricoh has taken the concept a bit further and released a system more akin to the not-yet-released Red Scarlet than, say the Lumix GF1. The GXR system includes a camera body with swappable lens-sensor modules. This enables a great deal of flexibility in system design and allows the development and optimization of lenses to sensors. This means you have the GXR body, and just plug in the module for the lens and sensor you want to shoot with. In fact, it’s really the awesome concept I’ve been waiting for in a digital camera, it means I can carry along a point-shoot small sensor module for snap-shots and a large sensor module for high-resolution images. It means I don’t have to carry aound a DSLR and a Ricoh GRD or a Canon G10, I’ll have the portability and high image performance options all in one system. Absolutely awesome!

GXR System Basics

The GXR system is being released with a body and two lens modules including the A12 50mm F2.5 MACRO and the S10 24-72mm F2.5-4.4 VC. The 50mm will include an APS sensor while the S10 module appears to have the same type of sensor as the current GX200. Additionally the current accessories include a wide angle and tele-photo adapter, as is currently offered for the GX200, as well as a decent flash and an optional external electronic viewfinder (VF-2). So, currently it looks like a cool slick little camera system, but people like to buy into camera systems, what promise does the GXR system hold for the future?

po3_img7

The control layout and design of the GXR body is very similar to the rest of the GR and GX lines. Meaning it’s more or less the best design being offered in a compact camera with good customization ability and excellent ergonomics. The body is magnesium alloy and the LCD screen is a High-definition 3.0-inch 920,000-dot VGA and a pop-up flash is integrated as well. The actual body is about the same size as the Lumix Micro Four Thirds GF1 from Panasonic, and is a bit larger than the GRD/GX body. So, it has a great size, smaller than a DSLR and is on par with the current camera-to-beat in this class, the GF1 (or the Olympus E-P2). How can the Ricoh GXR system compare the Micro Four Thirds offerings from Panasonic and Olympus?

GXR vs. Micro Four Thirds

po1_img2 Two big draws of the GF1 and E-P2 (or E-P1) systems is size and flexibility. Both systems are compact, smaller than a DSLR, but with a reasonably large sensor. They include HD video capability, and via lens adapters they offer the ability to create a tailored system to your individual style of shooting. If you want to use your Leica lenses, there’s an adapter for that. Contax or Nikon? There’s an adapter for those two. With the HD video options these cameras can be compact movie shooting machines in the palm of your hand with great image quality and use of Bokeh due to the large (as compared small sensor cameras) sensor size, nearly on par with offerings from DSLR cameras. Well, if Ricoh has the plan in mind I have in my mind, then the GXR system should be able to equal and actually surpass the capabilities of the Micro Four Thirds and some DSLR systems in a number of ways.

Now, there are some people who’ll jump to the conclusion (withouth really thinking), “But it’s a closed system! With the micro 4/3 system you can use nearly any lens from Leica to Nikon!” And this is just the sort of thinking which makes me think people just want to defend their camera system no matter the facts of reality. The real beauty of the GXR system – the reality, is that a great deal of the image processing, lens motors, focusing, etc. is included in the lens module. So how hard is it going to be for Ricoh to develop a lens module for manual focus lenses like the Leica M, Nikon, Pentax, etc. via one module and an assortment of adapters? Not very hard at all, and if they’re smart (and I know they are) it’s a sure bet that such a module is in the works, and if they’re really smart it’ll be on the market in early 2010. It should even be possible (and no, I don’t think this one will happen) to create a special module for Contax G lenses (but it would be freak’n awesome).

GXR – Awesome Customization

The lens module system also means that different modules can be optimized for different file formats. For example, of the first two modules, the S10 24-72mm shoots VGA video while the A12 50mm F2.5 shoots full HD video. You should eventually be able to build the exact system you want, an optimized HD video system for Cine lenses, an action package for sports, a high resolution wide angle system for landscape, a fast aperture system for street shooting, much like the Red Scarlet system (original system image included here), it’s an awesome concept. How about an ultra low-light module? The possibilities are really exciting.

The Ricoh GXR system actually holds the promise of what a lot of people have been asking for, and now they might not fully realize it has arrived. The GXR system is the most modular and flexible ever proposed, and I’m highly anticipating the release. It’ll be the perfect system for different types of shooting and offers the customization that many consumers are interested in. I’m putting off my ambitions to pick up a Lumix GF1 and will look at the GXR system, it simply offers too much promise for customization and system tailoring that I’ve only dreamed would exist, it’s just too much to ignore.

pop_l_front

Digital Holga – Yashica EZ F521 Review

8 Nov ’09Yashica EZ F521camera, Digital Holga, EZ F521, review, Yashica

Yashica released a cool little camera called the EZ F521. It’s been released in Japan and I ordered one from Japan Exposures, this is a review of the camera and additionally of the Digital Holga concept. The Yashica F521 has been labeled the Digital Holga. I think this makes sense on some levels and is preposterous nonsense in other ways. The Holga camera is a simple 120 medium format camera produced in China. You can set the negative size to 6×4.5 or 6×7. The body is plastic as is the lens (the Woca version I use has a glass lens) and comes in variations with or without a flash and now different colors. There’s no way to focus with any precision, the lens has three positions, two apertures, and a fixed shutter speed. Of course you can modify the Holga to do bulb exposure and extra shutter clicks can build up an exposure so you can get cool abstract layers overlaid in one image. Basically the Holga is a cheap and fun way to get into medium format photography. The bodies originally cost about 20 dollars, although since they’ve achieved cult status and been produced in various colors, you might pay between 50-100 USD for a new body (maybe with a flash) which is a lot for some pressed plastic.

The Holga Concept

The Holga concept is to just focus on taking pictures with a cheap camera where you need to focus on the subect, as the performance of the camera sucks. The term Digitla Holga has been thrown around a lot since the rise of digital camera technology, but in my mind the only thing that comes close is sticking a medium format back on a Holga or Woca body. I know you can put a Holga lens on a DSLR, and no, I see no fucking point in putting a 2 cent lens on my Sony A900 body. And no, I don’t want a Lens Baby either. Why? Because the Holga look is a combination of substandard manufacturing and horrible body design coupled with cheap plastic. It’s insane to put actual time or money into trying to replicate the look in any other way.

The look of images from the Holga/Woca is characterized as unique, as it comes from light leaks and nearly impossible to determine exposure and focus issues. The image to the left was taken in a coffee shop in Zurich with my Woca. You can see scratch marks from the Woca body and it has a very dark and grungy feel to it. Why try to replicate this look in any other way? Sticking a shitty plastic medium formant lens on your Nikon D3 is not being creative. Additionally, trying to replicate the Holga look in Photoshop using PS actions and filters with programmed algorithms using repeated patterns accomplishes nothing short of making your images look like over processed crap. So in this sense, the Yashica F521 is nothing like a Holga. It doesn’t have light leaks and I think it’s safe to say that pictures from one will look closely like those of another, with little variation from camera to camera. However, the substandard lens and funky exposure properties are retained in the F521 design.

The F521 is too well-built to be a Holga. I’m pretty confident my Holga/Woca would explode if dropped on the ground. Holgas are made from cheap plastic with poor fracture toughness, alowing brittle cracks to propagate easily through the body. The F521 actually has build quality on par with my Ricoh GRD and Canon G10. It’s built like a little tank and sort of resembles a miniature Fuji GA645. The finish on the body looks and feels like anodized aluminum and the faux leather on the grip looks well affixed to the body.

Creative Short-Cut

Anyways, what does it mean to be a Holga? The philosophy behind Holga is that you just shoot, without trying to perfect exposure or focus. Resolution is shit because the lens is crap. The point is just to have fun, and if a cool picture is the results, then sweet. Some will say that these limitations make you more creative, like choosing to use a 50mm instead of a 24-70 zoom. I think this is bullshit, limiting your ability to create an image doesn’t improve creativity, it simply limits your options. Want to be creative? Take up painting and challenge yourself to create something in a completely different way from your normal routine. Photography is the easiest “art form” ever developed, the creative part comes from realizing the non-intuitive attributes of a subject. With a crappy camera like the F521 or Holga you just focus on the subject, not on focus or exposure because you have very little control over either one. So you could say these cameras make you more visually aware, but it’s not a short-cut to overdosing on creative expression.

Shooting with the F521

Here are the basic details, the Yashica F521 is light, sized to the palm of your hand, runs on three AAA batteries and takes SD cards. A 1 Gig SD card gives you like 180 images if you use the 12 megapixels interpolated image setting. The normal image size is 5 megapixels. I figure it can’t hurt, so I use the 12 megapixel setting. Look, it’s a toy camera, but the F521 actually has decent control over parameters. You can set the exposure compensation, white balance, image size, there’s macro capability (the lens has two focus positions), on-board flash, and some color modes. The automatic white balance is really horrible, so I set that myself.

My first outing with the F521 was a short trip from Zurich to Basel. I took the camera along and shot a bunch of abstract motion images in the Zurich and Basel train stations. This is the type of imagery I like producing with this type of camera. I’ve done the same in Tokyo with my Ricoh GRD (GRD Frozen Motion Photography). Basically I walk around shooting while I’m walking and the long shutter speeds due to the low light of the Bahnhof produces the blurred abstract images I see in my head as I’m moving through the night. The F521 scans the sensor from top to bottom (I believe) when taking pictures, so if you’re moving the camera you can get a wavy line patterns due to the sensor scan rate.

Due to it’s small size the F521 is a very non-threatening camera and can be useful for creative street photography. It fits in any bag and the lens has a rubber cap, so it’s very compact to take around and you can throw in a coat pocket without worrying that you might be damaging the front element.

Picture Output

Picture quality is as you would expect from a digital Holga, absolutely horrible, but that’s part of the charm and experience. I mainly use these types of cameras to produce abstract images, more akin to my Artcast paintings than a traditional photo image. You end up with pictures with unpredictable exposure, focus issues, and eventually with non-intuitive results, which is exactly in line with the Holga spirit. Concerning digital workflow, I download the images from the SD card directly into Adobe Lightroom for organizing and processing. The F521 image hold up well to processing, including exposure compensation, shadow adjustments, clarity, etc. Shooting with the F521 is a nice balance to shooting with the A900, and I’m planning to shoot with the 521 and my Elnichrom BxRi lights as soon as I get a photodiode to trigger the Skyports from the on-board flash. Maybe I’ll take off the lens and figure out a way to mount a Mamiya 150 f/3.5 portrait lens to it.

Is It Worth It?

The EZ F521 is cheap and definitely worth a look. It’s available for the international market via Japan Exposures and costs 9,990 Yen (about 100 USD). A few years ago Japan Exposures was selling the Fuji Natura S camera with the fixed 24mm f1.9 lens, I hesitated and then they stopped producing them. It’s my biggest purchasing regret of my camera buying life. So I bought the F521 without really thinking about it and so far I’m loving it. Does it live up to the name Digital Holga? Yes, I’m of the opinion that it totally does.

Sessions with Joey L – DVD Tutorial Review

21 Oct ’09Photography, PhotoshopJoey L, review, Sessions, Tutorial

This is a review of the Sessions with Joey L DVD Tutorial, including a break-down of the DVD content and how I feel it applies to my photographic directions and how it might be useful to other people.

Back in the fall of 2007 I was spending my days in a Tokyo dorm room playing around with Photoshop, and decided it was time to pick up some sort of tutorial DVD. Yes, you can learn and be inspired without needing to buy these things, but I break my brain trying to figure out stuff like applying Altair Optistruct optimization strategies to fatigued composite structures with barley a manual to work with. So with Photoshop I was looking for a way to relax and get a grounding in photo processing, so I bought the JoeyL Photoshop Tutorial DVD by photographer Joey Lawrence. It was well received by some, ridiculed by others, and I found it to be a good buy. However, I’m able to pull a great deal of knowledge from anything, due to my training in figuring out ball-busting simulation programs like Nastran. However, for my purposes, what was lacking from the Photoshop Tutorial DVD was the connection between lighting and shot setup and Photoshop processing. So when Mr. Lawrence released his Sessions with JoeyL DVD, I watched the trailer, and then decided to drop 200 USD on the DVD.

First some background on me

Here’s my situation. I’ve mainly focused on learning photography and lighting during the last two years. This was mainly in my spare time while finishing my Doctor of Science degree at ETH Zurich I read Strobist in between experiments, and sometimes sketched out lighting diagrams at the SPIE Smart Materials conferences. Since starting a normal job I’ve had time to develop a lighting and processing look that I like, which fits with what I see in my head. To this end I finished with taking only self-portraits and started organizing model shoots. The last piece is nearly in place and that is making a strong link between vision and reality. Taking the image in my head and easily making it a tangible medium people can hold in their hands or see for themselves. I sketch out shoot ideas, design lighting concepts, network, and do my own Photoshop. Foe me it’s all part of the process of Arience, the integration of Art and Science in my life. In my view, everyone is a poet and an engineer. I attended a Strobist seminar and picked up the Sessions DVD to get a better perspective on how other photographers work, see the process of concept to photo in other people.

The Sessions content is broken down as follows

Lighting Theory

The Vision

Lighting Theory – The Basics

Lighting Theory – Advanced Technique

The Necessary Tools

Modifiers

Photoshoots

Forbes Assignment

Monty Are I CD Artwork

Thrillogy Advertisement Shoot

Model Test Shoot

Strange Familiar

Business

Business Lecture

Trust

Misc Q&A

Travel

Travel Lecture

Ethiopia: Behind the Scenes

Photoshop

Compositing

Using Color Curves

Strange Familiar – Swapping Skies

Experimenting with Blending Modes

Black and White Conversion

Tonal Colorizing

Fixing Blown Highlights

There’s something that always floats around in my head, namely that photography isn’t difficult, and it gets easier every year. Images which took a full production studio to create 20 years ago can now be done in a bedroom quicker and with fewer resources. The thing that interests me is the process and approach a person takes to the whole idea of photography from concept to lighting to final image, and I think this has been well communicated in the Sessions DVD.

Lighting Theory: Joey explains his philosophy and how he sets up lighting. Then he moves on to modifiers and how the ones he uses to define the character of his images. If you know nothing of lights and modifiers this is a great video, if you know everything already you probably won’t buy this DVD anyways. I fall in the middle, and found this to be a very interesting section. It didn’t totally revolutionize my ideas on lighting, but did make me think a bit more outside of the Strobist softbox.

Photoshoots: Joey presents a walk-through, behind-the-scenes videos of different shoots including bands, a plastic surgeon, and a model test shoot. Throughout Joey gives explanations of lighting and concept, and you can draw a direct link between how he works and his previously described Lighting Vision. Also interesting here is seeing the photographer-model interaction. This is an important, I think the most important part of a shoot. I try to make an emotional connection with models and explain what I’m trying to create in a shoot, and it’s interesting to see the way Joey works in these different situations, working with a TFP model versus a highly successful surgeon versus a band releasing a new CD. All in all, very cool to see.

Business: Joey describes how he grew and developed as a photographer, the value of a portfolio, how he gets jobs, basically a discussion on how he works as a businessman. Again, this is great to see, and would be interesting for anyone contemplating a business (even outside photography), because he focuses on the personal drive and interaction which are needed, as opposed to just having a slick portfolio online somewhere. He also has a video on Trust and how important it is for business as well as directing shoots, again, very cool stuff to hear about.

Travel: Focus is on Ethiopia, and a lot about how he understands the culture of his subjects before blasting them with a Profoto strobe. You don’t need to be planning a trip to Africa to get a lot out of these videos, they focus on the human connection between photographer and subject, a topic often missed and usually never even brought up in internet forum discussions (well, the ones I read at least). The Travel section is great for looking at the human side of photography, and focusing less on the technical side. It’s also a great motivational video if you’re the type who always thinks of traveling but hasn’t jumped on the plane yet.

Photoshop: Here are presented a few popular techniques, many things people are always asking about on the internet. Yes, you can also find internet videos on the basic techniques, but it’s the application of those techniques in the larger puzzle which is of value here. If you want to buy the DVD just for Photoshop, you’re better off looking at something else (I recommend Skin Photoshop the book). The Photoshop section fits in very well with the rest of the DVD, bringing the vision full circle to the post processing stage. This was something I found lacking in his Photoshop DVD Tutorial, because there a strong connection wasn’t made between lighting and post-processing. Here however, you can see how the images from the Strange Familiar shoot are processed, including a new sky, and in this way you get a feeling for the whole process from start to finish.

Why I Liked It

What I like is seeing concept development in other people, and seeing how they think and work. I like understanding their philosophy of creation and ideas or their approach to concept development and how it’s realized in a final form – be it a picture or an elegant toaster. In this way, I think the Sessions DVD is fantastic, and I recommend it instead of taking a workshop (if you have to choose). Sessions gives you a feeling for the whole process from lighting philosophy, through shoot execution, the business approach to final Photoshop editing, and throughout out you get a feeling for the human connection as a main driver of the process.

Is it worth the Money?

Is $200, $250, $300 too much for a photography DVD? Maybe yes, possibly no. I paid $200 for my copy, and I’m ok with that. The Zach Arias DVD is $250, the Strobist $135, and new ones come out all the time from places like Lighting-Essentials, Scott Kelby (how many remixed Photoshop books can we release this year?) and David Honl (to name a very few). But not all are coming from a working commercial photographer who shoots stuff I find interesting. This isn’t the same as a working educator who also takes nice photos. There is a significant difference here. It’s easy to say, “you need to do this, this and this” to make cool pictures, it’s another thing to be a working photographer at this level and showing the whole process.

I consider it the difference between learning Physics from a tenured professor who hasn’t written a new publication in 2 years versus a Richard Feynman (even after he was at the top of his field, you can find some of his lectures on the net). Maybe this sounds harsh, but my main critique of 90% of the photography/Photoshop learning material I see for free from internet sources as well as some professional educators is the lack of vision, and for me that makes all the difference. The Sessions DVD is a tutorial with Vision and Heart. But maybe that’s just me? I got so bored with McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries I didn’t get half-way through it, but I love re-reading Michael Grecco’s Dramatic Portrait. It’s just what gets me off.

I’ve also reviewed and still like the JoeyL Behind the Scenes Photoshop DVD, the reason being that the focus isn’t placed on minute details of levels and curve operations, but because it focuses on process and development. This is the same philosophy I use in engineering research, so maybe that’s why I like it. The details can always be ironed out, but if you don’t have that overall big picture (that thing you’re reaching for) in your head, then you won’t have a clue about which details need to be fine-tuned. This is one thing I wasn’t getting from reading Strobist or attending a seminar – but I just learn differently than other people, and so do you. I don’t need someone to make me creative, I do that on my own, sometimes vie induced boredom. It’s just cool to see how other people are creative in the scope of their vision.

Brass Tacs

The Sessions DVD isn’t some blue pill to take with a whiskey chaser, promising you everlasting creative abilities as well as the drive to bring your vision into the world. It’s just another piece in the puzzle. Seek your knowledge in the way you know will be most effective for your own personal learning style. I get Photoshop technique inspiration by actually painting, I get lighting inspiration when I’m listening to a Web Monday talk or a smart materials presentation. No two people learn the same way, so find out what works for you and exploit it to make your own visions a reality.