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.

Web Monday Zurich #10

21 Oct ’09Web Monday ZurichAmazee, StartUp, Web Monday, Web Monday Zurich, Zurich

Web Monday Zurich is a meeting setup on Amazee.com to enable interaction between people in the web community around Zurich. Startups have a chance to present their ideas and get feedback, everyone has a chance to mingle and network, feed your brain and your innovation side in social atmosphere, how can you not go?

I wanted to attend my first Web Monday at the end of August, companies like MAGMAG Magazines were presenting, and being a photographer looking for new ways to present visual content, I was eager to see what was up. But that Monday I had just flown back from shooting a wedding in Rome, had picked up some sort of sickness, and took down the wrong address. So I ended up looking for Feldstrasse 113, a fictions address just different enough from Feldstrasse 133 to make me think I was going out of my mind.

Web Monday #10 was held in the Amazee office at the Technopark in Zurich (I was there before for a booster party), and my mind was sharp, so it was problem to find and attend. I could have stayed home and played with my new Octabox, but I was itching to infuse my mind with something new.

Two companies presented, GetYourGuide.com and StreamForge.

GetYourGuide.com

So, there’s like a thousand travel website on the net, you can book a flight, book a hotel, book a car, book a train…but what about booking “an experience?” GetYourGuide is a newly out of Beta website Startup which seeks to connect trip provides (suppliers) with people looking for travel experiences (customers). The idea is you head to the website and and quickly search through destinations or activities and quickly find a cool experience, like a city tour, bike tour, etc. I see a lot of potential for GetYourGuide, because I’ve been in a position to use it many times. During the Spring I was in San Diego and L.A. for a few weeks. In San Diego I was trying to book a kite boarding class, in L.A. I was searching for the best graffiti. I ended up buying some Bratz dolls and shooting them on the streets of the cities. So, in the end I didn’t learn to kite board, but did have a cool experience. However, I didn’t end up kite boarding because by the time I found a school, I had run out of time and had to fly back to Zurich. For a travel consumer such as myself, GetYourGuide can offer a lot of value, and I’ll use it to find a cool trip in the next city I visit.

For trip suppliers GetYourGuide is attractive, because it connects the local suppliers to the global customer directly. It includes a very nice back-end with analytics software to help suppliers see how people are visiting their trip listings. At the moment GetYourGuide is targeting popular destinations, and finding trip suppliers in those main cities. This is nice strategy, as they can bring in revenue quickly, and then expand to targeting trip suppliers in broader destinations. This is what interests me the most, because if you’re looking for a cattle driving experience in New Mexico and you live in Stuttgart, it’s not so easy to do. I also had problems in the past contacting mountain guides in Bolivia when I flew down there. I think if GetYourGuide expands into these areas and eventually targets specialty suppliers, they’ll set themselves apart from their competitors like Viator.com and have a web company offering a lot of value to their customers and suppliers. I’m looking forward to a travel experience-enhanced future.

StreamForge

So, when Barack Obama was giving his inauguration speech, so many people tuned in that the video feed was unavailable, the internet was broken – overloaded, users were blocked, their experience ruined. I didn’t watch the speech, but I do recall trying to watch the 2009 Leica webcast during the launch of their new cameras, the S2, X1, and M9. Their servers were overloaded and I had to read about it on a forum, how disappointed I was. How can we avoid this in the future? By using Peer-to-Peer strategies like those employed in LimeWire and previously in Napster (and now many others).

Instead of downloading the video or audio content directly from a website, parts are downloaded from other people who are downloading the same content. This removes the load from the main server, and enables people to maintain their enjoyment of the internet without overloading the system. This isn’t a new idea (in principle) it was tried (and failed) in the past. But StreamForge is using technology developed from the latest research at ETH Zurich, and like many technologies, the subsequent try is often far better than the first attempt.

Like (as far as I know) all Peer-to-Peer sharing platforms, StreamForge does require that their software be downloaded and installed by users, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to upload data and remove the load on the main server. But this presents a potential problem, because many consumers are wary of installing random programs which are connected to the internet, even though it may not be any different than using a webpage. Also, this is a technology which the main server companies need to adopt and trust in. If these two barriers can be overcome, then StreamForge has a bright future. There are other examples of companies with similar problems. Flash was introduced something like many, many years ago, but it’s really only in the last few years that it’s gained wide acceptance, and nearly every web browser has it installed.

Brass Tacs

Web Monday #10 rocked, I love seeing how different technologies develop and how new companies launch and present themselves. It’s very inspiring, and makes you think in new ways (at least, it works for me). I had an excellent time at Web Monday #10, I’m sad I missed #9, and am looking forward to #11, which will include presentations by Prof. Manfred Vogel from FHNW, Joaquin Cuenca Abela from Panoramio and Andreas Hoffmann from UBS (there’s a contest in the works).

The next Web Monday is coming up on Nov. 30th, location to be announced. Check out the Web Monday Zurich magazine on Amazee for further details. Also, STARTWERK.CH was a German write-up on Web Monday #10.

Wedding Trip: Revolt from the Singles Table

17 Oct ’09ProtestLoveBook, ProtestLove

After a few years and various cups of coffee and a couple of things in between I’ve released my first book. It’s self-published – not official in the sense that someone has put up financial backing to get it into print. In the digital age, what is the point unless one has been approached already by a publisher? This is the value of the internet, the ability to side-step financial barriers to produce what you want and publish how you want. There was no specific reason for writing this book, I could have done it earlier if I were a motivated person. Basically I attended a wedding, too some pictures and started writing, thinking it would be a funny email to send out. Then I thought it would be a webpage and it just kept growing. After a while I decided that it needed some sort of form and turned it into a short story – a book, a literature-challenged novel, whatever you want to call it. I made it into a book, because this is the exact form which was required (as opposed to a blog post). I wrote it as a short-story because I wanted it to be simple and short, uncluttered and with a voice that is unpretentious and genuine (well, at least from my perspective). So here it is:

American Peyote Vol. 1
Wedding Trip
Revolt from the Singles Table

Other title iterations included:

Last Thoughts Before Being Born
Dissension from the Singles Table
Revolution of the Dateless Guest

Chapters Include:

I. Everything else is background noise, feel the beat and ride it as far as you can
II. It means not looking for a return on your emotional investment
III. Last Thoughts Before Being Born
IV. Elixir of the Gods
V. Carpe Noct
VI. Only a determined removal of the thin veils of society sets the soul free…a beast approaches
VII. The night is also mortal
VIII. Epilogue

Basically the story is about a guy attending a wedding, and all the random thoughts on Love and relationships which infest in his mind during the festive event. If I tell you all the details now your reading experience will be ruined. I don’t know if it’s any good or not, but a few very cool people said they like it.

I could have left it on my computer, like writing stuff in journals and then leaving them on a shelf somewhere, but that’s like writing a letter and not sending it, what would be the point? The emotions and revelations are then left to sit – lost – irrelevant. Which is not to say that Revolt from the Singles Table is in any way important or significant in any sense of the universe. It’s a self-published book through Lulu.com and is available online sofort (immediately). It’s a pocket edition, not very long (meant to be carried around and easily left on trains or coffee shop seats), some of you know the backstory – and others of you can no doubt guess at it. I could have made it longer, but in the self-publishing realm of reality I can make it as long or short as I like, and this is the exact length that the story needed at this point in time. Names have been changed, certain facts embellished, and it wasn’t written to be a historical document – so it is for sure a stretch to call it non-fiction, and therefore, it’s been released as a work of imagination with accompanied footnotes.

More books are sure to follow, but not being tied to publishing responsibilities I can’t say there’s any specific timeline. Some day I’ll be poor and anonymous, but until that time – I’ll keep publishing under the American Peyote framework. Now the fun begins in this grand experiment, developing and executing a marketing strategy.

Order Revolt from the Singles Table from LuLu.com

Preview from Issuu

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The Scream – Inspiration via Acute Boredom

14 Oct ’09Creativitydrawing, Inspiration

I’m a drawer, I doodle, I always have, and I intend to never stop. I’ve drawn in class as long as I can remember. On my progress reports my teachers would often write that I was a good student, but my only problem was that I drew during class.

Now, looking back after 31 years, the majority of which have been spend in class learning everything from reading English to writing Japanese, thinking about Algebra, Calulus, intermediate dynamics, biomaterials, engineering, chemistry, physics, everything inbetween, all culminating in a Doctor of Science title from ETH Zurich, I can tell you with aboslute certainty that doodling, and continuing to draw in class was one of the best decisions I’ve made in life.

Drawing in Science and Engineering classes forms the perfect Arience – mix of art and science. I talked about this notion of Arience at the 2009 Swiss StartUp conference (Idea Generation and Development). When half of your brain is bleeding – trying to understand the diffusion equation or the basics of colloids science, it just makes sense to exercise the creative centers and draw something. My biggest critique of my engineering classes at Michigan State University (MSU) is that very few of the professors took time to understand this concept. Teachers of all levels should take the time to understand their students, and to understand how their students learn. In the end it makes you a better teacher. Trying to apply a rigid I-know-it-all teaching philosophy to every student is harmful and highly counter-productive to learning. And if you’re not interested in teaching, well, don’t become a Professor – just go to the private research sector.

By far the best drawing I produced at MSU was started during a Chemcical Engineering course on Colloids. I wanted to learn about colloids science to better understand the application of 3D printing and rapid prototyping technology to the manufacture of 3D hydroxyapatite bone scaffolds. The class started out fine but the lecture consisted of Dr. Ofoli runing through a black and white PowerPoint presentation for about an hour and a half during the evening. Although the slides were prepared before class, he wouldn’t let us download them for class to takes notes with, “because then students wouldn’t come to class.” So, basically I didn’t learn anything during class, all I was doing was trying to copy everything from the presentation before he flipped to a new slide. The woman who sat behind me would draw Manga all night, and one night my brain had had enough and drew a giant screaming head inspired by Pink Floyd: The Wall.

My frustration culminated one night when my brain was about to explode and I drew a giant screaming head while listening to notions about colloids and chemical interactions. I dropped the class soon after the first exam, not because I didn’t find the topics interesting, but because the learning technique was so completely opposite to my natual way of learning, it had simply become a huge waste of time to attend the lecture, and since I had the book, I could just learn whatever I needed.

To finish the screaming head sketch I scanned it and started some basic work in Photoshop. Using my Wacom tablet I erased part of the head and then added an arm – drawn later on a separate night. I didn’t like the original shape of the head so I re-drew the head with my Wacom and then made the head more alien-like, with oriented pen strokes. In the end, after writing Revolt from the Singles Table, I realized it was the perfect graphic to place opposite Chapter IV.

“Only a determined removal of the viels of society sets the soul free…a beast approaches.”

Sometimes art influences science, sometimes science inspires art. Sometimes boredom sparks a new idea, sometimes you use analogies to develop new concpets in different fields. Whatever the outcome, find out what works for you and exploit it.

Photoshop in My Analog Days

6 Oct ’09Photoshopdrawing, Phototshop

Photoshop is one of the coolest, most influential programs I’ve used in my computer life. Before I had a digital camera I had a Mac Cube, that beautifully designed simplistic computer which has never been equaled for elegance and class. It was a good time, I put contact paper on my walls and wrote on them whenever an idea took hold. Poetry, philosophy, thoughts on existence, everything that came into my head. The problem with drawing on static walls is that the ideas and pictures become locked in a certain place, a specific arrangement. Photoshop freed me from that. As soon as I got Photoshop I knew it would be pointless to use it with a mouse and picked up a Wacom Graphire tablet for $80 or something. From there I started experimenting with combining sketches and doing the color digitally.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that my background in Photoshop learning started in my Math, History, English, and Chemical Engineering classes. I wouldn’t say I was totally bored in school, but y=mx+b doesn’t need to fill the entire brain, and the vast expanse not consumed by redundant analysis of the Scarlet Letter were used to draw various things in my class notes. The problem is that you then have to run through old homework assignments on colloids to find that cool sketch of a screaming head, and much like Ulysses for writing, Photoshop has been great for giving life to random class sketches.

With Photoshop, a scanner, and a Wacom tablet, I knew I had it made. My first real attempt at creating something was a composite of hand-drawn sketches scanned with a Microtek machine and manipulated on screen. I included a portrait, taken during a biomedical engineering student meeting at Michigan State University (MSU). Somehow I guess it was the precursor to the current self-portraits on Flickr and my website.

I called this first thing “Perspective” I guess because, well, I have no idea. I was introduced to Pink Floyd: The Wall during this time, so it made sense to include a brick type structure, which was being demolished by small worker guys with devil legs and no hair on their heads. I also like the look of Marvel and Magneto from the X-men, so I added something with muscles and a cool Spartan helmet. It started as a few separate hand sketches which were digitized, and then colored in Photoshop.

Here was the workflow:

Draw random stuff
Scan sketches with flatbed scanner
Open in Photoshop
Cut up the sketches, just taking the ones I like
Assemble sketches so they sort of fit together
Ink over with a Photoshop brush
Expand and draw other strange images
Add color on separate layers for everything
Save and forget about for 8 years

It’s been cool to look at what I do now with a sweet camera like the Sony A900 and what you can do today with Photoshop, and compare it to what I was doing nearly a decade ago in my apartment. What I edit photos today, it’s always with a Wacom tablet, adding to the shadows, manipulating the density of darkness on arms and cheek bones, using the exact same drawing techniques developed in Geometry class when I thought of how cool it would be to draw an issue of the Punisher. Photoshop is a sweet program, but like Altair Hypermesh, it hasn’t changed much in the past 10 years. There have been some essential changes, but the core philosophy has stayed the same. If you have a cool idea and some drive, you can create some tripped out stuff. It’s just the drive to create which is important and will propell you forward, not matter if you’re working on Smart Materials, a photo shoot, or a sketch during a chemical engineering class.

Revolt From the Singles Table – Cover Design

17 Sep ’09ProtestLoveBook, Design, ProtestLove

I’ve been slowly working on finishing a sort of short-story or non-novel about a wedding I attended a few years ago. The wedding sets the backdrop for thoughts about love and relationships, life and death, the normal stuff I think too much about. Naturally, once you write the book, you need to represent it somehow, everyone reads a book by its cover, or at the very least the cover leaves a mental image in the mind of the reader. So in the process of writing I needed to eventually design a front and back cover.

At first I wanted to go a bit Retro and started stared with a simple uniform yellow background with the American Peyote logo and the working title: Wedding Trip. The title was never a set thing, it sounded sort of cool, but after it was written I wasn’t happy and in the end I expanded it to: “Revolt from the Singles Table” For me this works on many levels, giving a preview of what to expect and it also reflects the tone of the book. Since I work a lot with layering and concrete or grunge textures mixed with portraits, it seemed logical that I’d add that to the book cover and give it some grittiness. This visual texture also reflects the tone and feeling I’m trying to communicate in the book.

The author name is there to reflect two of the main characters which were the inspiration for the writing style of Wedding Trip, Tyler Durden and Hunter S. Thompson. The desire to do this is somehow linked to the idea that a person writes in a certain voice, and the voice I use for the blog is different from the one I use for research publications, and somehow I wanted to put this on the cover as well. Maybe it’s also because in a research publication you always cite where different ideas were coming from, it’s another theme I’m playing with in Wedding Trip.

For the back cover I stayed with a bit of 70’s retro styling and layered colored rectangles over one another with a solid black background. The American Peyote logo is added with Gonzo sitting prominently there as well. It sort of makes me think of a rainbow tunnel, like the one I used to walk through at the Detroit Institute of Arts when I visited with my mom. It also reminds me a bit of A Clockwork Orange and the visuals from the movie. Strange how all these things get mixed up in the head.

So, now we’re nearly set for the soft launch. I’m waiting for the test copy to come back from Lulu.com, where I decided to publish it. In the digital age you have the option of being the author, published, marketer, and designer for a book, and it’s been fantastic doing these things on the side when I’m bored with climbing, uninspired to do photography, or need a break from Science.x I’ve decided to offer it as a low low introductory price, initially without an ISBN number and then expand it to a proper release later on if I decide to Go Pro.

Update

I’ve finished with all the madness and put up an edition for sale on lulu.com

Wedding Trip: Revolt from the Singles Table – LuLu.com

Stroking the Photography Ego: Published by PopPhoto For Free

3 Sep ’09PhotographyPhotography, Published

PopPhoto-02211-Edit If you spend too much time reading about Web 2.0, it’s easy to get confused with the transmission of creative goods and hopeful returns in terms of money in the internet economy. If you read Wikinomics and practice your life in a Web 2.0 way, then nearly anything you produce should be given away for free. If I produce a photo for An American Peyote Scribble article and post it to Flickr, then I’m part of the philosophical web photography industry where information exchange is the medium (as opposed to hard goods). An internet publisher writes an article, posts a photo, and thereby produces a commodity (say a digital image or story) which is consumed by a consumer (random person on the web – you, the person reading this blog article).

Via Flickr I got an email from the editor of the PopPhoto College Edition magazine about using one of my images in an upcomming issue. My first instict was to think about publication rights and compensation. At this point, there are two basic reactions flowing through your brain: one is the joy that someone likes what you did, the second is the question of monetary compensation for a creative work. When you sell or license a creative work, I’m of the impression that you’re selling or licesnsing the actual medium (digital) and as well as the concept contained within that medium. The reason for compensation is generally obvious, a magazine makes money from subscribers and advertisers (really mainly from advertisers) and therefore photographers should be paid for their work when a magazine editor calls and requests usage of a particular photo.

The image in question is a self-portrait I shot on a weekend afternoon to experiment with my new full-length reflector. I could have demanded money, but that’s not what the image was produced for. It was produced to be displayed on Flickr and my blog, and to not to be used with out consent from myself. Does allowing use of my image without monetary discourse degrade the overall economic potential of the entire photography market simply because it is being published in a freely distributed printed magazine as opposed to say, the Strobist website? Photos from Flickr are used everyday on websites that bring in advertising revenue for the site publisher, and generally no money is set aside for the creator of the image.

If your photo is posted to the Flickr Strobist Group, and used in one of the posts on the Strobist website, you’re also allowing publication to a money-generating entitiy without prior (or future) finanical compensation. The same goes for photos posted to PSDTUTS and a number of other Flickr groups. But this isn’t considered to be a bain on the entire creative industry (and shouldn’t be). You post your photo to a popular Flick-website-integrated entity and get exposure to a wide audience, the site gets content for the readers and the advertisers pay to keep the site going, since they get exposure to potential customers (the readers of that particular site). To close the economic loop, the groups which I post my images to are generally linked to my digital imaging education. I’ve learned a great deal from both the Strobist and PSDTUTS websites, so I feel like it’s a fair trade if they use my images on their site, despite the fact that I’ll receive no monetray compensation from advertisers. In the end, services and digital goods have changed brains, been absorbed, and I receive a free education as they receive rights to display my images on their sites.

For the past year I’ve mainly been shooting myself, this gets boring occasionally, and I’ve since expanded to organizing portrait parties and TFCD model shoots. Why? Because it’s a challenge. Everyone is cool and beautiful in their own way, and it’s far more challenging for a photographer to make themselves look interesting than simply photographing a stylized movie star. Some say that nothing which is free has any real value. And something which is useless can never be truly beautiful. Some practice a free photography based (non?)business model and others push a traditional photography business model. Does giving PopPhoto permission to publish my Flickr photo devalue the cumulative impact of the creative industries? Did I grant the publishing rights for my Flickr photo just so I could write this article? Perhaps, but that’s the beauty of being a Creator, you have the ability to control (to an extent) the use of your digital productions.

Heavy thoughts on any day of the week.

The Creative Space

17 Aug ’09Creative SpaceCreativity

Environment plays a huge roll in creativity and creation. Physically this happens inside a relative thing we call “space.” Call it a room, a studio, your office, a play-pen, a workshop, a bathroom, baby crib, whatever – the place you work and where you do your creative stuff. It’s where you do your photography, Photoshop, writing, painting, videos, finger painting, claymation, whatever. The point is you have to have somewhere to work and create cool stuff, and the design of that space, of that environment will greatly influence how well you can translate the vision in your head into a “creation.” So how does one design an effective “creative space?”

Why Design a Creative Space?

Like many other things in life, you start out with what you have, and figure out how to fit in what you need to accomplish your desires in life. When I moved into my new place I knew it was the perfect time to design my “space,” so I picked a new apartment with an open design, almost modular. The place is split into two sections, with a kitchen area in the middle. I sleep on a small bed near my computer just adjacent to the living area on one side of the apartment. This lounging area is setup with bookcases and a couch with a cool Oriental carpet (perfect for yoga). Then beyond the kitchen I use the open space as my Laboratory, containing all manner of lights, cameras, and random paints and canvases. There was a method, and flow-design to this creative space madness. The design revolves around ideas and their creation. Think of ideas, how and where they are created? Then let it all flow into a place where ideas can be translated to a creative product. Ideas are developed on one side of my apartment (the left brain), and carried out on the opposite side (the practical right side). In between is the door leading back to my perception of reality (you know, the front door, the one I walk through most days when I have to go to work).

My Creative Space Design

I set up my place this way so that all the thinking and idea creation is done in the small context of my sleeping and lounging area, while the “work” (play) is handled in the larger open space of the studio beyond the kitchen. I have essentially two rooms in the laboratory, with large glass doors separating the two, which can be opened to combine the two spaces. In the larger area I set up lights and a background. The smaller area is usually lined with plastic for painting. This enables me total freedom to jump between photography and painting, which is important because photography is just light painting, and everything I know about painting with liquid on canvas I learned from Photoshop. So, it makes sense to put the two (photography and painting) next to one another in some context. I like having a separation between the creation and lounging spaces because I’m a complicated and occasionally chaotic-thinking person, and by separating the two I keep the clutter of my life away from the photography and painting, away from the work-creation areas. This makes it easier to concentrate on shooting when desired, and not worry about flinging paint on my computer screen when the madness takes hold and I set upon a new canvas.

In the painting room (called my “winter garden”) I can open up or close the doors, creating separation from the main space as needed, when needed. This allows me to pen or modify that space as desired. So, for full length portraits with a 50mm lens on an APS body, I can open the doors and have enough room for a full-length shot of a model. Later I can easily close-off the painting room and line the inside with plastic to protect the walls. The painting area is now fully closed off and I can throw paint around as needed when I set about translating some abstract madness into reality on the canvas.

My Creative Space Philosophy

My creative space design also focuses on the important separation between idea and execution, between brain-storming and action. It’s easy for me to come up with ideas, and more often than not I’ll start branching off into fifty different directions. But it’s hard to follow through on 50 different ideas, so it’s important for me to focus on one or two things and complete them before moving on to something else. I like to think up and organize things, put it all in place (ironic since I’m a filthy person), and then do whatever is needed to bring those ideas from my head into reality. That’s why my sketch books, journals, pens, and Manga markers stay in the lounge area while my lights, paints and camera gear stay in the studio area. I sketch up ideas on one side of my place (or in a cafe), and then walk over to the other side and “execute” the idea. In between the kitchen and studio is my storage room with a shelf full of climbing and outdoor adventure gear. When I need a break I pack up some climbing gear and tour up a mountain for a bit of clarity.

Free the Mind – Reduce Flexible Clutter

This creative space design is ideal for me because I can setup more or less however I want to. I didn’t put in a kitchen table or armoire, (much to the disgust of my mother) so I’m not constrained by existing clutter (this is a new concept in my life) when, for example I want to setup a photo shoot. In the photo studio I put a 2.7 meter paper background system to use for most of my shots. There’s ample room to move, setup lights, and even get a small softbox or beauty dish directly over a model. I chose a location background system instead of one screwed into the wall so I’d have the freedom to move it around if desired (but I leave it where it is).

It’s Not Rocket Science

Designing your creative space just means that you have the space to create and to easily access those tools required to do your creations. You need somewhere to work, so take the time to include your creative space in your environment. If you’re a mom writing a novel, you might need a quiet place to write, well-insulated from the chaos of your kids, so do it. Design for the creative space as you would for a new kitchen or recreation room. If creating is an important part of your life, it makes no sense to exclude it from your living area. It’s the things we do in life to express our desires and ideas which makes us all interesting and beautiful people. Don’t deny your inner artist, everyone around you will lead a less-interesting life if you ignore your creative ambitions. The vision starts in the head, and all you’re doing is translating it to the real world in a form for other people to experience. Simple, easy, not complex in any sense of the word. This can happen in a place you design yourself, a cramped dorm room in Tokyo, or the vast expanse of the Swiss Alps. Find ways to make the space your own and you will never be constrained by walls, and your mind will always be free.

Margarita – Urban Location Photoshoot

7 Aug ’09Model ShootsKacey, Model, TFCD

Margarita contacted me via Stylished.com (she’s also on ModelMayhem: #1243386) and we setup a quick photo shoot in the urban area of Winterthur, just outside of Zurich, Switzerland. What follows is a break-down of the shooting process.

I conduct my photo shoots similar to the way one might assemble a portfolio of research projects. See, some research topics like Smart Materials can be rather revolutionary with a large potential pay-off, but risky. If you design a mechano-bioreactor using Electro-Active Polymers, you can (theoretically) grow and at the same time mechanically stimulate layers of skin or bone cells to engineer artificial tissue. But if you put all your energies and financing into such a risky topic, you run the risk of spending five years developing something which might not – in the end, be completely successful. So instead, you might also include less ambitions projects like active-mechanically conformable sensors for remote surgical robots and control gloves.

What’s the connection from biomedical research to photography? In short, when planning a photo shoot you balance out the shot concepts. Start with ones you know will be cool and work out as intended, and then experiment and spend some time with new poses or lighting scenarios.

The Shoot Setup

I met Margarita in the industrial area of Winterthur to do some Urban Location shooting. I’ve shot here before when I was playing around with Urban Dry Tooling concepts. I picked the location and worked up a few location ideas in my head, but I knew this shoot would be more spontaneous than, for example my previous studio shoot with Alexandra. Margarita came in a car with herself, a small wardrobe, and her cousin on a cool motorcycle. Since the shoot would be more flexible and off-the-cuff, I planned for a small location lighting setup. The weather was beautiful with strong afternoon sunshine, and I just needed lighting to be mobile and produce the desired effects.

Camera:
Sony A900
Minolta 7D
Sigma 70-200 HSM

Lighting:
Sunpak 120J
Sunpak 383
TR-II battery pack
Kacey Beauty Reflector
Orbis Ring Flash adapter
Gadget Infinity 16 channel radio triggers

Margarita brought three or four different clothing combinations. So, essentially she defined the initial visual concept via the wardrobe and I placed her in the right urban location to full define the shot. We ended up with four strong looks including: Jeans and T-Shirt, Elegant Dress, Form Fitted and a Fox Head, Urban Chair, and Urban Cowgirl (woman).

Jeans and T-Shirt

We started with a jeans and T-shirt look in an old factory-turned-parking-garage. The simple wardrobe would work well with the processing I had in mind and let Margarita be the focus, not her clothes. This would give me an idea of how she posed and carried herself, and make subsequent shots come out better as I would know more how to direct her, already having a feeling for how well she could direct herself. For lighting I setup a 120J in the Kacey reflector on a stand, this produced a nice directed, slightly hard light source, placed 3-5 meters away from Margarita. First we shot against the cinderblock walls, some of which had cool scribbles. Then we did a few shots backlit by the sun from the large windows. I shot with the Sony A900 and Minolta 7D. The 7D with the lower pixel count (6 megapixels) produces files with a different shadow texture, and can work better than the 24 megapixel A900 for certain looks. These shots leant themselves well to grunge texturing in the post-processing stage.

Long Elegant Dress

After the first set Margarita chose a long, elegant dress. This was perfect to contrast against the large steel columns which support the roof of the old factory. We did a few distant headshot captures, then I posed Margarita against one of the steel columns. The 120J-Kacey combination was used in both instances, first to add just a tad of fill on the head shots, and then to illuminate the scene from the side. This allowed me to capture the texture of the steel and also give excellent light on Margarita’s face and upper torso. As I was using a lot of natural light, so I could open up my aperture and diffuse the background behind the steel column. This added a nice dimension to the final images.

Form-fitted and a Fox Head

For this shot, we were really experimenting. Margarita came out dressed in a form-fitted top and leggings. Additionally, there was a fox handwarmer. This had a certain strange appeal, so naturally I approved and we used it. For lighting, I setup the 120J-Kacey dish, as well as a Sunpak 383 in the Orbis ring flash. I wanted a hard sort of steel look. Generally convention dictates that the photographer should know what they want and direct the model in a specific way to produce great results. But to be honest, the foxhead was unexpected and we set about experimenting with different looks. Fox head on her head, to the side, is it the main focus of the image, is it a concept, does it “mean” something? I don’t know if anyone can answer these questions, and probably they require no clarification.

Sitting on the Chained Chair

Winterthur is like a giant kick-ass photo studio. Next to the old factory-turned-parking-garage there are some very posh apartments, which have chained chairs sitting on the rocky courtyard. This location gives a nice feeling with the desolate gravel ground and random chairs, it makes me think of a Pink Floyd video. We did two more sets in the setting sun and shade of the buildings, which stretched across the courtyard. In the first set Margarita sat in a chair and I bumped the 120J up to full power and placed it just out of frame in the Kacey dish. Naturally I wanted to balance out the exposure of the dying sunlight in the background. Again, I can’t say enough about the awesomeness of the Kacey dish, it’s a tad large to take around but well worth the inconvenience. It’s awesome on location, and when you use it with a Sunpak 120J and TR-II battery pack it’s a flexible, very powerful and fantastic lighting tool. But we were not finished, Margarita had a final look she wanted and ran off to change.

Classic Urban Cowgirl

Margarita came back dressed in white with fun cowgirl boots and the same fantastic smile from the past two hours, undaunted by the time we’d spent posing. For this set I left the flashes standing at a distance and used natural sunlight, which was being reflected off of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the posh apartment buildings where I wish I had a place. In the gravel courtyard were a few shallow pools, and I used the full capabilities of my Sigma 70-200, shooting images of Margarita posing across the water. Here I got down low to the ground and pick up Margarita’s reflection in the pool.

Post-Processing

The combination of Margarita and the industrial background worked nicely with my imagination and visual tendencies to blur the divide the line between visual reality, painting, and graffiti. When processing photos from a location shoot I generally use textures from that specific location. I’ve spent a few days shooting around the old industrial walls and cracked concrete in Winterthur and have a nice library of low-rez 6 and high-rez 24 megapixel texture files to work with. The post-processing philosophy included blending concrete layers with Margarita and manipulating the shadows of the images.

Wrap Up

Margarita is a pretty awesome model to work with. She has a dynamic personality and has a good sense of form and posing. Margarita’s cousin came along for the shot. Some photographers shy away from the idea of a model bringing along a friend, but I think it’s great. Margarita and her cousin discussed poses and she could watch from the back and throw out suggestions in Lithuanian while I was shooting, it was awesome.

My Sony A900 User Review
My Kacey Beauty Reflector Review
Kacey Beauty Reflector – Kacey Enterprises
Kacey Dish on Location – Swiss Strobist

Alexandra – Anatomy of a TFCD Model Shoot

31 Jul ’09Model ShootsConcept to Photo, Model, TFCD, Tutorial

A little while ago I started networking on with models on websites like Model Mayhem and Stylished to organize some shoots. One day I was reading my email and saw a contact from Alexandra (MM# 809690) on Model Mayhem, she liked some of my shots of Amber and we organized a TFCD shoot. What follows is an article on my approach to organizing ideas and lighting scenarios for the shoot with Alexandra. I took a project management based approach in this case. This included a pre-shoot meeting, concept development, and laying out all the ideas, resources, and equipment in a mind map project file. Organization overkill for a basic TFCD shoot? Some will say yes, some will say no, and some will have no clue of the appropriate response.

Pre-Shoot Networking

A Time For CD (TFCD) shoot is the digital incarnation of the Time For Prints (TFP) concept developed in the film area. In the purist form this means that a photographer and model work together, both contributing their time and talents free of charge, and in the end both use the resulting photos for their respective portfolios. In this particular case Alexandra (the model) contacted me (the photographer) via Model Mayhem. We discussed a few details and expectations via email, and then met in Zurich one fine Saturday afternoon to discuss concepts and logistics in person. During this meeting we decided to shoot three photo set concepts with different outfits in my studio. Those concepts were…

Basic spring dress
Business suit
Hippy Ninja – Barbie Hunter

The spring dress and business suit ideas were basic, safe concepts, sure to result in some usable images. The Hippy Ninja was a riskier notion I wanted to work with – an adaptation of my Urban Ninja photo set.

Photo Shoot Project Planning

There are two extremes to the approach of organizing a photo shoot. On the…let’s call it Conservative end you have a photographer planning each and every detail of the shoot from start to finish. On the…let’s call it Liberal end, you have a photographer showing up with a camera and lights and doing everything “in the moment.” The former sounds calculated and boring, the latter a romantic vision of what a creative photographer “should” be like. I’m a mix of the two, and I happen to know that the best example of Gonzo journalism ever written: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was not written in the Gonzo sense of a reporter furiously filling up a notebook and sending off directly to Rolling Stone for publication. Fear and Loathing was a great short story which took a lot of work to translate into a novel. It’s easy to be creative and spontaneous in “the moment”, but translating a vision into a solid tangible photo concept is another story. So I just did what I do best. I took my project management skills honed in the academic research world at ETH Zurich and EMPA and built up a project plan detailing all the shooting concepts and resources required to complete them using a little Computer Aided Creativity.

The photo concept stage started with our first meeting between myself and Alexandra. We came with our ideas of what we wanted and came to a middle ground. I took the notes from my meeting with Alexandra and started creating a mind map on my PowerBook. I used MyMind to list and then organize all the elements of the shoot, listing the photo ideas, what would be needed for each concept, the lighting style I wanted, and my available resources (cameras, lights, etc), and finally what I would rent or need to buy for the shoot. The mind map isn’t necessarily a rigid plan for the shoot, rather it’s used here to collect and organize all the ideas. Since I’m acting as financier, creative director, photographer, and post-processing artist, I can change the game plan as needed. The organization of ideas is useful so that way I remember to buy a couple of Barbie dolls to remove their heads for the hunter necklace, in addition to buying fresh flowers for the Ninja head dress. Although I love my Minolta 7D I rented a Sony A900 and the Zeiss 24-70 lens from GraphicArt in Zurich. Why? Well, mainly because I’d been using a Minolta 7D for many years and now wanted something with better resolution, auto-focus accuracy and dynamic range.

Camera:
Sony A900
Zeiss 24-70mm

Lighting Kit:
2x Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes
2x Portalite softboxes
1x Elinchrom beauty dish
2x Sunpak 383 flashes
1x Kacey Beauty Reflector
1x Orbis Ring Flash Adapter
1x Lastolite TriLite Reflector kit
Skyport and Gadget Infinity radio triggers

Photo Concept: Color and Lighting Design

The three different looks would require different background colors and lighting designs. My backgrounds included dark green, deep red, and storm grey.

Summer Dress

Yellow summer dress with different scarfs (picked up at H&M and from my closet). for the spring type feeling I went with my green background and main lighting via the BxRi flashes using a softbox and beauty dish. We also added a deep red scarf and a few hats. The lighting scheme was to use the BxRi flashes, a large softbox light with the beauty dish for some directionality, giving some deeper shadows and better definition on the skin. The dish also provided nice sort of hard shadows over the brim of the hat to form a vile over here eyes. Lastolite TriLite reflectors were used to add fill from beneath.

Business Suit

Here I shot with a deep red background, contrasting with the black suit Alexandra wore and giving a moody feeling. I pulled the cushion from my couch for Alexandra to lounge on and we also did standing shots. For these shots I used a beauty dish, softbox, and added fill with a Sunpak 383 in an Orbis ring flash. I setup the softbox on a boom up high with one BxRi. The second BxRi was in a beauty dish on a boom and used as a shaping and fill light to create some moody shadows and balance out the light from the softbox. The 383-Orbis light was used to fill in more of the dress, as it was a dark fabric it needed more light to define the texture.

Hippie Ninja – Barbie Hunter

At some point in the concept stage I remember thinking something like, “It would be sweet if she were a Ninja hunting Barbie and Bratz dolls and then made a necklace from their severed heads.” Here I wanted a harder look, and deviated from the softbox-beauty-dish combination. Two softboxes were placed directly perpendicular to Alexandra, creating definition on her arms and side (think Joel Grimes). The TriLite reflectors added fill to her front, and a Sunpak 383 on the lowest setting in a Kacey Beauty Reflector was used high in the front.

Post Processing

Alexandra originally contacted me because she liked the processing work I do with layered texture techniques. While I made it a point to stay true to these desires, it was obvious that all these images didn’t necessarily “want” to be textured with concrete and graffiti layers. Yes, you read right, I listen to the image while post-processing, the colors and shadows speak to me and we build the final image together. No, I don’t do drugs, I just listen to the rhythm of the world. In the end I worked on the images Alexandra chose for her portfolio and applied the urban style I like to play with. However, for many images I left them mostly true to the in-camera look. Naturally I modified the shadows and color feeling, but for the Barbie Hunter images, I wanted Alexandra to stand out – contrasted with the Barbie Head necklace.

Wrap-Up

Shooting with Alexandra was pretty cool. We did a few safe image concepts and then moved into the experimental territory with the Barbie Hunter. I loved doing the pre-shoot planning and concept design. The more time you put into pre-shoot planning, the less you have to worry about during the actual event and everything will just go smoother. The Elinchrom BxRi flashes are awesome and the Sony A900 + Zeiss 2470 is a sweet combination. Many people will tell you to buy the more powerful 500 ws strobes, but the 250 ws strobes have a fast recycle time and provide more than enough light for my current studio setup. I got Elinchrom strobes from Profot in Switzerland.

What comes next? A photo shoot with Margarita…

The Shaman’s Trance

19 Jul ’09Deep ThoughtsAmazee, Shaman, Zurich

Part II: The Shaman’s Trance

[audio:Digital_Shaman.mp3]

After making preliminary plans to re-write the internet, a few of us from the Amazing Amazee Booster Party headed into the heart of Zurich to find the Digital Shaman at Kanzlei. We paid the cover charge and moved through the place pack with bodies. The DJ was spinning and we made out way to the front of the dance floor.

Culled into the Shaman’s Trance, secure in his embrace the dance waves encircle the mind. This was the final cap to the night, a long set of music and body movement. The mind moving in and out of step with hard reality, and every part of the brain and body gets tuned in to the music. These places are best to leave at the apex, before the DJ starts the chill-out music and the lights come on. But we had no intention of leaving before the music stopped, and danced until the end. At 04:01 “Give Me Love” started playing, and I knew the night was closing. It’s a sad way to end the shadow games and await the morning sun, the DJ had no initiative and played something easy to end on – A downer. I like to dance out of a place, my emotions intimately connected with the rhythms. The lights turned on and we headed outside.

“Das Music spielt in Mein Kopf!” I yelled back at the bastard who had killed the beats. My fists raised in mock protest. Indeed, the music is always drumming in my head. The Doors gets mixed into Beethoven, and I don’t need an iPod. I just listen to some stuff in the morning, and remix the rest of the day in my head. Then I head out to clubs once in a while get fully engulfed by the energy. The night ended and the morning began on a train back to Winterthur around 5am.

This end wasn’t too different to the next Thursday when I headed out to Zurich to celebrate a birthday. We started at PurPur, a restaurant and nightclub near Stadelhofen. That night started out in a similar fashion. The mind confused, I decided to walk confidently into the night, wait for the beast to take on a fantastic form and then embrace the monsters and creatures which you meet along the way. Strangers are friendly faces in the shadows, and nothing is quite so comfortable as when you face the situation with the right eyes and attitude. The problem is that Zurich was dead that Thursday night. This isn’t Berlin where you can easily stay out all night, every night and walk out of a club into the sunshine. We left PurPur at midnight, and the place was nearly as empty as my apartment, just cleaner, fewer clothes on the floor. But if you try hard enough, even on a dead Thursday in Zurich you’ll find what you were looking for.

We stepped into Amber, right across from the Zurich Hauptbanhof. Amber is an over-priced place, but there was no cover-charge and a DJ was spinning – so the costs all balanced out, plus there was no other option without paying to get inside Hive or Kaufleuten. Amber was loosely filled up with bankers and foreigners (like us). The scene was basically a bunch of highly successful business guys standing around a few women that couldn’t be bought, but pretended like a price was listed next them on the bar. To characterize the ambiance in a single scene, one banker chick with a low-cut breast-popping, almost fully unbuttoned shirt was getting eye fucked by five guys at a time. A few other bank managers half-danced near the bar – trying to look hip and trendy. They stopped moving every five seconds to see if they could catch the eyes of one of the few women in the place – to see if anyone was looking at them. It was a sad and irrelevant scene. Irrelevant because we had come for the beats, and headed directly to the dance floor by the DJ.

For this Amber was perfect. Cool music, slightly deserted, little smoke in the air and room to dance. I easily lost myself in the music and started my interpretive dance moves. The floor was comfortably covered in broken glass, and large chunks got embedded in my Doc Martens, which made sliding around the dance stage effortless. There was a small group of Vikings on the floor as well, two tall guys with blonde hair wear white T-shirts and jeans, and one short female in a black skirt. They were the only other people interested in just enjoying the night and being touched by the music. I channeled Jim Morrison and started doing an Eagle Sun Dance. Arms outstretched in the sky, slowly circling the Earth below, you fall into that sacred trance and feel only the music. The body becomes the receptacle for the soul – and as the DJ turns it to a high-frequency sea of waves, which tunes in perfectly to those of the brain and showers down around your being – the mind-body connection becomes totally complete.

Carpe Noct mon ami…

The Amazing Amazee Booster Party

16 Jul ’09ZurichAmazee, Amazon, Zurich

Part I: The Amazing Amazee Booster Party

[audio:Amazee_Party.mp3]

We always tend to start with a beginning, and find our way towards an end. Photography is simply a lazy Artistic form of communication. Sit in front of a computer doing Photoshop every night, and you run the risk of living a predictable plotline.

When your mind is locked in a tired day-dream-suspension of animation, where it’s impossible to focus and you imagine that a bed would be your best friend, then it’s time to say “yes.” Time to take an iced bottle of Vodka from the freezer, step into your Docs, and stroll confidently into the night. No other reasonably sane option you see, just have faith and propel yourself “forward”. My destination of the night was the Amazee Booster party at the Technopark in Zurich.

Amazee is a grassroots social networking and project management website. It’s a Swiss Startup and was having a booster party to energize funding and interest into different projects. Since it was a good time to say yes, I decided to attend. I like stepping into a comfortable set of street clothes and heading out when I feel drained by life. Sometimes you recharge the batteries of the body by pushing it further – see what’s in the shadows and alleyways of the night. Try hard enough and you’re sure to find what you were looking for – Cape Noct mon ami. The day is a time to hide and play out the pleasantries of society, the night is the time to take place on the Greek stage and act out all the monologues which embarrass us in the sunshine.

I got to the Amazee party sometime after 8pm. I didn’t actually know anyone, which was one reason I said “Yes” and decided to attend. The only requirement was a bottle of vodka/run/champagne and some booster money. I figured it was a good time to step out of my comfort zone and see how my social skills really are when fumbling with my not-exactly-fluent German. I figured I would go there and push my German language abilities are far as they would go. Parties are the best place to test these things, between the alcohol and noise you really see if you have any actual conversation abilities, or if your German is just a bit better than gibberish, fit only for asking for directions in Berlin or ordering drinks at a bar. Naturally, the Amazee people were as you would expect at an internet startup party, cool and easy to talk with.

Of course, one has to be careful when discussing things like, “internet parties.” When you say, “I attended an internet party in Zurich” everyone thinks something like, “What, you went to a Craig’s List sex party last night?” So you say instead, “I was hanging out with hip Swiss StartUp people at a company party.”

Amazee had recently been contacted by lawyers for Amazon.com, who asserts that the name Amazee is too close to Amazon, and therefore Amazee must change its or face litigation. This is like McDonald’s getting pissed at Burger King for selling french fries. It’s like Apple computer suing iRiver just for making an awesome music player. It makes no sense. Those who ask those in the know, know that Amazee derives it’s name from the word Amazing, which accurately describes the Amazee grassroots web platform. At least Amazee an original idea. Where does Amazon.com come from? The name is taken from a fucking rain forest in South America. Amazon.com is one of the least original names of the DOT.COM boom era, slightly more original than Buy.com and far less clever than Yahoo. The actions by Amazon.com is nothing but imperialist bullshit and internet strong-arming. However, this internet stand-down is slightly relevant to the night, as there was a white board at the party and people were putting up possible alternative to Amazee. I was slightly intoxicated and a moment of false clarity manifested in my mind. There was a pen, so I went slightly mad coming up with new names:

Zaema, Kadamos, Gadakis, Zukama, Kamkan, Zakahann, SAMO (apologies to Jean-Michel), Freudzeud, Zukama, Adazoo, Edokann, Eomasan, Uberkann, Zanasan.

It’s such a shame I took up engineering instead of marketing and brand management as a career, but that’s why I publish a blog. The party was breaking up around 2am, and a few of us decided it was too early to go home. We headed towards Hive, the logical location if you’re coming from the Technopark and looking for a place to groove, but the beats were uninspiring and we took a cab to Helvetiaplatz and walked into Kanzlei, to seach out the Digital Shaman.

Part II: The Shaman’s Trance

Sony A900 – First Impressions Sony A900

8 Jul ’09A900A900, DSLR, review, Sony

My photography-digital-imaging-hobby-obsession has started peaking in the past few months. After putting up some profiles on Model Mayhem and Stylished I started getting requests for Time For CD (TFCD) shoots. So I figured: Hell, why not try out a Sony A900? Why the Sony A900? Well, I have a Minolta 7D, and all my lenses will work with the Sony DSLR line. Plus GraphicArt in Zurich rents the A900 as well as the A700 and all the Zeiss and G lenses. I started out renting the A900 and 24-70mm Zeiss zoom, and since picked up a body, a flash, and a Sigma 70-200 HSM zoom. What follows is a first impressions user review of the Sony A900, used in my apartment studio and around Winterthur and Zurich for location shooting.

Why the Sony A900?

Here’s my DSLR history. I started with a Canon D2000 from eBay, decided I like the DSLR concept, moved on to a Minolta 7D (I own the Minolta 7 film camera) and basically did nothing but shoot with the 7D and expand my lighting kit. Why? Because for basic shooting a 6 megapixel camera is all you need. If you have one then keep shooting with it, only camera freaks feel a constant need to upgrade. I saw little need to buy a new DSLR, in particular I saw no point unless the new camera was significantly better than my current one. I’ve been unimpressed with the results of the Nikon D300 files as compared with those from my 7D, so why consider the A700 (which sports a similar sensor). But after shooting with the Sony A900 for a weekend and seeing how much resolution and shadow texture (dynamic range) I could get with the thing, it was a natural reaction to look at my bank account and pick up a body of my own. So to get it straight, I bought the A900 because I love the colors and shadow detail.

The A900 in the Studio

My first experience with the A900 was shooting Alexandra in my studio. She found me through Model Mayhem and we worked out a few concepts. Here I used the A900, the 24-70mm F/2.8 ZA SSM (SAL2470Z), two Elinchrom BxRi studio strobes as well as a Kacey Beauty Reflector with a Sunpak 383 flash and sometimes the Lastolite Trilite reflector kit. The Zeiss-A900 combination really leaves little to be desired. The resolution and color produced with this combination are simply fantastic, and almost exceeded my expectations (on can never be satisfied with camera gear). One major problem with the Minolta 7D is focusing. I have a number of image with a model against a wall where the camera focused on the wall instead of the model. The resulting image would of course be slightly out of focus. This doesn’t matter much for web stuff, but affects the image quality and provides less image information for post-processing work. Compared to the 7D the Sony A900 has very accurate focusing, in particular when used with a SSM (Sony Super Sonic) lens. The focus point can be controlled using a joystick on the camera, and is very useful when composing. There’s no need to “focus and recompose” as you can just move the focus point where you want. The Sony A900 is the only camera to sport a function called Intelligent Preview. Basically with Intelligent Preview you take a preview image, you can view it on the camera LCD for a few seconds, and make any adjustments necessary. On other cameras you just take an image, so at first I thought “who cares?” The face is, for light checking and shooting with the popular Strobist techniques, Intelligent Preview is a very useful feature. It allows you to fire the strobes and check exposure very quickly without filling up your memory card with test images. And when the full RAW images are 35 Megabytes in size, the Intelligent Preview feature actually saves you a lot of time and storage space.

No camera can produce an image without light. For the lighting, the Elinchrom BxRi flashes were triggered via the Skyport radio system and worked flawlessly. I hooked the Skyport camera trigger up to the A900 using a hotshoe adapter from Gadget Infinity, which enables connection of a standard 1-pin flash to the Sony/Minolta flash mount. The power of the BxRi flashes can then be adjusted directly from the camera. This is ideal when you don’t have an assistant and have a number of lights set up. There’s nothing more annoying than standing around while the photographer fiddles around with lighting equipment.

And what is the result? Perfection mon ami, perfection. The tones and colors from the A900 are fantastic. I shot Alexandra in a few different sets against green, red, and grey backgrounds. This included everything from a yellow dress to posing with a Katana and a severed Barbie head necklace. During the pre-shoot brainstorming stage I remember I was thinking something like, “Wouldn’t it be great if she was hunting Barbie dolls in the jungle and then cut off their heads and made a necklace?”

The A900 on Location

I was contacted by Margarita via Stylished (she’s also on Model Mayhem). I wanted to do some photography in an urban environment, so we headed to the old industrial area of Winterthur and moved around the old Sulzer industrial-area-turned-hip-living-area. For this shoot I used the Sigma 70-200 HSM and a Sunpak 120J with a Kacey Beauty Reflector. I always use the TR-II battery pack with the 120J, as I can shoot almost all I like without worrying about battery life. I also had a Sunpak 383 with my Orbis ringflash adapter for added fill when needed. Margarita and I did a few different sets in the Sulzer parking garage and then outside. The A900 and Sigma combination was very nice. The Sigma includes an in-body ultra sonic motor, giving fast and accurate focusing. The 120J and Kacey dish is my favorite location lighting kit. Margarita posed against concrete walls, walked around the old industrial space, and contrasted quite well with the steel framework of the place.

Many people say you don’t need the 24 megapixels of the Sony A900, and this is probably true for me as well. However, more important then sensor count is the full-frame 35mm sized sensor. This means you’re able to use the bokeh qualities of your lenses the way they were designed to be used. In the Sulzer garage you have sunlight filtering through the roof and wall windows, I balanced this with my strobe and opened up the aperture of the Sigma lens to get fantastic background blur – an ideal portrait setup. I grabbed the super bokeh frames and then posed Margarita against the steel columns. I placed the Kacey dish just out of the frame to light Margarita’s upper torso and the steel column. Light fall-off from the Kacey dish was as fantastic as ever. Every time I use it I’m happy I bought it.

The Amazing A900 Files

I’ll be honest, I gag every time someone says something like, “I take real photos, I get it right IN-CAMERA and never use Photoshop.” The images I see in my head can rarely be captured in-camera. Many times they are, but like my paintings, the final image only starts with what I capture in-camera. The ability to manipulate your images in the post-processing stage depends heavily on how much information you’ve captured in-camera. So if you have a 24 megapixel image which isn’t focused properly, the shadows of the image will have poor definition and you’re limited in how well you’ll be able to manipulate those shadows, limiting your vision with Photoshop. The RAW .ARW image from the A900 are beautiful. You can shoot in normal or cRaw, the compressed .ARW format. The uncompressed RAW files are like 35 Mb, and the cRAW are like 24 Mb. Good money says you won’t see much difference between the two formats, and I’m shooting everything in cRAW at the moment. Now, I bought the A900 to get significantly better shadows texture and dynamic range than I was achieving with the 7D. Am I happy? Yes – fuck yes, I am ecstatically over-joyed with the shadow texture and post-processing ability of the A900 RAW files.

But beautiful files eat up a lot of CF card space when you’re like me and only have 1 and 2 gigabyte cards. But given how cheap these things are, I plan to be shooting with 4 or 8 gig cards with the A900. During shooting I copy the A900 files to my HyperDrive Space, then hook that up to my Mac Quicksilver 2002 G4 and copy the files using Adobe Lightroom. Basic adjustments are done in Lightroom, then choice images are exported to Adobe Photoshop to achieve the vision then fine-tuned again in Lightroom before final export to Flickr or for printing. I’ve been told you can just shoot JPEG with the A900, but I can’t figure out why. If you’re shooting JPEG with the A900 you probably don’t need the camera and should sell it to me at a good price so I can have a backup body.

So…

Is the Sony A900 a sweet camera? Yes. Should you buy one? Yes, if you want a fine camera which produces fantastic files, has a speedy focus, handles really well. I kept my Minolta 7D for a long time, and I plan to keep on shooting with it, but I also plan on shooting with the A900. The 24 megapixels are over-kill for many applications, but when you want the fine shadow textures and ability to mainuplate the light of an image, the Sony ARW files are heaven to work with in Photoshop and Lightroom.