A Picture's Worth

Panoramic Photos Of New York

2012-01-28T13:16:00.001-05:00

Ever since I created my first panoramic photo panoramic photo, it has inspired me to create more and more of them. I realized, I haven't actually shared many of these images on my blog, so here's my most recent one. The stormy weather yesterday made for some great photo opportunities. I love the way the cloud stretches across the city.

Macro photos of autumn leaves

2011-10-30T23:15:00.000-04:00

Fall is a beautiful time of year. The leaves start to change colors, there's a crisp, freshness to the air, and it's just nice to cool down after a hot summer. I grew up in Massachusetts, and I've always loved the changing colors of the leaves on the trees come autumn. As a kid, we would spend hours raking the leaves into giant piles and then go jumping into the leaves.

Now as an adult, I notice more detail in the leaves. I've noticed how as the leaves start to change color, they don't change all at once to solid yellow, orange or red. They colors change at different rates, and may change only on certain parts of the leaves.

As a photographer, I've found great inspiration in this natural phenomenon. There are so many naturally occurring patterns and colors formed on the leaves that I have chosen to explore with a macro lens, so you can see in detail how intricate and beautiful nature really is at this time of year. I love the structure of the vein system coursing through the leaves. Some of the photos even look like maps or aerial photographs of some rural landscape I love the beauty in the decay. I love the fragility of the leaves themselves. I love how they have so many bumps and imperfections that you wouldn't otherwise notice unless you took the time to stop and really look. I was surprised to find things that looked like hair growing on some of the leaves. I also was able to see some really small spider webs that were built on a couple of the leaves.

Leaves - Images by Shawn Lynch

The leaves you will see here were gathered one day last week at Central Park. By the time I had the chance to photograph them, they had dried up a good deal and become pretty stiff, which did have the benefit of making the leaves more stiff so they weren't flopping over as I was trying to photograph them. Next year, I will have to try this again with leaves that are freshly collected to see if there is a difference in how they look compared to the drier leaves of this year. I'm sure there will be, and I imagine it's a bit like food photography where you want to take the pictures right away when the food is freshly prepared.

Photo of a ghost?

2011-10-30T15:36:00.000-04:00

Just in time for Halloween, I created this photo at work the other day and it appears I have photographed a ghost. Anybody know how I did it?

The Palms in Long Island City

2011-08-21T22:27:00.002-04:00

Wow, I'm having so much fun lately working on personal photography projects. Just yesterday I traveled over to Long Island City for some photos at this temporary summer party thing. The Palms was set on Jackson Avenue where a Bank of America used to be. Once you step into the transformed parking lot, it's like being transported to another time and place - namely 1950's Palm Beach.

There are some modern touches with food trucks selling lobster rolls, the so-called dumpster pools (dumpsters converted into small swimming pools), DJs, and more. A lot of people came dressed in period appropriate swim wear.

Anyway, have a look at the photos and if you get the chance, you should head over before The Palms closes up shop after Labor Day weekend.

"
The Palms - Long Island City - Images by Shawn Lynch

Camera Shy Portraits

2011-08-18T18:55:00.004-04:00

Just last night I was waiting in line for dinner and chatting with some fellow soon to be diners. We had spent some time talking about our various occupations, what they are like, some of the fun stuff and the challenges. I had my iphone with me and was able to show a couple of my recent street portraits. I also talked about how that day I ran into to some camera-shy subjects.

This is often a challenge I run into, and if you want to be a good photographer, you ABSOLUTELY MUST find a way to work around it and get the photos you want to or need to create. I said, sometimes you have to make a portrait without exactly making it a portrait of the persons face. In return I was asked how to do that. In Zen Buddhism, some lessons are taught through the use of koans. A koan is a story or question where the meaning or answer is not found through rational thought. And so I answered the question with a question.

"Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand clapping?"

It's fairly obvious what a portrait with a face in it will look like and how you go about creating one, but how do you create one without having the face? My explanation was that you have to dig deep into your creativity and pull out something a little different. There are ways you can hide or obscure a persons face so they feel more at ease because it's not really a picture of them. You can silhouette them. You can even shoot through something that is translucent where it shows maybe an outline of the subject. Maybe you take detail photos of the various parts of the person. A close up of their mouth, or beard or some defining detail.

This is where the fun in photography lies. Creativity. I don't want to just capture what lies before me - the same thing that everyone else sees. I strive to make a better, more thoughtful image. Something that others will say, wow, I never would have thought to do that.

Williamsburg, NY - Street Portraits

2011-08-16T23:17:00.003-04:00

After heading to the Bedford Cheese Shop for some photos and a small sample of some really delicious feta cheese, I went back out to the street to try to make more Street Portraits.

The first person I approached was this girl. She was all tuned into her iPod, sipping some ice coffee while having a smoke and couldn't care less if I were taking her photo or not. I did of course ask her. When I go out looking for street portraits, I'm usually looking for interesting people with an interesting background and great light. Those are not 3 things that always line up so easily, but when they do it is quite serendipitous and magical. Since she wasn't really paying much attention to me, I didn't really get her to pose, but I just used the environment and her comfort level with me taking photos to the best of my advantage.

Next, I met this guy. I stopped him while he was on his way to grab some food. I really appreciate it when people give you even just a few moments of their day when they are on their way to do something else like eat. I know when I get hungry sometimes, you're best to stay outta my way, haha.

I loved the scene for this next photo. The sun was poking through the tree behind me and causing a cool shadow on the building and doorway in the background. Then I added a little flash from the side to give the photo that extra little pop.

Finally I ended my street shoot with this guy. I liked the bike but what really called out to me at first were the yellow socks! He told me the Wall Street Journal did a story with him in it recently about his bike and his fashion that he was going to e-mail me. It sounds pretty interesting and I look forward to reading it.

All in all it was another successful and fun day creating photos for myself. Oh and on top of that, even before I started shooting today, I was photographed as part of this Portrait of the Artist as New Yorker tumblr blog. I'm not sure what the main goal was, but it was still interesting to sit for someone else and have the camera pointed in my direction for once! I could probably do a third blog on that. Maybe later...it's getting late.

Bedford Cheese Shop

2011-08-16T22:56:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to create more photos worthy of putting in my portfolio so today after work I headed to Williamsburg to see who or what I might come across. Since I'm familiar with the area, I had a few places I wanted to check out. The first one was the Bedford Cheese Shop on Bedford Avenue. It's a quaint little shop that sells meats, eggs, and some other grocery items, not just cheese as the name might suggest.

Walking through the door you are welcomed with the pleasant smell of all the fresh cheeses. It's a great shop with a lot of visual impact. After making some photos they even let me try some delicious Australian Feta cheese.

The staff were mainly pretty shy, so I focused more on their goods. But I did get one employee to agree to let me create some portraits. Here's a look at what I created.

"
Bedford Cheese Shop - Images by Shawn Lynch

Street Portraits - New York City Photographer

2011-07-31T13:28:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I took a couple hours to roam the streets of the West Village in search of some interesting characters to make some fresh portraits for my website and portfolio. It was so much fun meeting the people, sharing some stories and making a few nice portraits along the way. I even got to meet two of the original cast members from Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk! Pretty cool.

Here are a few of my favorites. Or click to see the whole gallery of Street Portraits.

On the technical side, these images were all made with my favorite lens. It's my 50mm f/1.8.

The High Line - New York City Photography

2011-07-27T23:11:00.014-04:00

Today I went for a walk along the High Line with my camera chasing the good light as the sun went down. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the walk.

I love all the bird's eye view perspectives the High Line provides you.

My favorite shot of the day though, might be this one with the slow shutter and the cab turning the corner.

5 Pointz - Long Island City - LIC

2011-06-07T20:42:00.002-04:00

The other day I had the opportunity to borrow a 100-400 mm lens from my boss. I wanted to play around with the lens so I could see what to expect from it for an upcoming personal project we are going to be shooting together. I ended up bringing it over to the 5 Pointz building over in Long Island City. I grabbed a few quick photos with it before heading over to the waterfront to shoot a couple images that more closely resemble what I'm looking to achieve with the personal project. Anyway, here are a few outtakes. I love the color in both the graffiti and the outfits.

LICAO Highlights

2011-05-23T18:45:00.007-04:00

The week is finally over and I'm just now getting around to writing a little something about the first art show I've ever been involved in. What an amazing experience it was. Long Island City has a wonderful community of artists and they all really pulled together to make this festival happen.

This first image came from the night of the installation. I stopped by my friend, Jesse Winter's Ten10 Studios to see what was happening there as the doors were open and people were hanging out. On the upper level, I found these large sculptures made from recycled bags by Beth Williams on display. They had a lot of detail and character to them. People really seemed to enjoy them.

The first day of the arts fest, I popped into Modern Spaces to make sure the pictures we had hung hadn't fallen down and to see what the traffic was like in the venue. Everything was going smooth, so I left there to go check out the goings-on at the Krypton Neon. Kenny Greenberg, the neon artist, wasn't working on anything at that moment, so I just grabbed a few shots of some of the more interesting pieces in the workshop.

Monday surprisingly didn't have anything scheduled and since it was a long work day for me, I didn't head over to check anything out. The next big thing I did was Wednesday when I was invited to display some more photos at a pop-up art show in a space called Art-O-Mat put on by Kristy Schopper of the SPACE.

Friday, a friend came over to see my photos, so we took a look at those, then chatted for a bit before she had to head back to the city. Friday night I went back to Ten10 Studios to see Jesse Winter's Edible Arts: LIC. His photos were fantastic. He photographed some of the areas chefs in interesting poses with some of their different utensils. He coupled each shot with a photograph of one of the dishes that they make at the restaurant. The dishes truly looked mouth watering and many people, myself included, commented on the ones they wanted to eat.

Saturday rolled around and I brought another friend over to see more of my work. We then grabbed a beer and some food at Lounge 47. After that I headed over to LIC Market to hear some farmers talk about the LIC CSA (Long Island City Community Supported Agriculture) program. For me, this may have been the highlight of the show. The program sounds amazing. Fresh veggies delivered once a week. Helping support a sustainable organic local farm. I can't wait to join!

Long Island City Arts Open - installing artwork

2011-05-14T12:25:00.003-04:00

Yesterday my boss and I spent a few hours down at Modern Spaces hanging our artwork for this weeks Long Island City Arts Open festival. Our artwork will be on display from Now until May 22nd. If you are in the area come on by and check out the photos. One of them we had printed 6 feet long!

Here are a couple photos we took of each other hanging the artwork and some information about the photographs.

I definitely want to take a moment to thank Modern Spaces for allowing us to use their office to display our artwork. I also should take time to thank Karen Dimit, who was my initial contact with the art show, and council member Jimmy Van Bramer, who put me in touch with Karen. Let me not forget, my boss, Laurie, for trusting and supporting me when I had this crazy idea to get us involved in an art show. There are plenty of other people to thank, but way too many to list. But anyone who helped support the show by advertising, donating, or helping with organization deserves a huge THANK YOU!

Also, if you can't make it down to the show, you can always take a peek at the newly designed Bernstein Associates website. There are lots of cool photos and we hope to have the ability to sell prints directly through the site very soon!

Photo on an album cover!

2011-04-11T18:52:00.012-04:00

So a while back, I invited a friend over to model for some photos. I had no idea that they would end up coming out so great that she would want to use one as the artwork for her new single, Who's Gonna Color in the Middle? (<-- Click to buy it on iTunes!)

Melanie, who is a singer and songwriter, agreed to come over and model for me so I could practice some lighting techniques as well as kick the tires on my new apartment and see how much space I really had. Small spaces can be really hard to work in, so it was nice to finally be living in a large apartment. Anyway, for more on how the shoot went, you can read the original post

Melanie just this past week released the single. My friend Lisa George was going to do me a favor and let me borrow her laptop so I could use Photoshop to lay out the album title and Melanie's name. I don't currently have a copy of Photoshop (I have Aperture), so it wasn't easy to design the artwork as I wanted. I just didn't have all the tools I would have liked. Lisa, who is an incredible graphic designer, ended up actually taking on the task of designing the artwork for me though and WOW did she ever do an amazing job. Lisa doesn't currently have a website for her freelance graphic design work, but once she gets that up, I'll post the link. If anyone needs any design work, you can always contact me and I'd be happy to pass along her info!

Here is the final cover Lisa created:

I love how Lisa did Melanie's name. She used a nice and elegant font. She had the colors changing in the middle of the words, and continued the orange from the end of "Melanie" and continued it into "Edwards." I also like the black bar she added to make the name kind of pop out a little more. Absolutely fantastic work!

Then for the song title Lisa created her own font for the title of the song. The final touch was adding the gradient color slash.

And to give you an idea, here's the one I came up with that pales in comparison:

It was weird how this all came together. Melanie brought over some apples, which I decided to use as a prop. I had never heard her song at this point and had no idea that there was a line in the song about apples. She didn't mention it either. I'm not sure if she realized the potential at the time, but I certainly didn't.

At the last minute, the photo was switched from the one I originally selected to one we agreed was a better fit for the artwork as it more clearly showed Melanie's face and the apple showed more of it's red skin. The original photo doesn't really show the best side of the apple, as it was more yellow and it's practically upside down. The red of the apple in the newly chosen photo is more much pleasing.

I encourage you to go and buy the song. A ton of blood, sweat and tears went into making this song. Melanie also had the help of two amazing musicians from the band Alcoholic Faith Mission. Make sure to check them out as well. And don't forget to buy some new music while you're at it!

Long Island City - Arts Open Festival

2011-03-28T19:11:00.003-04:00

Part of being a photographer is getting your work seen by other people, so today I was extremely excited to find out that my panoramic photo of Long Island City is going to be on display for a week (May 14-22, 2011) during the first annual Long Island City Arts Open festival.

This will be my first photo ever to be included as part of an art exhibit. I'm hoping they will allow us to sell prints during the show.

I'm still waiting to find out some details, but we may have this thing printed even larger than the 36" photo that I currently have printed! I can't wait to see what that would look like. The one I have now is amazing.

Click for more information on the Long Island City Arts Open Festival

Contest Time - Please Vote

2011-03-25T12:05:00.003-04:00

Remember this photo?

Well, now I have it entered into PDN's Faces Photo Contest. It's doing quite well in the People's Choice section, currently it's ranked #18 out of 1029 photos entered. If you have 30 seconds to spare, please click over to the Contest page and cast your vote. They will send you a confirmation e-mail with a link. You must click the link which will bring you back to the VOTE NOW page. This is VERY IMPORTANT, you have to RE-CLICK on VOTE NOW in order to have the vote count!

So please, go vote. And for everyone who does or already has, a very big thank you!

Learning to Make Panoramic Photos

2011-02-23T19:34:00.005-05:00

So there's a bit of a learning curve to this panoramic photo thing. File size can be HUUUUUUGE (or small, if like me, you're an idiot and forgot to check the size you're exporting the photos from Aperture - in my case 600 pixels and 72 dpi) which will slow down your computer dramatically.

Once I had things figured out, I made the files a reasonable size to work with. I'm thinking next time I create a panoramic photo though, I'll change my workflow a bit to first tone and correct the individual images, then export the processed photos, then create the panoramic. If you try to create the panoramic first, then work on the huge file, it takes too long.

Next time I may also try doing an HDR photograph. This photo is not HDR. It was simply toned (color corrected, contrast adjusted, saturation boosted a little, etc.) HDR for anyone who doesn't know stands for High Dynamic Range. An HDR photo takes multiple photos of the same thing at different exposures and uses the best parts of each photo to create a new image with more range of color in the highlights and shadows.

Anyway, here's a section of the really long panoramic photo of the East side of Manhattan. This section shows mostly Midtown Manhattan. I love the detail. You can see so much. I cropped this photo to three feet by one foot so it will fit nicely in a frame I bought a while back. I can't wait to get it hung on my wall!

Panoramic Views of Manhattan

2011-02-19T14:02:00.008-05:00

UPDATE: I've figured out how to create much larger files and I've re-posted the images.

This week I was on a few different rooftops around my neighborhood in Long Island City, NY. I took a few spare moments to create these amazing panoramic views. I used some software to stitch the pictures together. One of the panoramic photos was done handheld and the other was photographed on a tripod. You can barely notice any difference in the quality. See if you can tell which was which. Leave your guesses in the comment section below.

This first photo is a much longer panoramic view of the Manhattan Skyline seen from a rooftop 20 stories up on the Long Island City waterfront. You can see many of the famous Manhattan architecture. The Empire State building, Chrystler Building, United Nations Secretariat Building, the Queensboro Bridge, and part of the East River are all visible in this photo.

The second photo, also taken in Long Island City, was taken from 24 stories up. You get a nice view of the Citi Building, the Queensboro Bridge, and the Manhattan skyline is way in the back.

I had a lot of fun making these. I can't wait to get some prints made and hung on my walls. I'm sure I'll be posting more of these in the future. If anyone would like to purchase a photo, please contact me directly and we can arrange for something. Thanks.

New Year's Resolutions - 2011

2011-01-08T11:21:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again to set some goals and hopefully check a few of them off the list. I just went back to look at my resolutions from last year. Either I didn't make any or I just didn't write about them on my blog. But I did find the ones I set in 2009.

2009 resolutions included:

* Getting back into photojournalism (haven't really done that yet)
* Do more personal projects (check)
* Upgrade equipment (I got a new laptop and bought some software)
* Increase income by 30% (check)

So what will it be for 2011? In 2011, I really see a lot of potential. My career is going great. I am still at Bernstein Associates photographing construction and architecture all around the city. If things keep going as great as they have been, I should be able to easily set and achieve some goals. So here's the list:

* Redesign my website, probably to take better advantage of my Photoshelter account. Right now I realize my website is a little jumbled and a touch all over the place. I need to make it more cohesive and less confusing.

* I also want to enable print sales through my website this year, which should be easy with Photoshelter.

* Again, I'd like to increase my income. This year I'm going to aim for a smaller percentage because the economy is still down and the more I make the harder it becomes to increase my income by such a high percentage. This year I will aim for 10-15% increase.

* I want to put in motion quite a few changes at my job. I already have had a meeting with the bosses about this and they've pretty much given me the green light to run with some of my ideas. Now it's just taking charge and finding time to coordinate certain things with them.

* Can't believe I'm adding this one, but I want to get in better shape. Not that I'm lazy and fat. This is more to save myself from killing my back and looking like Mr. Burns (from the Simpsons) when I get older.

* Focus on marketing myself and getting more freelance work and new clients.

* Work on a new portfolio.

I think that's a good start! I have some other personal goals, but I want to keep this about the photography. Anyway, here's to a great 2011. Cheers!

Levi's Photo Workshop - New York City

2010-11-21T17:30:00.012-05:00

Holy Crap, I died and went to photo heaven. **Pinch** Owww, no wait, I felt that. I'm still alive, I just stumbled into Levi's Photo Workshop located at 18 Wooster St. in New York City. The workshop has been up and running since October 7th and goes through December 18th and if you're a photographer and in New York this is a MUST DO before it's over. I know I'm late in getting there myself, and I only popped in for a short while today, but I'm hoping to make it back real soon!

The workshop has a large space with everything - and I mean everything - you need to do a complete photo shoot. Lights, cameras, laptops, printers, hell you can even print an image on a T-shirt with a special printer they have there. Just look at the "rental gear" on the wall here. I put rental in quotes because all the equipment there is yours to try out by putting down a $100 deposit. As long as you don't go breakin' nothing you get it back when you return the gear!

Here's the T-shirt printing machine I mentioned above. I wonder how much one of those costs. I kinda want one. Hey isn't Christmas right around the corner, Santa?

I forgot to mention the make up station for fixing hair, make up, etc.

There were people there photographing friends, models, dancers, etc. Some were at the computers working on images. Others were in line to print photos for free.

Here's the backdrop I'm thinking of using if I get the opportunity to go back and make some photographs. I have a friend in mind who does ballet and I think this could be the perfect backdrop for some interesting images. I like the gritty look of this torn wallpaper. It's got this great feminine look to it, but has an edgy feel in the forgotten, abused, and mistreated look of the tears.

Before I left, I stopped and sat at the photo booth for a couple of fun photos of myself. I don't usually get many pictures of myself, so I figured I should take advantage.

Long Island City Portrait Photography

2010-11-20T20:33:00.016-05:00

Last night a friend and really talented musician, Melanie Edwards, stopped by my new apartment to check out the space, drink some wine and sit for a few portraits. It was a great night. We started off with a bottle of white wine and just sat, chatted and caught up. She had been on tour for the last 6 months promoting her new album, Between the Binary, and is now back in the city to relax a bit and get back to a little bit of normal life.

As we were polishing off the first bottle, I mentioned, "We better start taking some photos, or I'm going to be to drunk to make any soon!" So with that, we began. My new place is colorfully decorated with one lime green wall and another wall that is striped with thick gray and white vertical stripes.

Here are some of my favorites. I only used one strobe for each of these photos. I set up my large softbox because I don't often get to use it since it is so large and kind of a pain to set up. It's a great light though and gives a beautiful quality. I did occasionally vary the shutter speed to let in more or less ambient light at times.

Melanie has a great face with striking features. It was easy to make her look great. Half the work was already done for me by her just showing up. She also showed up with this awesome white violin. It was an electric violin and made by Fender.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of the lime green paint, so eventually it's probably going to be painted over. Before we started, I had the idea that I might convert some of the images to black and white. Here's the photo above converted. Also, I should note, I had to do a lot of touch ups on the photos taken on the green wall because there are so many light switches that I had to remove to make the images look cleaner.

For this next photo, I wanted to use this hanging light as an element in the photo. I kind of imagined something slightly different, but I still like this one and maybe I'll save the idea for another shoot. I wasn't able to pull off the photo I was envisioning because I would have needed a much smaller and more controlled light source than the softbox.

After creating a bunch of photos on the green wall, I rearranged some furniture and had her sit on the couch with the striped wall in the background.

I also used the couch as a backdrop which worked perfectly with her hair and skin complexion. I love the mostly monochromatic feel of this image with just the pop of red from her lipstick.

Melanie also brought some fruit over to munch on. We ended up using one of the apples she brought as a prop. We tried tapping into some of the symbolism and history of the apple for a few of the photos. We were thinking Eve in the garden, William Tell, and I think this photo I asked her to channel a little bit of Desperate Housewives.

I can't tell which of the following three photos here I like best. I like each one for different reasons. The first one, it's the location of the apple. In the second one, I like the the way her hand mimics the V shape of her neckline. And in the last, I like that the apple is perfectly inverted.

About halfway through the shoot it was time for a wardrobe change. I this time used the door at the back of my apartment that leads out to the deck. I actually wanted to take some photos on the deck, but it's starting to get cold out and this top is definitely not all that warm.

I leave off with this final photo. She looks pretty fierce in this pose straddling the barstool.

Melanie was an awesome subject. She never got bored and was able to keep her energy throughout the entire photo shoot. Once we finished shooting, we sat down and uploaded the photos to my laptop. We cracked open bottle of wine #2 and reviewed the images while listening to some music. I wish I had more subjects like her to photograph more often.

Long Island City Photography

2010-11-13T16:49:00.002-05:00

If you've happened to hang out with me recently you've probably heard me going on and on about Long Island City. I just moved there from the Upper East Side and am super excited about the move. This place is great. It's an up and coming neighborhood that's already well on it's way to becoming the next hot neighborhood in New York. To me, I've always seen it as the next Williamsburg, but I don't have much experience or knowledge of New York's history to compare it to. I really have only known New York for the past two and a half years.

I've been dying to get out and take some photos with my camera ever since I moved, but obviously with a move there are a ton of things to take care of and set up, so I didn't have the chance to until earlier this week when I finished work a little early and noticed the amazing light outside. This was the perfect chance to get out and shoot for myself once again, so I grabbed my camera, slung it around my neck, stuffed my pocket with memory cards, and headed out to explore the light and the city.

One of the first things I photographed was this little spot of sidewalk. I liked how the little pebbles were casting such long shadows. It's kind of metaphorical how something so small can create a much larger shadow.

For this little photowalk, I focused mainly on Jackson Ave. That is where the sun was setting and it's also pretty much the nearest main road. On Jackson Ave you'll find a building called Vere 26. I got a lot of different views of this building as the setting sunlight changed the way it looked quite dramatically.

The Citibank Building is pretty much the only sky scraper nearby until you walk over to the waterfront where they've built a lot of luxury high-rise buildings and new ones are still being built. I took this shot from the base of the building. The lack of tall buildings means we get a lot of great light down at street level during sunrise and sunset, which is great for creating photographs.

I also was looking at the subway and the way the light reflects off the cars. When it hits it at different angles, the color changes. So the orange glow of the setting sun would illuminate some parts of the car, but most of the other parts were colored by a more natural white/blue sunlight that was reflecting from all around.

When I take the 7 train into LIC, I always notice there's this graffiti covered building, and I finally found where it is located, so I went down there for a few photos. I'm going to have to go back there again sometime to make some better images (I'm acknowledging these ones are a little generic, haha!).

Finally, we have a view of the sunset. Next time I'll probably focus on Vernon Blvd (which to me is like the Bedford Ave of LIC) and the waterfront. Stay tuned for more photos and updates on this up and coming neighborhood!

Wireless monitor for DSLR

2010-09-01T19:59:00.003-04:00

I recently discovered Robert Benson's blog and it seems he is a bit more of a gear freak than me. He's even gone on to create his own wireless monitor which shows a feed from your DSLR camera. This seems like a cool tool and I'd like to get my hands on one, but it does seem a little bit limited in usage.

Below is a video of the monitor in use. It's a little bit Blair Witch-y in that there wasn't a lot of thought put into the video. It's really just Benson showing off the capability of the monitor and that it actually works. He makes the monitor in both a 7" and 10" size. To read about it go to: www.robertbenson.com/blog

My main issue with the monitor are mostly based on current camera body limitations. As far as I know, all DSLR cameras have to shut off live view while using the camera's Auto Focus operation. So the ability to remotely focus using just the monitor is limited.

The monitor also doesn't have a great amount of range - only about 30-40 feet according to Benson.

On the other hand, it does allow you to do basic composition adjustments remotely. On some photo shoots, the photographer is not the only one with input on the composition of photo, there may be an art director or editor as well. The monitor will give them (for better or worse) the ability to see what the photographer is doing as he does it.

The transmitter uses a typical 9 volt battery and the monitor has a rechargeable batter that holds about 2.5 hours worth of juice. The receiver inside the device is powered by the same rechargeable battery as the monitor itself.

Until I get my hands on the device I will not actually be able to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, but it is a cool idea and I could see some practical applications for it in the style of photography I do.

Bridgehampton Polo Club - Black Watch v Certified

2010-08-29T14:36:00.004-04:00

I went back out to Bridgehampton for the final week of the Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge. I toted the camera once again. This time, I also brought Rigsby, dressed in his polo shirt! Everyone loved him, he was pretty much the star of the show.

This week, I got there early, so I actually got to watch quite a bit of the match this time. But I also made time to talk with someone who I had me the week before and also to meet some new people.

Here's a short slideshow of the day. I got some pictures of Dwayne Wade from the NBA's Miami Heat. He took a ride around the polo grounds before the match with Jason Binn, a Boston University alumni and the CEO and founder of Niche Media.

The polo action was pretty fun to shoot. I didn't realize last week how much the mallets bend as they are being whipped around to hit the ball. I caught a few good pictures that demonstrate that. Below is the slideshow.

Bridgehampton polo wk6 - Images by Shawn Lynch

Link to week 4 at [Bridgehampton Polo Club - Circa v Caballeros]

Bridgehampton Polo Club - Circa v Caballeros

2010-08-16T22:49:00.003-04:00

I got an e-mail today looking for some Bridgehampton Polo club photos, and since I've been really busy, here they are with the most minimal blog posting. I will update it as I have time. Not to sound too busy or too cool or anything, it's just the girlfriend's mother is in town and so we are trying to entertain her. So here are the photos. These are the untoned pictures. I added some to facebook the other day which were toned, and I'll be posting those soon.

Bridgehampton polo club - Images by Shawn Lynch

Pick Your Poison - Dry Ice & Food Coloring

2010-07-31T19:32:00.004-04:00

Last week I got a shipment of Omaha Steaks, which come packed with dry ice to keep everything cold. I decided it might be fun to play with the dry ice and do a little photo shoot. It was fun and the gas makes some pretty cool shapes as it rises up out of the glass. When I edited the photos down, I tried to look for ones with unique and interesting shapes. I kind of analyzed them like handwriting. Each photo had it's own unique signature. Here are a few of my favorites in a slideshow.

Dry Ice - Images by Shawn Lynch

To create the photos, I used one strobe with a 20 degree grid placed on a lightstand behind the glass. I spread a black backdrop underneath. My camera was set to ISO 100 and with the small aperture, even if I didn't fill the whole shot with the backdrop, I was overpowering the ambient light enough to make everything else appear black. It was fun to shoot. I felt almost like a little kid doing some science experiment. I remembered after the fact that I have this cool skull shaped jar that would have been perfect to use as a container. I guess we'll have to order more steak!

If you'd like to try something like this, I have a few tips. The first being safety. Dry ice is so cold, that it can cause the cells in your skin to freeze causing a sensation very similar to a burn, so either wear some sort of gloves or tongs and make sure it doesn't come into contact with your skin for very long. Second, you will get a better, more volatile reaction when you put the dry ice in hot water as opposed to cold water. The gas will bubble up more and give you better results. I kept on changing the water every few minutes to keep the gas bubbling up nicely. And that's pretty much it. Good luck.

Photos from the dog park

2010-07-03T23:13:00.011-04:00

Every once in a while you have to go out and take some photos for yourself. Today was a day like that. The weather was gorgeous, as it has been for the past week or so. Every night when I bring my dog over to the Carl Schurz dog run, I notice the way the setting sun filters between the buildings and then through the leaves of the trees.

I had been noticing, even studying the way the light poured into the park for days. Every night I would look at the clock on my phone to see what was the best time to come and capture the perfect lighting.

So when I arrived at the park, I started off at the small dog park, which only allows dogs under 25 lbs., as it had the better lighting for the time. The lighting there is a bit trickier because it comes through in spots which are difficult to deal with when the sun is higher, and when the sun gets lower, the park is all in shade which becomes boring. I like this one of the boy wandering through the dogs because of the highlights on his shirt, face, and legs.

The dog park is a great little community and it's nice to find out about how many rescued dogs there are. This next photo is a greyhound who was rescued once he was retired from racing. The muzzle protects other dogs because he has been so trained to chase after small, quick moving animals. The sunlight coming in behind him though is the reason I went to the park! It's starting to warm as the sun dips lower in the sky. As it does so, the leaves of the trees start to glow and the dirt in the park that gets kicked up becomes back lit and also glows.

The next photo is fairly similar to the greyhound photo, but for some reason I'm drawn to the dog's posture. Maybe it's because the dog kind of reminds me of my first dog, Holly. Again, notice that great lighting streaming in from behind! Dogs that have black furn can be hard to photograph because you tend to loose detail, but if you get the lighting right, you should have no problems.

As I continued photographing in the park, I really pushed the lighting. These next two show people walking with their dogs. I was more exposed for the highlights, letting everything else go to deep shadow. This gives the photos a very dramatic look.

The lighting inched it's way across the park as the time passed and the sun set lower in the sky. I noticed these two little girls playing on the periphery. The light was just catching the face of the girl on the right. I noticed one of the owners was playing fetch with his dog, so the dog was passing in front of the girls. I did my best to use the girls and dog as two separate elements to the photo to come up with something different.

This last photo reflects what I'd been seeing in my mind over the previous days at the park without the camera. I would see the dust flying and knew it could provide an exciting element to the photos. The dogs weren't running around too much, so I didn't make it play as big of a role as I'd imagined, but it's still nice to show so you can see what I was thinking while taking the pictures.

It was a great exercise and a nice release to go out and photograph something purely for myself for once. I knew I'd get some great pictures of my dog, Rigsby, which would be fun to share with the family. I also take every situation I photograph as a learning experience and I'm sure I learned a few small lessons here. It was also good practice to familiarizing myself more with the Aperture 3 software I've been using recently for different aspects of my photography - both professional and personal.

Architecture in New York

2010-07-03T22:53:00.005-04:00

Over the past few days I have been working on a new portfolio for my website that showcases more of my architectural photography. If you haven't noticed it out please go and check it out. I will be updating this gallery with more work soon. I'm planning on an overhaul to the whole site, but baby steps first! Anyway, I hope you'll take a look and leave me some feedback. Let me know if there's a photo or two in there that need to go! Here's the link to my new Architectural Photography.

Cake Boss Season 3 Premier Party Photos

2010-05-31T17:36:00.018-04:00

So I posted a couple of mini blogs last week about something I had photographed showing a rooftop portrait of me on location and then a couple of the awesome views from the venue. Today, I am able to fully divulge what it was I had the privilege of photographing, which was the premier party for Season 3 of TLC's show, Cake Boss.

My friend Richard, who works on the show, called me about a month in advance to see if I was available to photograph an event. At that point, the details were very vague as to what I was shooting, but I happened to be available so I said I was in. All I knew was he was looking for something similar to what I had done when I photographed the Make Me A Supermodel Season 2 wrap party. Since he didn't give me much info, I started thinking of ways to expand upon what I had previously done, so I could make it bigger and better. After a few more phone calls/e-mails, he made it clear he was looking for almost exactly the same thing as before.

Fortunately for this assignment, I had more space to set up lights. Before, I was crammed in a space about the size of a hallway. This time I had a whole room inside the penthouse of the Cooper Square Hotel.

I grabbed a few of the obligatory celebrity photos including Buddy Valastro and his wife Lisa, as well as some crew members. Everyone was a pleasure to work with and they were all very grateful to be at the party, which was very refreshing. Aside from producing the red carpet photos, I did expanded upon what I was asked to do by getting some candid party photos.

Here are two of my favorite photos from the evening. The sunset made a perfect setting for the pictures. And of course, Buddy and the ladies of his life are always fun to watch!

I made sure to get a quick photo of the women by themselves. I tried to get something fun, so I simply asked them to blow me a kiss.

One of the first couples to step in front of my lens actually was Buddy's mother, Mary. She was so sweet. She came up to me and introduced herself with a lot of genuine enthusiasm, and on her way out of the party later in the evening, she gave me a kiss on the cheek goodbye. Her and her husband were adorable and she wasn't camera shy at all!

When the party began, we had a preview of episode 1 of season 3. I grabbed some nice photos of Buddy and company gathered around the tv to watch. There were some funny reactions to the tv, but I think the best was Lisa leaning her head on her husband's shoulder. It was really cute.

And at the end of the airing, I grabbed a great picture of Buddy celebrating how great the show has turned out to be.

Aside from myself taking pictures and the airing of episode one, there was a DJ playing music in the 3rd room of the penthouse. His name was Matt, but I didn't get a business card or anything to link to him unfortunately. He did a pretty good job and kept the vinyl records spinning and people dancing all night.

Last but not least, a few more photos...

An outtake from a bath tub photo, careful not to reveal any identities!

I love this one, the way her eyes are closed, the posture of her head and the smile.

And of course, this one isn't so bad either. I handed the camera off to someone to snap a few of myself posing on the red carpet. Why not?

Million dollar views

2010-05-29T14:41:00.006-04:00

I wanted to share a few more of the views from the still secret location I was photo- graphing at the other night. Don't fret too much, I will be able to share all the details early next week.

These photographs are outtakes from the party, just showing how great of a backdrop we had for the evening. The first one is a picture of the setting sun being reflected in the glass of the building giving the illusion of a double sunset.

The next one was a photo of the New York skyline. It's slightly tilted, but I didn't have my tripod (I thought about bringing it, but knew I could do without). I like the effect. You can also see the streaks of car lights driving down the street during the long exposure.

I'm working on a panoramic of stitched together photos to show about a 115 degree view from the roof top terrace. That will hopefully be published soon. Enjoy these photos for now until I can get up everything else!

Rooftop Portrait

2010-05-24T23:27:00.003-04:00

I had an assignment last night to take some pictures at a party. I can't release the details or photos yet, but once I get clearance, you'll see what I got to do. Here's an out take from the gig though. It's a portrait I had one of my friend's who was there take of myself with the awesome backdrop we had!

5 Useful Tips on Apple 3 from today's CreativeLive session

2010-05-17T19:11:00.005-04:00

When I first heard about CreativeLive.com, I was really excited for the learning opportunities afforded. As a professional I'm always trying to stay ahead of the technology and expand my skill set. Anyway, if you are able to catch the classes while they are being broadcast live, they are free to watch. Otherwise, you can download a class for a nominal fee (I think it's $79 or $39 if you buy while class is still in session). The first one I took a look at was Vincent LaForet speaking about HD DSLR cameras. As of right now though, I don't own one of those cameras, so I didn't really get much out of that class (truth be told I was only half watching because of that and I didn't watch the whole program either).

Last night I was able to catch a session with Scott Bourne about Apple's recently released Aperture 3 software for professional photographers . I recently purchased this software because of the video editing capabilities which I needed for a specific project I was hired for.

Here are 5 of the most useful tips I gained from last night.

1. If you hold "Shift" while making Adjustments in the HUD and the HUD will disappear. This allows you to see the whole image while making image adjustments so you don't miss anything, like a corner of the image that is blowing out when you push exposure too much. The HUD tends to get in the way of your photos and overlap them, so this is a good way to work around it.

2. You can actually dig into your Aperture Library (through preferances). When I first got Aperture, I thought this was basically like a locked box that you couldn't really get into, but there is a way to open it and view all the photos and where they are stored. I won't need to be doing this often, but it is reassuring knowing I can.

3. Take a day to click on basically every option and icon to see what they do. I'm currently in the process of doing that and reading the user manual. Both of these things are teaching me so much about the power and ease of use of the program. There's so many new shortcuts to memorize as well. I'll get the hang of them eventually. So far I learned about the Create Smart Album from the manual. That's a great way to pull any photos of say, "Barak Obama" taken in "New York" in "2010" that you've given a 4 star or greater rating.

3. You can import your photos from you CF card with custom metadata!!! <--This one deserves the extra exclamation points. This makes metadata management - which will be the key to copyright protection in the future - so easy to do. Also, proper keywording and captioning is essential for finding photos you took long ago. Just think about when a client comes to you looking for a specific photo of a particular subject. Type in a few words, hit search, and there you have it - all the relevant photos appear! Also, I know I've lost caption info about some of the photos I took in the beginning of my career. Hopefully with these new tools that will never happen again. You can even make certain adjustments and conversions (like vingetting or changing to B&W).

4. Check out automater.us - this is a website with free actions for Aperture (which can be applied on import). I'm sure there's a lot of useful tools there to help speed up workflow. Once I work my way through the manual, I'll probably check that out next.

5. Start using Aperture's vault feature - this is an automatic backup that allows you to restore missing, damaged or lost images from the vault. It will only really help you if you're storing images in the Aperture library (and it'll give you a warning saying so). The best way to back the photos up is to an external drive and ideally to a second external drive in a second location (bonus points for a third drive stored in a third location).

BU Law reception

2010-03-24T19:27:00.006-04:00

The second of the days assignments on March 11th (as continued from this story - Photos & Video), was a networking reception for Boston University School of Law. There was a decent turn out, and the assignment was pretty straight forward. They just wanted photos from the event showing some of the important people from the university in attendance, some photos showing how busy it was at the event, and then photos of people socializing.

Here are a few outtakes from the event. A lot of this was just random groups of people taking to each other, so the challenge was to make the photos look interesting and not have them all look the same. To do that, I used a variety of lenses, chose to shoot from different angles, and looked for anything that would make one photo different from the last. I also used my flash bounced of the ceiling for most of these pictures.

This first image shows what each of the photos might have looked like had I not tried to be creative with the shooting. It's a very straight forward picture of a group of people socializing.

But it would have been fairly boring if I handed them a whole CD full of images that look exactly the same except for the people in the photos, so I tried to get different angles like this one here.

Here's another one where I tried to play around with angles and composition. This time I wanted to photograph the person who in the middle from behind. This is similar to the last photo, but includes more of the person who I'm standing behind for the photo.

The dean got up to speak for a brief period. I like the way the lighting is bouncing off the ceiling and also causing a shadow on the wall behind here. It looks like she is being lit by a spotlight, but it is just my flash laying on a nearby table and pointed up at the ceiling over her head. The shadow isn't too dark because I balanced the lighting pretty much perfectly!

For the second photo of the dean speaking, it might have been better to photograph her from the opposite side so you could see more of the crowd, but that was near impossible as she was so far back against the wall leaving me no room to get into position without disrupting her talk.

Finally, my contact at this assignment came up to me to make sure I got the dean speaking with this person, so I made a few nice frames of them. I like that I captured some of the emotion of their encounter and I'm sure the clients are pleased too!

That was pretty much it for that event. This assignment was mainly about the people and there weren't many details or scene setting photographs to be had. Also, it was a fairly short gathering, but the prospective students I think gained a lot of insight into the University.

Photos & Video

2010-03-19T19:03:00.011-04:00

[UPDATE: Link for article and high res video on BU website]

March 11th was a busy day for me. After a sleepless night worrying about the big day I was about to have, I got out of bed ready to go. I began ironing my clothes and gathering gear for my two assignments that day. Since these were both more corporate/formal type events, I went with a jacket, shirt, tie and nice pants. The first assignment was a compound one, where they asked me to produce a video shoot as well as some still photographs as well. The other was a straight forward photo shoot to provide journalistic style coverage of an event.

Both of these jobs came from my alma mater, Boston University. Two different people there had contacted me the week before about doing some freelance work for them. I was really excited, because it is always great to get a chance to stay connected with my school, and because it was two pretty cool assignments for one day!

I arrived at the first assignment a little bit early, as I had a LOT of gear (still cameras, two strobes, lightstands, some modifiers, video camera, tripod, wireless microphones, etc.). The location for this assignment was at my subjects office. He had not yet arrived by the time we had, so his front office help called him and asked if we could enter his office to set up. He said no problem, and we began bringing the gear into the office to set up. I decided to focus on the video first, and finish with the still photographs.

Below is the video. It's kind of low quality, I think I reduced the size too much by mistake (I'll see if I can't fix that later, with a larger file). It took about 20 minutes to film the entire interview. From there I knew I had enough to chop it into about a two minute piece as requested.

After filming was complete, I transitioned over to the still photography. I finished tweaking the lights, and then got my subject to stand in position and give a few different poses. I moved a couple of chairs out of the way to make room to work and clean up the images. After popping off a succession of photos in the one spot, I turned around and sat the subject at his desk for a few more frames. It's always best to provide at least two different options in case your client doesn't like one of them. Here is one of my favorites from the first location.

His office had this nice green wall, with some white shelf or something that created lines and some visual interest for the second setting. I used various cropping techniques on the photographs and tried to frame him differently and with different poses to provide the most options for the client. I wanted to leave some dead space as seen on the upper left of this photograph to lay text out over the image. I also tried to shoot some verticals, in order to give them a potential cover shot if they choose to run him as a cover story on one of their various publications.

I moved quickly through the photos as well, so as not to take up too much time. I was trying to be efficient and not too much of a burden. Usually I only have to do one or the other (photo/video) for a client and some people aren't all that comfortable with either, so my working fast and being keeping it from getting to boring helped me keep the subjects focus and get some great shots. In retrospect though, I probably could have worked a little slower because the subject was fairly comfortable being in front of the camera. Actually he was quite the pleasure to work with!

The morning assignment was a great success and left me feeling more than ready for the second one to come later that evening. I will blog about that one in a second post to come later...

Contest Photos

2010-02-27T17:18:00.013-05:00

It's another update including photos of my dog Rigsby. But fear not, I have not gone totally dog crazy. The reason he's being featured again is that I set out this weekend to make some photos to enter into PDN's Faces contest. I took a total of 329 photos. I narrowed it down to 15 images. I'm still trying to further refine the images, so if anyone wants to comment and say which they like best (and why!) that might help.

It might seem that I took a rather large number of photos, but when you consider my subject was my noncompliant dog, you may start to understand why so many weren't keepers. Half the time Rigsby, the dog, spent trying to get away from my strobes because to him they are big and scary and make a popping sound when they are triggered.

But the keepers I selected I think really have something great to them. I tried to get rid of any images that were just a picture of his face and select only ones where he was displaying some sort of personality. One of my selections (seen here) was an image I would have thought would just be a throw away, because something happened when I shot the photo and it came out underexposed. I can't remember if one of the strobes just didn't fire or if he was just to far forward and not in the area the strobe was lighting. After some adjustments in iPhoto (yup, I tried to see what I could get with just iPhoto and not Photoshop), I actually love this image!

To make the photos, I basically turned my living room into a mini studio as you can see here. I set up our coffee table as my set. I used a white blanket as a backdrop. The coffee table was great - it has a glass top, so I put the blanket underneath, which allowed me to put some distance between Rigsby and the blanket. This let me light them both separately and eliminate shadows. I used a total of three strobes. One for the backdrop. One from camera left to light Rigsby from the front. And one from behind to provide some rim lighting.

There are basically two things you need when photographing animals, lots of patience and some treats! Rigsby isn't quite at the level of understanding yet that when I say "stay," he needs to stay until I say "ok" to release him. So many times after I got him into position, then got back to my camera to take a few photos, he was already up and looking to get off the table. Ironically enough, normally we can't get him to stay off that table and now he wouldn't stay on!

Below are the rest of the photos I'm considering in order of my favorite.

Free photos part 4

2010-01-29T22:47:00.003-05:00

I was commenting on another blog the other night over at Strictly Business. The blog was mainly about professionalism, but the comments turned to clients looking for free photos. I ran some example numbers and came up with an example that if I were to follow through on giving away free photos at my job, at year end I'd have given away approximately $25,000 worth of photography. Then I factored in that there are three other full time photographers at my job. Between the four of us, we could potentially give away $100,000 of free photography.

I'm sure there are large companies like Coca-Cola who can afford to give away $100,000 worth of free product or services, but I'm pretty sure my bosses would be pretty mad at us if we started doing that. As for myself and my freelance photography, I wouldn't even be able to make a living giving away that much free photography.

As a side note, I've previously written three other blogs about free photos:

[Free Photos Pt. 3]

[Free Photos Pt. 2]

[Free Photos Pt. 1]

Manhattan Bridge in the clouds

2010-01-24T14:00:00.006-05:00

Here are a couple of quick photos from the end of 2009. I was driving back to the city one day from work and there were these amazing dark clouds. I tried to get a few different angles and crops. Thank god for auto focus! I basically just pointed and shot while keeping my eyes still on the road.

A philosphical look at the last decade

2010-01-14T21:12:00.003-05:00

Since we are still in the very beginning of the new decade, now is the perfect time to reflect on the past decade and what it has meant to me, my photography and my career.

My real pursuit of life as a photographer probably didn't begin until about 2001 when I transfered into Boston University's College of Communication to study photojournalism. By the summer after my first year I was already out and looking for my first "job" as a photographer. I didn't want to do an internship. I wanted to be paid. After getting over the fear of showing off my still very amateur portfolio, I went out and spoke to my local newspaper as well as the local wedding photographer. Fortunately, I was able to get paid work from both of them. The newspaper hired me to write a couple of stories and take some pictures as well. The wedding photographer took me under his wing and showed me some of the business aspects of photography as well as lighting and posing techniques. It was a great summer!

Eventually, after many photography classes, I finally built up a much stronger portfolio. I still didn't really feel 100% prepared for the real world upon graduation, but it was time for me to start learning on my own!

After graduation - and a little procrastination - I started freelancing for Community Newspaper Company. A few months there after, I was offered a part time position. That was a huge accomplishment for me. Even better though was when a few months later that position turned into my first full time job!

I worked there for a few years, growing more and more dissatisfied with the quality of work and assignments that come with the territory in the world of community journalism. I knew it was time for me to start to branch out and grow. I started plotting a move to New York. As luck would have it, I was laid off six months prior to the date I had set in my head to make the move. That meant, I would be getting unemployment and would have some form of income (however measly it was) while I looked for work in the big city.

I consider myself to be extremely lucky to be a photographer and I was extremely lucky again when I landed my second full time photography job. I now work for one of the greatest companies I could imagine working for photographing a lot of architecture and construction around the five boroughs of New York.

I still try to supplement my income with some freelance photography jobs. Aside from the extra money, it also keeps my skills sharp because I never know what a client may want. It challenges me to continue pushing creatively. The other great thing is it is a diversion from the routine of daily work mode, because again, I never know what a client may want.

When I started in photography, everything was done on film. I've seen the industry change both for the better and for the worse as it has transitioned to digital. I have to admit, I do not miss shooting film. Digital for me is so much faster, easier, and more rewarding. It's more rewarding because it has helped me to learn much faster. If I were still shooting film, I may still be struggling to learn lighting and other techniques vital to survival as a photographer. Another great thing is that digital allows me to carry a mini portfolio in my pocket at all times! I've uploaded my portfolio to my BlackBerry Storm and can show it to anyone, anywhere, anytime!

This has been a decade of immense growth for me - as a photographer, as a professional, as a business owner, and more. My work has progressed so much over the past year alone. My lighting skills have grown exponentially. I can only hope to continue on this upward path over the next decade. But with my passion and desire to become the best photographer I can be, I have no doubt about that happening.

A good start to a new decade!

2010-01-10T21:45:00.004-05:00

So 2010 just started barely over a week ago and I'm hoping that these first few days will be indicative of the rest of the year (or better yet - decade, but that may be asking for too much).

So what has happened so far. Well, first I've gotten quite a few e-mails lately about some of my work. Many of them with kind words of appreciation. Here's a short on

"Hi Shawn,
The pictures just arrived. They are fantastic!

Thanks so very much"

And a portion of another one from a friend whose cat recently had to go to the vet because he was really sick:

"I have to tell you - i just love that pic you took of [our cat] in [my girlfriend's] arms that she has as her profile pic. He has been such a needy little thing since he's been home but it really makes you appreciate what you have when it's almost gone."

I removed the names to keep their privacy.

I've also had some print sales recently, which is great! Those orders can really add up and help me to grow my business.

Then another e-mail came through from a friend asking me to do some head shots. We have yet to set up the date for that, but I'm excited to do something a little different from my usual.

Finally there's one project hanging over from last year. I was on the subway and ran into a former supermodel who is starting a line of hand bags. She's been in touch with me to photograph the bags so they can be sold online as well as shooting an advertising campaign. Hopefully I'll have something to show from that soon!

And to go with the new year, finally we have some new gear! I ordered a MacBook Pro 15" with the anti glare screen (better for photo editing). I can't wait for the increased productivity and time saved from the faster machine. My old computer is about 6 1/2 years at this point and has served me well, but it was definitely time for an upgrade! With all these new projects and print sales, the computer will certainly have paid for itself.

The Story of Mr. Rigsby

2009-12-23T21:27:00.010-05:00

As you can imagine the run up to Christmas has been pretty busy, but I finally had some time to sit down and go through the photos of our new dog, Rigsby. So here's a little bit more about him to go with the photos.

My girlfriend and I went out to finish our Christmas shopping two weekends ago. She had been begging that we get a dog for about 2 years now. She would browse the online adoption sites and send me multiple e-mails with links to the dogs she was in love with that day. Also, our local Petco does an adoption day every Sunday, so I got dragged over there quite a few times to see if there were any dogs that might be a good fit for us. It's probably my fault because I brought it up to her, saying, "Hey, do you want to go see the dogs at Petco?"

As luck would have it, this guy was there.

When we first met him, we were told his name was Orlando. Aside from the fact that we didn't really like that name, it seemed like such a big name for such a little dog. We asked about him, what his back story was, how he seemed to be at home, etc.

Rigsby had been found tied to the door at Baystreet Animal Hospital. Someone just abandoned him there. There was no note. We're not positive of who even gave him the name Orlando. It could have been found on a dog tag, or the vets could have named him that. They told us that they believe Rigsby is about a year old.

You may wonder what type of dog he is. He is mainly a papillon. We also believe he is part chihuahhua. We're not sure what else he may be. If you've never heard of a papillon, it means "butterfly" in French. This is because if you look at the back of their head, the ears and the fur below them look like the wings of a butterfly. A lot of people comment on how he looks like a fox. My girlfriend was even walking him by a school the other day and she said the kids started saying "Look a fox!"

He is quite cute, but don't be deceived. He can be a bit aggressive, defensive and possesive of his toys. He's bit both Honor and I a few times. Sometimes it was our fault, other times he just gets nippy. We are working to get those issues solved. Hopefully with a lot of love and a little training, we can work through his issues. Tomorrow a trainer is stopping by for a bit before we go away for the holidays to monitor his behavior and make some recommendations.

So here are some of my favorite photos from the other night when I did a quick photo shoot with him. Enjoy!

An Early Christmas Present

2009-12-15T17:43:00.004-05:00

Last year I had [A Late Christmas Present] for everyone. This year I have an early present to share with everybody. We have skipped the decorations this year because this one gift might have fun tearing them down. So without further delay...

Meet Rigsby!

More photos and more about this little bundle of joy to come later.

More aerials of Central Park in the fall

2009-11-18T18:19:00.010-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I did a post called [My Office View!]. It proved to be quite popular. Since I only had a few moments up on that rooftop that day, I didn't take much advantage of the awesome views. I only snapped the one quick photo for myself. Recently I returned to the same roof, which is 62 stories high. This time I wasn't in such a rush and took a few extra photos for myself. Here are a few of them.

This second photo is a close up of the skating rink located in the lower right corner of the photo above.

And in this third photo, I'm zoomed in on the big green area near the upper left corner of the first photo.

Finally, I zoomed in on the sign over the Essex House and the colorful park below it. I'm not sure why that area is so colorful, it's probably painted concrete or rubber. I might have to go investigate!

I love the colors on the leaves. It makes the park a bit more interesting than just seeing a whole lot of green. Soon though, that will all be white with snow. Can't wait.

Time Lapse Photography

2009-11-08T21:10:00.006-05:00

This weekend was a very busy one for me. I was running all over Manhattan and Long Island with my girlfriend. We ended up buying a lot of things for our apartment. We got a new couch, which unfortunately won't be arriving for a while. Then we bought some much needed curtains for our windows so we can have some privacy. After that was Dave and Busters (you gotta have a little fun!), followed by a really nice dinner.

Then Sunday (today) was spent running around the city trying to get the curtains cut to size. So you may be wondering how this all applies to photography. Well, I love to try and also learn new things. So I decided a "home improvement" project would make a good subject for learning a little about time lapse. I've never really used this function before, so I just wanted to try it out. I know there's a thousand useful applications for it, so I just wanted to be prepared for when the time comes.

Below are the results followed by the things I learned (Warning: this is slightly boring, haha. It was more of a learning experience for myself. To make it less boring, use the navigation arrows at the bottom of the slideshow to zip through it!).

Time Lapse (trial) - Images by Shawn Lynch

So from tonight's activities, I learned that selecting the proper interval is key. I used an interval of 2 minutes. For this project, I think that was a little slow. I kept on thinking, "Alright, when is the next photo?" It worked well enough, but I probably should have used something like a minute or a minute and a half. I chose 2 minutes though so as not to annoy the heck out of the girlfriend with the constant flash. The other thing I learned, is they are not that difficult to do. Focus is critical as your subject (in this case - me) most likely will be moving around a lot. You don't want the subject falling into and out of focus. Also, you need to make sure that at the end you'll have enough photos to make a meaningful slideshow. I ended up with 89. If you were to view them at one per second, that would end up at just under 1.5 minutes which would be perfect. You don't want to many photos or not enough. Hopefully I'll get to use this technique in a real world, practical application soon!

Camera info:
Nikon D300
Lens: 12-24 mm f/4.0
Focal length: 12 mm
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter speed: varying between 1/80 and 1/30 (I adjusted as the light outside started to fade)
White balance: cloudy
Flash: SB 800 set to 1/2 power and set on camera but bounced off a wall pointing to the right

By the way, if you're wondering about the mannequin dressed in pink, her name is Jessica. She is our newest roommate. Unfortunately she doesn't pay rent, and all she does is take up space! But really, it's something my girlfriend came home from work with one night...that's about all I have to say about her. I she moves out soon!

My office view!

2009-11-03T16:21:00.004-05:00

I don't really have an office view, but if I did, this wouldn't be a bad one to have. I work on the road all day every day. Heck even that statement is a little misleading. A lot of the times I work way up on top of buildings like in this photo taken from the rooftop of 152 W 57th St. It was either 60 or 62 stories high (there were two rooftops I was on recently, one was 60 the other 62 and I forget which was which) and had a great view of Central Park. Other time I've been sent to photograph underground in the subway tunnels and other locations strange locations, including once inside the form of a bridge. It's always exciting at my job. It's moments like this that make me love what I do. Enjoy!

Halloween at Dylan Murphy's

2009-11-01T17:53:00.004-05:00

Last night I hauled my camera gear and two lights into a bar around the corner from my apartment. I set it up to take pictures of the customers dressed up for Halloween. There were some pretty good costumes and the bar handed out prizes for best and second best costume. It was a fun night. Here is a slideshow of some of the better photos from the evening.

Halloween at Dylan Murphy's - Images by Shawn Lynch

Some of the costumes included: John and Kate, Alvin and the chipmunks, Pebbles from the Flintstones, Wolverine and Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent.

Now on the technical side, one of my lights was off to the side with a grid and a green gel on it. I wanted to add a little mood and color to the lighting. Originally I was going to do one light with a yellow gel, one light with a green gel, and the main light with no gel. I was thinking the green/yellow combo would be good colors for halloween. Orange would have actually been better than yellow, but B&H photo was closed, and I didn't have any orange. I ended up only using two lights though because I think one of the owners of the bar was getting a little worried by the amount of gear I was bringing into his place. The main light was coming from just slightly behind camera left with a small umbrella on it.

I only had a little space to work with, but I think I really worked it. I didn't set up a back drop either and I knew the chords from the lights would be in the background. This was solely meant for fun and I decided to deliberately let those things slide.

Last but not least, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who stepped in front of my lens and to Jack and Blake, the owners of the bar.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T19:58:00.011-04:00

It's holiday time, so it's a perfect time for a new post. Halloween has so much visual opportunity for photographs and there are plenty to come. Later tonight I'm setting up a photo booth at my local bar to get pictures of people in costume. It's going to be a blast! As for now, I'll leave you with a couple pictures from the other night when I set up two lights and photographed the process of cleaning out and then carving our pumpkin.

I didn't do anything too elaborate. I didn't even use my photo stands. I just placed two lights in places that were secure and they would not fall. I taped one of the chords to the floor for safety reasons (tripping hazard and protection for the light). One of the lights sat up on top of our refrigerator and the other sat on the back of our couch. Both of them were bare bulb, meaning there were no modifiers on the lights to control their direction. I planned on this because we have white walls and the light could bounce all around and provide nice, even fill. This is what that set up looked like. You'll notice I did my best to circle them with red in photoshop. Not easy with the track pad on my lap top.

The first thing I did was cut a hole in the top and Honor scooped out the insides. We saved the seeds to bake them afterward. I meant to photograph that as well, but I forgot. But that's ok because I think we ended up over cooking them just a little bit. Haha! Are they supposed to taste that dry? You'll notice most of these photos are close ups. The girlfriend can be a bit camera shy at times!

This third picture is the sketch I did for our pumpkin. Honor wanted the nose to look like a heart, but you can't have a happy looking pumpkin! So I did my best to make it look heart-shaped but still kind of scary and mean.

After Honor had cleaned out the pumpkin, I gave her a crash course in how to use my camera so she could get some images of me carving it. I drew the face on the pumpkin, and started carving. I drew it a little too small, so I mostly just freehanded the carving. We weren't using the proper knife for this, but it worked. It was just hard to make turns and do detailed work. Good thing I didn't design anything to intricate and complicated. Below is a set up photo of how the first photo at the top of the pumpkin was made.

We did one final fun photo after all was said and done.

Interview with Jay Blakesberg

2009-09-11T14:51:00.007-04:00

Today I had the opportunity to do a phone interview with Jay Blakesberg, the photographer who did the video for Third Eye Blind's music video "Don't Believe A Word" which I wrote about in my previous post here [Music Video Made of Photos]. Jay's got an impressive resumé but as he'll tell you, that doesn't mean much in photography! I recorded the interview straight to my laptop while he was on speaker phone.

Here is the youtube clip of the video uncensored. Watch it to get a grasp of what we're talking about, then read the interview and let me know what you think! Jay said he's going to send me a couple of photos to fill out the article but I want to get this posted now so I can share it with everyone.

This is my first time interviewing someone for my blog, so that was cool. Hopefully I can do more of them in the future. Read through to the end and you'll see what I gleaned from this experience. The following is a transcription of the interview:

Shawn Lynch: First off I wanted to ask you about your background, how you got started, what you shoot and how long you've been a photographer.

Jay Blakesberg: Ok, um, hang on. Let me go turn the music down so you can hear what I'm saying...Hi.

SL: Hi.

JB: Alright, let's see. Your first question. How did I get started? Is that what it was?

SL: How long have you been a photographer, how did you get started, what do you shoot?

JB: Alright, when you say what do I shoot, what do you mean? Like what subject matter or camera gear?

SL: Right, what subject matter. Is it advertising? Is it editorial? Is it all of the above? You know.

JB: Right, Ok. Ummm, I started taking pictures when I was in high school. I'm 47 and 3/4 years old, so that puts me somewhere back in the 1970s. I started photography just kind of because I liked it. It felt good. I took a lot of pictures. Started out shooting concerts and friends and things like that. Umm, you know, just kept going from there. Studied some photography in school, but I'm pretty much self taught. I shoot people. I do a lot of event photography. I'm mostly known as a music/rock and roll photographer. Shot a ton of advertising. I've shot, you know, thousands of magazine stories for both corporate, computer, business and rock and roll magazines. I've been shooting for Rolling Stone magazine since 1987. I've probably shot over 250 assignments for them. I've probably been published in magazines over 5000 times. Several hundred CD packages. I've published 4 coffee table books of my work. I've been published in probably another two or three hundred books and another couple hundred television programs. Umm, does that answer all those first questions?

SL: I believe so. That's quite the impressive resume there.

JB: Yeah, it doesn't mean shit though because you're only as good as your last photograph.

SL: Yeah, always true and you know, I started off in newspapers and worked my way up to some magazines and stuff. [I now shoot a lot of architectural photography]. You just keep on struggling day to day and hope the work keeps on coming.

JB: Uh huh!

SL: So what I really wanted to talk to you about was the video that you did for Third Eye Blind. How did you get that gig? I see you've got some other videos up on your site. Some of them seem a little bit similar especially like the First Act guitars video.

JB: Well, I've known Stephan Jenkins since his career started pretty much. I mean, I shot the very first Third Eye Blind publicity photo before they were signed to a label they were just a local band. Hang on one second, my dog's chewing on a pen. I've got to take it out of his mouth, sorry!

(disappears for a minute to tend to his dog)

JB: Sorry (laughing)! Ummmm, so I've known Stephan Jenkins from Third Eye Blind for a long time. I've shot other, I've shot, you know, early on I did a lot of work for them. I shot magazine covers for them. I did publicity shoots for record companies. I did, let's see, don't they have a record called "Blue" or something like that?

SL: Yeah, that was their second album.

JB: Yeah, so I did a bunch of photos for the inside of that record. So I've just known Third Eye Blind for a long time, and I ran into Stephan at some sort of a benefit type event somewhere in downtown San Francisco and hadn't seen him in a while and just reconnected. And at that point my son, who is 16, had become a big fan of Third Eye Blind. Stephan told me he was working on a new record, which was Ursa Major, and I said, "Hey, I'd love to bring my son by to check it out and listen to it in the studio and come see your new studio." And he said, "Yeah, come on by!" So I went by, we visited and we hung out, and then a couple months later he called me up and said, "Ok, you know what? I need to do photos for this record. Let's talk about it." So I went over to his studio again and I showed him, there's a similar video on my website for a company called First Act, which is a guitar manufacturer.

SL: Right.

JB: I showed him that and he basically was like, where has this video been shown? And really it was just this internal thing. They showed it in the flagship store in Boston for like a week or something like that. So it really hadn't been seen a lot. And he was like, "I really like this look. I like this idea. Let's talk about maybe making a video like this for one of my songs for this record." And I said ok, so he sent me the music and I listened to it and I came back and I said, "Let's do it very similar. Let's shoot it black on white." And then I came up with the basic framework. And then Stephan came up with a lot of great story board ideas. You know, he didn't want this to get stale and boring. It could get very old looking with that kind of a theme, so that's why there's a lot of theme stuff in there. The boxing gloves and the hat and different stuff like that. So, you know, he was definitely a collaborator. I mean, Stephan's a very strong personality in case you don't know that (laughs from both of us).

SL: I see this.

JB: And so he has a lot of great ideas. And so he put his ideas with my ideas and I connected us with an incredible editor who brought in his ideas to make it kind of flow and move. And I shot with a lot of Stephan's input and my editor polished it off and made it sizzle.

SL: Ok, so uh, let me take a guess here for what you were actually shooting this video with. I'd have to say something like a Canon 1D MKIII or a Nikon D3 and maybe...I don't know what you'd use for lights, but maybe like a Profoto 8 because of its fast recycle times. Am I anywhere near on that?

JB: Yeah, sure. I mean interchange names and brands. Yeah, I'm a Nikon guy and it was shot on my Nikon D300, actually. And it was shot in my studio, and it was shot using Dynalite strobes. And, you know, there's a lot of very intricate direction that goes on to create that kind of movement with still photographs. So it's not just, "Ok, start playing," and shoot as fast as you can. It's a little bit more involved and it's a little bit more deliberate in terms of how you're directing the movement and the body language and things like that in order to actually get it to work and to show off and to flow.

SL: So the movement wasn't as fluid. It was staged or posed?

JB: Well, I mean, yeah, the whole thing is posed because I'm telling them what to do.

SL: Yeah, I understand that, but when he's like strumming through on his guitar and is he actually strumming and you're capturing three frames there?

JB: No, I'm capturing probably more like in blasts of six, eight, 10 frames at a time. Pretty quick. I had my strobes on very, very low flash settings so they would recycle very fast. I think I fried a couple of packs on that shoot - the capacitors - from the shooting so fast and so much. You know it was about 5000, I think we did about 5,000 images that day and I think there's...What's that (talking to someone in the background) Umm, my digital manager just walked by and said there's 5,300 images from that day.

SL: Oh ok.

JB: So there's very specific things you gotta keep in mind because you have to edit this. So you gotta have things that flow and that cut together and so on and so forth.

SL: Right, now was the buffer on the camera ever a problem?

JB: Yeah, I mean it is, but if you have fast cards, you're never really...you know video shoots at 24 or 30 frames per second and I'm shooting at probably three frames per second, but that's the beauty of it. When you watch that video it tricks your eye because you're not really sure what's going on. You're not sure if it was shot on video and there were drop frames. You're not sure if it was still photographs. You know what I mean. Maybe you know what it is, you're a photographer.

SL: Right.

JB: But a lot of people would look at it and it just tricks the eye. And that's the beauty of that look and that feel. I also shoot everything in RAW, so if I was shooting in jpeg, even if I was shooting in jpeg fine, I could have probably shot 80 shots at a time without any buffering issues. By shooting RAW files as fast as you can, you're still only gonna get eight or 10 or 12 shots before you're buffering, then it kind of comes into play.

SL: That also kind of slows down the frames per second rate the camera can shoot at, the RAW vs. jpeg.

JB: Yeah I would imagine that it probably does.

SL: So was there any other special gear you used for this? Did you use a tripod or were you like more hand held?

JB: Uh, both. I used a tripod for some stuff and I did hand held for some stuff. You know, when you see stuff, like a microphone stand is moving, you know it's hand held. When you're seeing stuff, like the drums were locked down and the drums aren't moving but the bodies are moving, then you know that it was on a tripod.

SL: Right, right. So was this shot in your studio? Did you rent a studio?

JB: No, it was shot in my studio.

SL: And so you already answered this question, the 5,300...How many photos actually make up the video?

JB: I don't know the answer to that. And I think we used them all but I'm sure there's stuff that's repeated. Do you know what I mean? Because we would turn these into little video clips. And then we would...there's definitely stuff that gets repeated in different places, so I don't know the answer to that question.

SL: So the same photo will pop up a couple of times throughout the video?

JB: Um, yeah, you know we tried to not get things pop up too many times because again we didn't want it to get "Oh, I've seen that already kind of a thing." But I think some of the drum loops were used again. But also because we were shooting RAW and we edited in HD, which is 1080 basically and you're shooting at three or four thousand pixels, so you're shooting at three or four times the resolution of HD video. So we were able to go in and then crop things in and not loose resolution. So we were using some shots where we could going in tighter on the shot, and cropping it and reusing it as a different segment like that. Does that make sense?

SL: Yeah, definitely. So now, for post production, did you do all the work, did you outsource any of it?

JB: I had an editor who did it and I sat in on some of the editing sessions, but also Stephan sat in on some of the editing sessions. And then we would get a cut and Stephan would look at it, and he would come back and say, "ok, we would like this, but we need to move this shot of the guitars jumping into this segment." He was helping us rearrange stuff. You know, it's his song. He knows how he wants it to flow. And he's certainly like I said a very strong personality. He has a good vision and I trust his judgement and I like working with Stephan because he's got such great creative prowess.

SL: Of course. Ok, so what software did you guys edit the video with?

JB: I think we did it in Final Cut with some after effects.

SL: Well, another thing I've heard, and I guess maybe you're used to this is that, Stephan doesn't really like having his picture taken. Were you aware of that? Probably since you've worked with him so many years.

JB: Umm, well you know what, I don't think...I don't know maybe that's true. I've never had that problem. Like I said I've shot him many many many times. We also did a whole second photo not that day because we ran out of time, but I wanna say the next day or the next week - I can't quite remember - where we did photos that they're using, I think there's some on the CD package. I don't know, I haven't seen the CD package actually. But there was stuff that was on the website and for publicity and things like that.

SL: I've actually met him before and Tony and they're all really nice, so I'd love to work with them myself one day.

JB: Yeah, they're all great guys.

SL: Any other stories you feel like sharing or anything I maybe missed that you want to touch on?

JB: No not necessarily. Nothing in particular. I think overall it was a great project. I think it's a very cool video. I think it's very original. I think that I've heard that Fuse played it and I know that it's online on a bunch of places. I don't know that MTV has picked it up yet. We submitted it to them and they rejected it at first because there's some language. You know there's the part of the song where he says "you fucking whore." We'd actually already taken that out, but then there was some other vocal in there that they had us change as well, like the word "high" or something like that. So we had to switch that out as well and now there's a clean version and a dirty version of it. In the dirty version you can hear he says "you fucking whore" in the clean version we took that out. But really, great project. A lot of fun. I hope it brings more work my way.

SL: Awesome. Well, good luck with that and thank you for your time!

JB: You're welcome!

So I think the two major things that I came away from this interview with were the fact that he used a pro-sumer level camera to do this video. The Nikon D300 is not their top of the line model. I was thinking he'd be using a pro level body because of the higher frame rate. But I guess it was good that he used a slower frame rate camera because he had already blown a couple of his packs. The other thing, I was surprised that he was using a low power setting on the lights to get the faster recycle times. I guess that since they were doing it in black and white grain wasn't too much of an issue and they could really push the ISO to get the depth of field needed. I love the video and the song, but I'm biased. Anyway, it was great to talk with Jay.

Music Video Made of Photos

2009-09-04T18:57:00.003-04:00

I'm a big music fan, and recently I picked up the new Third Eye Blind album - an addiction from the 90s. It's called Ursa Major, which is the larger constellation that the Big Dipper is a part of. Ursa Major is of a bear, which appears on the album cover. Ursa Minor, is a smaller bear, and yes, the Little Dipper makes up a part of that constellation.

Anyway, there's some random star based trivia for you. Now for what I meant to talk about. Well, I happened to catch Stephan Jenkins, the lead singer, on tv the other day talking about the new album. They then showed a the video for "Don't Believe A Word." Before playing it, Stephan talked about how the video was made up of all still photographs. This would be a dream job for me, since I love the band, and it involves exactly what I do for a living, photography.

Take a look and see what you think. Here's the link to the video. And the photographer/director who made it is Jay Blakesberg.

Gossip Girl films outside my apartment

2009-08-13T20:28:00.005-04:00

A couple of days ago, the show Gossip Girl was filming just outside my apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. You may have caught my "tweet" about it. I find it hilarious that many of my adult female friends, including my girlfriend, go nuts for this show about high school teenagers.

If I weren't busy that day, I would have hung around to see if I could maybe make a couple of paparazzi style photos of the stars. I would have used my telephoto lens and captured some of the action from a distance, and not do the distasteful, in-your-face photos. Unfortunately though, I had to get to the office to drop off my photos from the past couple of days.

When I returned home, I did however go roam over to the trailers just to grab a few pictures so I can show on a very small scale how large these productions can be. Actually, when I happened to notice them earlier in the day, there were mobs of people crowded around the trailers and a couple of paparazzi waiting with multiple cameras and lenses. I may have to pick up an US weekly just to see what I missed!

Haddad's is a big company in the film and television world. They supply all sorts of different trucks for the production companies various needs. Some of the trucks transport gear, others are places where the talent can hang out between shoots.

These photos are just snapshots, not representative of the professional photography that I normally produce, but I thought it would be fun to share because I think some of my readers may have an interest in seeing them (especially Honor and Kristen).

New Readers

2009-07-28T21:07:00.003-04:00

It seems like I've got quite a few new readers here, ever since heading off to the family reunion (thanks to my mother and Aunt Peggy for e-mailing my website to everyone). I'm gonna have to step it up a notch or two here over the next few months to keep you interested and coming back. I'm thinking I might start photographing more of NY and what it's like to live here so that maybe I can inspire some of you to come out and visit - or maybe I'll just make you so terrified that you'll never want to step foot in the big city! Haha.

Hopefully it'll be the first of those two possibilities. Anyway, check back often. Feel free to leave comments or even become a follower (the button for that is located on the right side of this web page). The more people I know are watching me, the more I'll feel ~~pressure~~ inspiration I'll feel to keep this thing with fresh new images!

Also, please feel free to pass along the link to anyone you might think would be interested in seeing some cool work. Alright, well if all goes as planned, I'll be taking some new photos this weekend and have a new post up soon after. Thanks again.

Family Reunion pt. 4 - After The Reunion

2009-07-20T15:43:00.010-04:00

After the family reunion was over, some of us gathered back at my grandmother's house. While there, I remembered I had a "surprise" for my mother and father. I may have finished all the photoshop work on this birthday present for my mother, but I didn't finish all the printing for the album until about a week before the trip to IL.

I brought all the photos with me and passed them around at for everyone at Grandma's house. I wish I remembered to show them at the reunion, but oh well. Actually, I was hoping we might have time to make it to the photog- rapher's studio who did the original photos, but I was told he just recently went back into retirement. How cool would that have been though to show him what I did with his album? And remember, I went and got permission to make reprints from him, honoring his copyright. I even offered to pay him in order to allow me to make the reprints, but he graciously declined my offer.

Anyway, as you see here, people are just passing around the photos and having a look at them. Lamb's boyfriend Colby, even recognized one of the attendants of the wedding. Mind you the wedding took place in IL sometime in the 1970's and Colby is from MA. The woman he recognized lives in the same town he lives in now and is friends with his family as well.

Also, in the picture with Lamb and Colby, you'll notice where I set my flash on the shelf behind them. I bounced it off the ceiling to spread evenly throughout the room.

I like this photo because it is a picture of my granmother's hands holding a photo of my parents hands from their wedding album. It just all ties in together nicely!

And that's pretty much it. I can't wait to do it again next year and hopefully spend more than just 2 days there. The trip was definitely too short.

Family Reunion pt. 3 - The Reunion

2009-07-19T13:57:00.034-04:00

This one photograph is pretty much the reason I was in Illinois last weekend. There was more to it than that of course. I haven't been out there in about 10 years. This reunion is something my mother's side of the family does every year. I wanted to see my grandmother, grandfather, and some of the cousins I haven't seen in quite some time. Also, there have been so many births and marriages, so there were quite a few new faces I needed to be introduced to. Unfortunately a couple of my cousins weren't there, that's why I'm hoping to go back again next year - with my girlfriend.

I didn't bring my tripod to the reunion, so I enlisted the help of a local kid, probably about 7 years old at most. I set up the group, pulled my grandfather's truck over for him to stand up on the truck bed, focused the photo, then walked over to join my parents in the photo. I had one of my pocket wizards in my hand to use as a remote to fire the camera. The second one was on top of the camera to receive the signal.

I had the camera lens set to 16 mm, to give the kid room for error (wasn't sure he'd manage to get everyone in the frame and hold the camera straight enough). I did end up cropping it to make it a little more level, but overall the plan worked quite well.

Now in comparison, here are a couple of old family photos that I found sitting on a table at the reunion. I'm not sure when they were taken or who is even in them. Everything about these photos has changed. The style of the clothes, the hair, the technology to make the photo (black and white vs. color and digital vs. film). It's kind of interesting to look at how my family has changed, or even stayed the same over the years.

Ok, so lets get back to the family reunion. It was held at a church right down the street from my grand- mother's house. It was sort of like a pot luck dinner, with everyone making and bringing some sort of dish. Before we ate, everyone took the time to catch up. Here my mother talks with some relatives. Not sure the exact relation, but maybe she can help me with that later. I think I recall that these three were all sisters (my mom was is on the left).

Grandma in the kitchen, talking with more family members.

My sister, Lori, or Lamb as I call her, holds one of the newest members of the family. Lori, is actually short for Loretta, and it is my grandmother's first name. There were I think three different Loretta's at the reunion, which might be the first time that's ever happened!

Before sitting down to lunch the entire family gathered outside the kitchen to share in a prayer. By the way, I forgot to mention, that there were 51 people there for the reunion that day! My uncle Richard spoke, saying how blessed we were to all be able to get together on such a beautiful day. It really was quite nice to be with everyone again after such a long time.

The plate of food I made for myself. Most of the food was that souther/country style cooking. Very tasty.

The first group photo at the very top was actually taken after we ate. We also did some smaller group shots. This one is bound to be my mother's favorite. This is all the little babies in attendance wearing the Boston Red Sox outfits she bought for them. She probably wishes they were all her grand children, but Lamb's not planning on having kids with her boyfriend any time soon and nor am I with my girlfriend. Sorry mom!

Here are a few more group photos from later in the evening. The first one has some weird lighting. I didn't have anyone to help me hold my flash, so the light is coming across instead of from above. Later, I made Lamb's boyfriend Colby stand in as my VAL (Voice Activated Lightstand). Oh and we only did these inside because it started to rain.

(from right to left) Uncle Richard, Aunt Caroline, Kristina, and her husband Chris.

My Aunt Terri and two of her grandchildren. Her daughter had to work and wasn't able to be there.

My cousin Val, her husband Tim, and their two kids.

Same as above with Val's parents (My Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob), and her brother's children. Val's brother, who is my cousin Bob, and his wife Amanda were out of town for a wedding.

My uncle Scott, Aunt Peggy, cousin Suzie, Cousin Jenna, and her boyfriend Garret, if I remember correctly!

Finally, me and my family with Lamb's boyfriend!

One more mini post to come...

Family Reunion pt. 2 - Foweler IL

2009-07-18T20:26:00.014-04:00

After getting back from golfing, as I wrote about in the previous post, it was time to scarf some taco pizza. Tacos and pizza are two of my favorite things. I had no idea such a thing existed, and it may be a good thing or else I may actually weigh like well over 300 pounds right now! I mean just look at this thing. It's a bird's eye view, so you don't really see the meat cooked into a thick layer of cheese, topped with what looked like Doritos (it could have been a knock off brand), then covered with lettuce and tomato. There was also taco sauce to spread on top! Whatever stoner invented this has achieved a new level of food nirvana.

I hung out with the family for a bit and chatted. I kept the camera in the bag for the most part at this point. I was already photographing golf all day long, so I was a bit worn out from that and needed a rest. Later though, I went on a walk with my sister and her boyfriend around town. This time I did bring the camera. Fowler is such a small town, you can pretty much stand at one end of town and see the other end.

That being said, Fowler is a great little place with a lot of character. Also, since Illinois is a pretty flat state, it makes for some great lighting come sunset. The quality of light also lasts a little longer, as it's not blocked by tall buildings and trees. You'll notice in a lot of these photos that there's an orange glow to certain areas. That is because as the sun sets, the light color of the light changes. It isn't so much the color that's changing, it's more that red light travels more directly than blue light. Blue light tends to get scattered by various things in the atmosphere as it travels toward earth. That's your science lesson for today. If you don't believe me look up "diffraction."

Here my sister leaves the field I made her and the boyfriend stand in for a few photos - slightly against her will because she was afraid of having a tick crawl up her. She's usually pretty reluctant to have her picture taken, so I didn't get too many of them together.

After leaving the field, we continued on down the dirt road (yes, I said dirt road!) I actually think even though they are dirt, they are probably better to drive on than the roads in NY, but I digress. We spotted a tiny little cemetery on a hill and went to scout it out. It was so quaint and peaceful. It seems like the type of place I might want to find myself one day (not anytime in the near future though!). There was a wonderfully intricate wrought iron fence at the entrance. I knew I could use that to make a nice picture. What I was surprised to discover though, was the sun reflecting off this grave stone and how beautiful it would look! When I took the photos back to the house, I showed this one to everyone, because I knew how great it was. My grandmother wants a copy now because she knows the family of this person.

On the way back home my sister and I took a photo of each other at the same time. I got a nice flare from the setting sun in this one that colored most of the frame. I like this because it's one of those happy accidents. I knew I was getting the flare, but you never really know how it's going to effect the final outcome of the photograph.

After some more chatting back at grandma's house, we finally left for our hotel. On the way out the door I wanted to grab a shot of the house. My hole thinking on this trip as I was photographing was to really make it so that when my girlfriend saw the photos it was like she was there with me. Since she couldn't come, I wanted her to experience my family and also prepare her for what's to come next year when I'm gonna make her come.

Family Reunion pt. 1 - Golf

2009-07-17T19:26:00.024-04:00

My mother's side of the family holds a family reunion every year on the second weekend of July. It has been too long since I last attended one of these gatherings, so I really wanted to go. I was hoping to introduce my girlfriend to my grandmother and cousins, but she has an unpredictable work schedule and some of my cousins weren't actually going to be around this year so we decided that she'd come along next year. Anyway, of course I had to tote along the camera for the weekend.

So here's how the weekend started. I got home from work on Friday night (not sure exactly when). Stayed up til about 11:30 when I knew I needed to be up at 3:30 am, to leave at 4:30 am, to be to the airport in time for my 6:00 am flight (thanks mom, you're never in charge of booking me a flight again!).

I get to IL, time to rent a car, drive 2.5 hrs, then after some brief hugs, smiles, and handshakes, it's off to golf. Longest day of my life. But it wasn't so bad. I was going to go golfing, but they didn't have any rental clubs and I'm a horrible golfer, so this probably played into my hand. I got to take pictures of my father and my sister's boyfriend embarrassing themselves on the golf course, while not having to make a fool of myself. Actually it wasn't so bad though. They did alright. My uncle is the "pro." He had the best score of 82. I'll spare everyone else from posting their scores!

Here is our foursome. From left to right: My father; my uncle Rich; my cousin's husband, Chris; and my sister's boyfriend, Colby. And here's one with me pretending to be a golfer that I set up a little later in the day. I used my pocket wizards to take this photo.

This is uncle Rich at the tee. Not sure which hole, but it doesn't really matter because he probably smacked it about 300 yards. I'm sure it helped that he was using his own clubs. Colby and my father were borrowing. I'm sure it feels a bit like riding someone else's bike using another person's clubs.

Everyone had some good shots. And everyone took at least one mulligan. While they got to play around on the course, I got to play around with the lighting and composition of the photos and while they were selecting clubs for their next shot, I was selecting lenses for my next shot.

As I said already, it was a long day. I think we got to the course around 2 or 3 pm and finished around 7:30. When we started, the sun was pretty much straight overhead. By the time we ended, it was pretty directional, which allowed me to get some nice shots like this one. This is Chris, he's married to my cousin, Kristina. You can tell this photo is from later in the day because his shadow extends back behind him. I tried to make him go dark and expose for the areas of grass lit by the sun. This gave him a nice highlight on his head.

Once you notice some nice light, you always try to take advantage of it. So here, I used the same idea to get a photo of Colby. I love the fact that I know how to use simple tricks like this to elevate these shared moments with my family. The memories will be much nicer as time goes on, even though my mother has already called and is begging for the photos now!

Here's another lighting style. Again, this photo focuses on form. By simplifying the image like this, it makes the photo easier to read and you appreciate things in the photo other than the action, like the dramatic sky.

My father tees off on a hole.I think this was the same hole as uncle Rich above actuall. I used the wide angle lens to show the environment. There's no ball in the frame, but I don't care because I like the form of his body and the fact that he's staring off to see where the ball lands.

This one is a detail of my father's hands as he waits for his next hit. I didn't notice the broken tee when I took the shot.

Another image of my father. This time, he's digging a ball out of the water hazard to see if it was his. I think it was a ball from another game.

When I took this photo, I was just trying to add some drama to the image by tilting the camera. I did it in a way though, that it makes it look like the photo was taken with a fish eye lens, but I only used a wide angle, not a fish eye. I think it's the curve of the putting green that gives it that sense. Even though this game was just for fun and there was nothing on the line here for anyone, I still made sure to take photos after the swing so as not to distract anyone. I also did a lot cropping on some of the photos with my telephoto lens when I was standing back further so they wouldn't hear the shutter.

Out of all the photos from that day though, I think this one really gives you the best sense of place. We were out in Illinois, and there are a lot of cornfields out there. Very different from anything you'd find in Massachusetts, where I'm originally from, and certainly extremely different from anything you'd find in New York.

Finally, we'll end it with a series of photos. I love how Colby's body bends the way he wants the ball to go. Then as he knows he's going to miss the shot he throws out his hand, and finally it ends up in the air on his head and he even kicked his leg out a little bit!

Pet Photography

2009-07-09T18:48:00.010-04:00

I wanted to shoot something fun today, so I decided to try something different and photograph our turtles, Turkle and Tiffen, while they were swimming around in their tank. We're not sure what sex they are, so my girlfriend and I just refer to them as males. Unfortunately, Turkle, the bigger one wasn't so interested, probably because I didn't have any food for him! But it was fun to shoot underwater and try to control the reflections on the water and in the glass tank.

Here you can see just how bored Turkle was. He yawned and barely looked over at the camera. He wasn't moving from his perch on that rock, which was kind of surprising, because usually any time anyone goes near the tank they both go nuts swimming as fast as they can trying to get to whoever is that is standing nearby.

This is Tiffen. He was less camera shy. Anyway, in this photo you see the light bouncing off some of the bubbles in the water. The light cuts through the water, bounces off the white wood that the tank is sitting on and lights up Tiffen's underside. You'll also notice in the photos there is some dried out residue from the water that's splashed on the sides is glowing from the flash. I like the result, it's kind of abstract. It adds an almost painterly feel to this photo.

In these next two Tiffen presses his face up against that glass. There's a lot less residue reflecting. That's partly because there is less residue in the corner and also the angle the light is bouncing off the glass at. I find the second of these two photos funny because it looks like Tiffen is looking out the window of his über modern New York City condo. You can see neighboring buildings in the background.

Finally a picture of the set up that I used. For anyone who doesn't really understand the technical terms of photography, you can stop reading here! I placed my flash with a Pocket Wizard inside of a smaller fish tank that rested on top of the tank that the turtles were in. I had the flash set to 1/8th power. I didn't need a lot, since the flash was so close. I could have gone even lower on the flash power as I was using f/11 for my aperture. My shutter speed for most if not all the photos was 1/125th (actually I think the setup was at 1/60th).

Glamorous

2009-06-30T18:41:00.004-04:00

Glamour Garage in Williams- burg is not your typical hair salon. There's lots of vibrant colors, grafiti on the walls, a large purple couch, the front end of some old car with a nice sparkly, green paint job and a dog named, Chance, who will usually greets you at the entrance.

The owner of this place also runs another salon nearby called Hello Beautiful. She mentioned to me that I had to go by and check it out sometime, not knowing I was a photographer, and so this past weekend I took her up on it and went to check it out. I had a friend in tow. She's a photo student from GA, spending the summer in NY. We met on the train going to the mermaid parade and we talked about photography. She told me how she was kind of scared to approach people in New York to take their pictures, which can be a tough thing to overcome in photography. You just have to get some thick skin and not really care when someone doesn't want you to take their photo. She's also studying photography more as art, not photojournalism like I did.

Anyway, we stopped by the salon, which has a tattoo parlor upstairs. It was rather hot up there that day though, so we didn't really stay to check that part out. We did take a look around though and it is definitely worth returning to in the future for some more photos.

Finally I get to share something new, something different, something that's not buildings! Maybe I'll return soon to do some real photography. The time we spent there was just a chance really to talk, show a couple of things and give her some advice she's probably not getting in photo school. I'm always happy though to share my knowledge and experiences with others though. I think its great when you get a chance to give back. And even better when you get to share what you love (photography).

Cadillac XLR photo shoot

2009-06-13T14:50:00.007-04:00

On Memorial Day weeekend I was in Massachusetts for the weekend to photograph a graduation and some family portraits. The night before I had set out my gear to test it and make sure it was all working properly. That night my family also planned a little cookout to celebrate the holiday. Anyway, long story short, my sister and her boy friend showed up with his mother's Cadillac XLR. This car costs about $100,000.00 and is a beauty, so I offered to take some photos of the car. We did the photos right outside of our house. We didn't go scouting for a location or anything more elaborate because we didn't really have time for that. I had no idea he was going to show up with that car.

It was nice because I really got to test my gear and make sure it was all working properly. On the upside, all the gear was working properly. On the downside, was is past tense, and while transporting one of my lights, it slipped out of my hands, fell to the pavement and smashed the light.

I wasn't worried though, as I have 4 lights just for this reason. If something goes wrong with one piece of equipment, I have others to use as backup. Most photo shoots, I can get away with one or two lights, so with one broken light, I was down to three lights. More than enough for a small group of family photos.

For the above photo, there was a light sitting in the car between the two seats pointed up to accent some of the interior. Then there was a light on a stand with a large soft box to the right of the car.

Now this next photo is a detail of the grill. I had to go in and photoshop some defects in the paint as this is not a brand new car. There were a few dead bugs on the bumper, some light scratches in the paint, and a spot where the car's bumper had clearly been tapped by another car while parked or something because you could see something from underneath pushing through.

This one looks like I may have added some colored gels to the lights, but I didn't. The blue comes from the intense color of the night sky. The orange is from a nearby street light. This photo only needed the one light. I repositioned the softbox toward the front of the car and swept is across the grill.

Then my sister wanted a photo of her and her boyfriend with the car, so I obliged. The difficult part with this photo was that it's being done at night and I'm using a shutter speed around 13 seconds, so they had to remain really still. Tricky considering the mosquitoes which would not leave us alone. I liked the way the red brake light showed up in the photo. I tried to figure out a way to keep the brake depressed for the photo without them in the car, but I didn't have anything big enough to get it to stay down.

Finally one photo with them standing outside the car. Notice, here you only get a little bit of the red brake light because the lights are on, so the rear light is on, but the brighter light that comes on when you push the brakes is not.

Beauty shots

2009-05-17T22:32:00.004-04:00

I just wanted to post two recent photos from work. There is a third also shot while at work, but it's kind of unrelated.

So the first two photos are prime examples of what our clients are looking for. These are the beauty shots keep them coming back to us.

Finally, the third photo was just a one off thing. I just liked the composition and lighting. The funny thing is, I didn't take this photo to actually make a picture. I just wanted to know what time it was. Since I don't wear a watch and my cell phone was in my pocket, it was easier for me to take a photo and hit the review button, which would show the time the image was created.

NYPH '09 saturday review

2009-05-17T10:34:00.005-04:00

Saturday was much nicer. I guess I just hit up all the galleries I didn't care for on Friday. Tim Hetherington has a project called "Sleeping Soldiers" that was really powerful. It was a multimedia piece that displayed images and videos across three screens. The pictures were mainly of soldiers asleep in their cots inside of a dimly lit bunker. The video was clips of bombings, helicopters firing some missiles, and chaos in the heat of battle. The effect wonderful and makes you think how these soldiers ever manage to get to sleep.

I still haven't made it to a single lecture yet. I'm not even sure I'm going to get back to DUMBO for today. I'd like to, so I can take in at least one talk, but I have a bunch of work and possibly some social obligations. I also want to try to meet a few of the photographers who I know that are there but I haven't had a chance yet to talk to.

Though, I did hear a little tip from an NYPH attendee from last year. Sunday is a great day to go because at the end of the festival last year many of the books were put on sale at really great discount prices - some as high as 60% I was told!

Update - Below are the links to last years blog posts about the NYPH:

New York Photo Festival

Images taken yesterday at NYPH

NYPH round up

NYPH round up part 2

NYPH round up part 3 - book soup

NYPH round up part 4 - awards ceremony

NYPH round up part 5 - borrowing canon g9

NYPH round up part 6 - the final day

NYPH '09 friday review

2009-05-16T13:00:00.004-04:00

I went to the photo fest yesterday with some high expectations. Last year was so much fun and the work was incredible. I took in about 3 galleries in the time I was there yesterday. Unfortunately I wasn't as impressed this year.

Friday night also held the awards ceremony and after party. There were about 25,000 submissions for the various awards. Thankfully, the work shown here was of really great quality.

One disappointing thing about the ceremony though was that there only were three recipients who were there to take their awards. Last year almost everyone who won an award was on hand to receive it.

Another is that probably one of the more interesting panel discussions, "Blogging in the Photography Community" was held at 11 o'clock in the morning. Hard for us full timers out there to attend this one. It would have been convenient if I were unemployed again or a freelancer, but I don't wish either of those things on myself again, especially right now.

I don't want to be totally down about it because it still was a fun experience and there was a lot of effort and hard work put into putting a show like this on. I think some of the reasons why things weren't as great this year was that a few of the sponsors pulled out of the show. There also seemed to be less organization and planning this year. Hopefully things will be better for next year if and when it comes around again.

New York Photo Festival 2009

2009-05-14T21:40:00.003-04:00

So unfortunately I missed the first day of events at NYPH today, but I thought I'd round up some links to point readers in the right direction and get some of the stuff I missed out on today.

Some of the folks at PhotoShelter will be there and blogging about it.

Andrew Hetherington has a lot over at What's the Jackanory? (lots of videos here)

FOTO8 looks like they will have some good coverage too.

I will be there tomorrow camera in hand to hopefully bring more formal coverage with photos. I'll probably post a couple of tweets to my twitter account via cell phone. Tomorrow night is sure to be interesting with the awards ceremony and after party (fingers crossed for free booze, haha).

Vacation photos!

2009-04-14T18:34:00.013-04:00

Before I really get started, I want to let everyone know this is my 100th post. Quite the milestone! Also, sorry for not being so timely in posting this. I've now been home from Mexico for about a week. I was on vacation with the girlfriend in the beautiful Mayan Riviera in Mexico. The weather was a far cry from the rain we left behind in New York. Gorgeous, nearly cloudless, blue skies, temperatures well above 80 and some nice breezes off the ocean.

Anyway, I want to keep this post from being too wordy and mostly about the photos. We stayed at Aventura Spa Palace, an all inclusive resort. It was amazing. This first photo was the view from the balcony outside our room one night as the moon glowed orange from the setting sun.

This is the same view as a verticle taken during the day.

This is the pool from ground level. The resort had multiple bars and one was conveniently located right inside that hut.

I loved this little architectural detail and found myself photographing it multiple times during the trip. This was one of the better ones with the warm glow of the late day sun. The clouds also add a little more interest.

Above are a couple last architectural photos. The second one is inside the main lobby. It's a pleasant seating area. It's a great meeting place while you wait to meet someone before heading off to dinner or the bars.

So here are Honor and I standing on the balcony. I stacked the little table on top of one of the chairs and set the camera to self timer. I also set off the on camera flash. If not, we would have come out too dark being in the shade. This was the third of three photos to get the composition (first two had heads slightly cropped off) and lighting right.

Inside from the balcony was our room. The hot tub was a nice touch. Make sure to read the directions for using it first, we over heard a few people say they blasted the glass door and curtains with water when they turned the jets on too early!

The other nice touch in the room - free booze! All inclusive really was ALL INCLUSIVE. The liquor didn't cost anything extra nor did the almost nightly room service we had delivered including champagne!

With everything included, it would have been easy never to leave the room or get off the resort, but we did go off on a few adventures. First up was a trip to the Mayan temples at Chichen Itza.

It's kind of weird, because years ago I read about this place in high school. It's a strange feeling to see images from your Spanish text book come to life. The above photo is this court that was basically like some sort of sports complex where the mayans played some form of ancient basketball.

On the sides of the stadium there are carvings depicting some of the ancient rituals and games. This photo shows a warrior or player holding the head of his opponent (left) and the headless opponent with snakes escaping from his body (right).

This is a statue of a high priest. I don't know much more about it. Apparently the temple is though to be a local gathering spot for parties and big community events.

Honor and I standing in front of another temple. I used a pocket wizard to take this photo instead of using the self timer. I perched the camera on my bag. A few people walked by offering to take a picture for me, not knowing what the heck I was doing.

This is a statue of the rain god. He's built into the side of many of the temples in the area. This is the face in profile. The large hook thingy is his nose.

On the way back Honor had coconut to drink during lunch.

This photo was from our trip to Playa del Carmen and Cozumel. We were sitting in swing chairs at Señor Frogs drinking a beer and looking out over the ocean. Perfect!

These are just some colorful buildings in Playa del Carmen.

The red in this otherwise monochromatic scene called out to me. I spotted this while waiting to board the boat to Cozumel.

Honor proves herself to be a worthy photographer. She liked the way the ocean reflected in my sunglasses.

Honor had to stop for coconut while we were driving around Cozumel. By the way, renting a car over there seems totally sketchy, but it's cool.

Honor and I have a lobster thing, so I had her stand in for a photo at this restaurant.

This is a pair of photos from back at the resort.

And finally some more photos of Honor and I playing around in one of the lagoons at the resort. There are lots of fish there and they provide you with goggles to go snorkeling. It's really amazing to see the fish up close and personal like that. The last two photos show me after I caught a tiny little fish with my bare hands. There were plenty of much larger fish though.

Make Me A Supermodel

2009-04-04T17:12:00.004-04:00

(UPDATE: Make sure to check out the slideshow at the bottom of the page!)

This posting is a long time coming. This photo shoot actually happened in November 2008 but because of certain contract obligations I haven't been able to post the photos online until now. I was hired to attend and photograph the wrap party for Make Me A Supermodel Season 2.

The party was great and I got to photograph all the talent including hosts, Nicole Trunfio and Tyson Beckford, as well as a the judges Jenny Shimizu, Perou, Catherine Malandrino, Marlon and Cory Bautista.

The cast aren't allowed to attend the wrap because their identities still have to remain hidden until the show airs, so unfortunately I didn't get to meet or photograph them. But I have been watching the season so far and it seems like a pretty talented group!

A couple of the featured photographers on the show were there, but I can't show any of their photos because their episodes haven't all aired yet and secrecy is really important on these reality tv series. They don't want to give anything away before it happens.

But wow, it was a bit intimidating know some of the photographers who were potentially going to be at the party - some huge names in the photo world. There was definitely a bit of terror coursing through my body, saying "Oh god, these photographers are going to come in here, take one look at my set up and be like, ugh this guy sucks!" But I had very little room to work and not many options for how to light the photos. Thankfully I think only one photographer, other than Perou, showed up. He did critique the way the banner was hung, but that was not my choice :)

I wish a few more photographers did show up, so I could talk with them and pick their brains, but I was pretty busy working anyway so I didn't get too much time to talk. I finally did pack everything away and joined the party. Tyson was funny because I walked by him at one point and he said to me, "What's up cameraman? You lookin' sharp!"

Below is a slideshow of some favorites from the night. I took well over 500 images that night, I think it was closer to 1000. Highlights include Nicole Trunfio jumping in some massive high heels. As she was doing it, I was praying to myself, "Please god don't let her fall and twist her ankle!" She only did it twice and I got the shot and quickly got her to do some other poses. She was an absolute doll to work with though. Very fun and eager to be in front of the camera.

Also, Marlon and Perou playing around in front of the camera. First Marlon came in and stood in front of Perou, and Perou towered over him. I thought it would be funny since Marlon is a bit shorter, to have him peeking out from behing Perou.

The photo of the two EPs (executive producers) holding up their drinks for the camera was also a great one. I eventually got a chance to grab a photo of myself with Nicole and then one of my girlfriend and I with Tyson. But I think the best photo of the night may have been the last one in the slideshow...take a look and see. I don't want to spoil it.

Strictly Business...

2009-04-02T20:40:00.003-04:00

If you're a photographer and you're not watching American Society of Media Photographers' (ASMP) series of videos on good business skills, practices, techniques and methods, then you are missing out. Yeah, business is boring and the part that most photographers have trouble with. But lack of good business skills is also probably the many photographer's struggle to make a decent living. If you care about what you do and want to make a living doing it, well then you better learn to be a better business person. And this doesn't even really apply strictly to photographer's but rather it applies to all businesses.

I'm probably just a total geek, because I get excited to see these successful photographer's talking about how they have managed to stay in business, but mostly I think that I get excited because, the things they are saying are the things I am doing and it makes me feel good to know that I'm on the right track to make a long and successful career in photography!

The videos are found in their blog and so far cover topics including:

Negotiating

Pricing

Paperwork

Copyright and Getting started in photography (This one link has two videos posted there)

If there's one thing I can't stress enough to other photographers is to learn good business skills. I didn't realize this when I was in college, but learned quickly once I left college and started reading everything I could get my hands on that was about business and sales. I even grabbed a Honda sales manual that they use to train their employees on how to sell cars. Business is actually kind of simple in that the principals pretty much can be applied and adapted to any type of business including photography. I recently met with Chase Jarvis, one of the interviewees, at a little photo meet up. here in NYC. I mentioned to him that I'd rather be a bad photographer who can sell you a crappy photo than a good photographer who can't make any sales. Chase fully agreed and thankfully I'm neither a bad photographer nor businessman.

A few recent aerials

2009-03-29T21:57:00.006-04:00

I haven't had much time to keep up with the blog lately, so I wanted to get a couple new photos up. These were taken last week. The first is an aerial view of central park before the leaves start blooming. My allergies indicate they will be blooming any time now though.

This next one is a shot of the building I was standing on the roof for the
video I posted a while back. The tall skinny one is the building I was on. It's about 50 square feet up there, and it's so tall and thin that it sways in the wind.

There will be a lot more activity here in about two weeks when I get back from my trip to Mexico. I'm not sure if I'll be bringing the laptop down there. I may be able to do some blogging from the cell phone, but who knows.

Spinning my web

2009-03-13T17:16:00.004-04:00

I added a whole bunch of links to this blog today. Scroll down the right side to find them. Some are links to photo industry related websites. Other links are those of my friends that have websites. Finally, the last bunch of links I posted are to all the places you can find me online. I'm sure I forgot one or two, but if I remember it I'll post it. You might find me in some places you didn't realize. Go take a look at all the other content I've produced.

Also, if you read this blog regularly I encourage you to become a follower (also located on the right side of this page). And as always please leave any questions, comments, or concerns (broken link, etc).

Have a great weekend!

Attacked paparazzi style

2009-03-09T21:53:00.003-04:00

I went home this weekend to visit my parents. Since they both have new cell phones they needed a new photo of me for them so every time I call they can see my smiling face. I was attacked paparazzi style with their cell phones. They each took about 4 pictures before finally getting one that was usable (no blinking, not blurry or too dark). Luckily I had my camera at my side and was able to fight back, that's when I popped off this shot. It makes me laugh!

2 Portraits to share

2009-03-05T15:10:00.005-05:00

This morning I got my butt out of bed a little early in order to get everything I needed to accomplish finished on time today. Anyway, sometimes getting up and out there early with your camera can really help create some wonderful images.

My goal was to start at 7 am this morning. I got to the first job around 6:45 am. Since I had some down time before anyone got to work, I was chatting with some of the workers. One of them was asking about my camera, so I asked him to stand in for a quick portrait so I could show him what I am capable of doing with the camera. The light coming from the rising sun was still that golden color. Most of the area we were standing in was still in shade, so that's what I set my camera for. I knew I was going to use flash, so that also had the benefit of warming up the color of the light, which made it match the warm color of the sun and looked very natural. The sun was coming up from behind, so I put my flash off to the side on something laying around to give it some height and also that was sturdy so it wouldn't fall over. I fired the flash wirelessly by using my on camera pop-up flash to tell it when to fire. It only took two shots to get the image I wanted. I showed the photo to the worker on the back of the camera.

I also was pretty impressed with the photo myself. I like the moody contrast between the shaded areas. The warming of the flash worked perfectly. I probably could have just put a CTO (color temperature orange) gel on the flash head to get the same warming effect, but it would have left the shaded areas too blue. Setting the white balance to handle the shade made the shadow areas look more natural and grey.

A couple of his coworkers came over to check out the photo. They all liked it, and soon there was a suggestion put out to do a group photo. I obliged and set them up in a similar fashion only making minor changes to accommodate the larger group. Mainly that involved just zooming out to the 12 mm setting on the lens, setting the flash on something a little higher and sturdier (the top of a van). This was the third exposure for the group photo. One was a test shot to see how the lighting had changed, I think my settings had also slipped in the mean time, so I had to readjust to compensate for that.

You can see where my flash is effecting the photo. You can follow the line of light in the dirt back to where the flash was placed off to camera left. You can also see more of the shadow cast off to the right side of the photo.

The last photo you don't see any shadows from the flash, because there was nothing nearby for the shadow to fall on that was inside the frame.

Camera settings for the first photo were: f/11, 1/160th second shutter speed, 14mm, ISO 640 (forgot that t was still on that setting from a shoot the day before or I probably would have had it around 200-400), off camera flash at 1/4 power, and on camera flash at 1/32 power so that it was barely having any effect on the photo (I just needed it to trigger the remote flash).

And on the second photo: f/9, 1/250th second, 12mm, ISO 640, 1/4 power on off camera flash, 1/32 power on for on camera flash.

More wedding stuff

2009-03-01T16:02:00.003-05:00

Posted some new wedding galleries. Check them out (here) and (here). They've actually been up for a couple of weeks, so you may have noticed them, but I haven't had time to write about it in the blog to alert others who may not have noticed. Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

New York City from above

2009-02-27T23:57:00.003-05:00

I took a couple of minutes at work the other day to film this little clip. Nothing too special, just wanted to share with you what it's like to be on a roof over 60 stories high in Manhattan. You can see the Empire State Building in the very beginning of the clip. It's the tall building to the left. Once the camera starts to pan to the left, that is the Hudson River and beyond there is New Jersey.

Please note, it gets windy up there, and the sucky microphone on the cell phone picks up some of the wind, so you may want to turn the volume down. I don't speak in the video anyway.

I plan on taking more videos with the phone in the future and doing a better job at it too. This is admittedly kind of like snapshot quality, but it's fun to mess around with the video camera, since I want to start to learn to shoot video on a real camera.

A stroll through the city

2009-02-21T20:08:00.006-05:00

I was a little antsy today after sitting at home for the first half of it, so I decided to go for a walk with my camera in hand. I had been talking to a friend of mine, and he wanted to see some photos, so the pressure was on to actually take something worthwhile. I got a few keepers. So for your viewing pleasure, here they are:

This was the last one taken, but I liked it the most for some reason, so I'm posting it first!

I went out near sunset because I knew the light would be nice, as seen here in this picture of Canada geese (not Canadian).

I decided to try a few shots made purposefully out of focus. It's good to break the rules every once in a while.

The different levels of reflectivity drew me to photograph the detail of this park bench.

Redbull Snowscrapers

2009-02-08T19:50:00.009-05:00

The Redbull Snowscrapers snowboarding event went off on February 5th, 2009 as expected. One thing I didn't expect though was the extreme cold. The event kicked off at 3:30, but I'd just gotten home from work and was still thawing out from the day. I changed clothes, gathered my gear and set off for the LES - Lower East Side.

I got there around 5:15-5:30 and the first heat of the competition was set to start at 5:45. I got into a position to take some photos, which I ended up ditching pretty quickly, as it was the wrong side to be on for the majority of the landings (but it was Shaun White's preferred side to jump to).

There was a lot of activity in the area surrounding the 9 story ramp built from old shipping crates. There was a stage with some musical performances, there were a couple spots where the different sponsors were hanging out free shwag. There was this guy standing on top of a car w/ a videocamera.

They had a massive video screen set up for anyone who was unable to get a good view of the event. The sunset that night over the city was pretty cool. Between the different rounds of the event they showed some behind the scenes clips of what goes on during the tour. They also did a behind the scenes with one of the local bands who played that night. There were probably other things going on that night too, but I departed early, so I have no idea. If it weren't sooooo cold or if I were being paid to be there, I would have stayed for the whole thing.

Anyway here's a few photos from the event.

A rider drops down the ramp. They were using a tow rope to pick up the speed needed to execute the jumps. If you click on this photo to see the larger image, you'll see two guys on the lower right side of the frame. They catch the tow rope and somehow feed it back up to the people at the top of the ramp. You may notice this photo is in black and white. I shot both color and B&W that night. All the pictures were digital. I noticed the color wasn't really showing up so well, so I decided to shoot just the black and white and see what happens. Also, I figured, shooting at the ISO, B&W might have a slight advantage. Or maybe would even have more of an old black and white film quality to it. Since I was there for me, I was free to experiment.

Above is another B&W with a cool lens flare.

Finally, a little video from the Redbull site. Check out the rider who goes down with only one leg strapped in! Insane.

Google Alerts and Shawn Johnson

2009-02-06T21:36:00.002-05:00

This is kind of random, but Google Alerts let called my attention to this gymnastics web forum because "shawn pix" appeared on the page. It linked to a forum about Shawn Johnson, of the US Olympic team, and a gold medal gymnast. There were a bunch of pictures of her and a link to her flickr page. Maybe I can sign an endorsement with her to promote my photography website, haha!

Good Reads

2009-02-03T23:41:00.005-05:00

So I haven't shot anything lately worth blogging about, so I thought I'd do a list of links to some interesting photo related stories.

First up, my friend, Zack Seckler, editor of The F Stop, has a new article up about advertising photographer, Darran Rees. Rees does a lot of car photography, but tries to keep from being pigeon holed into that category. Also, there's some talk about CGI (computer generated imagery) and how it's effected the automotive photography industry.

The Rob Haggart, of A Photo Editor, has an on point article titled "Hello, I Have A New Post." When trying to sell (read: advertize) your own work to photo editors, reps, photo buyers, etc. you'd be wise to really sell the photos with a solid headline or a catchy, descriptive title in the subject line of the e-mail.

Then there was this, and although, it's not very photo related, there are pictures in the article. And how can pass up a good article involving Legos? I remember spending hours as a kid creating anything and everything my mind could come up with. My creations were much more intricate. These sculptures have a very minimalist feel to them. I usually hate minimalism in art (especially in music), but this piece had me cracking up! Thanks to my friend Heather for sharing it with me.

That's it for now. New photos sure to be coming soon, especially with the Redbull Snowscrapers event coming to town in just two more days! Also, think I'm going snowboarding myself w/ a friend this weekend, so I might share some personal road trip photos from that.

Redbull Snowscrapers - Feb 5th

2009-01-24T11:51:00.008-05:00

Redbull is rolling into town with an event called the Rebull Snowscrapers on February 5th, 2009. The event is a snowboarding and music showcase similar to Tony Hawk's Boom Boom Huck Jam from a few years back, just swap out the skateboards for snowboards and change the headlining band from Social Distortion to Anthrax.

The ramp is already under construction and I had a nice view of it from a building in Williamsburg the other day. I grabbed a couple of photos with my 120 mm lens. It was a great view. I almost wish I could sit up there with my 70-200 (or better yet, maybe a 300 mm or 400 mm f/2.8) for the event. I probably could, but I'd rather take in the show from up close. Plus I'll be hanging out with a couple friends.

There's a lot of fun stuff coming up. I may also be going on tour for a couple of shows with Lisa Hannigan, who used to perform with Damien Rice. She's making stops in Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC.

I also just finished up another magazine photo shoot out on Long Island, which reminds me I had some older assignments that I can now publish. Check them out under in the sports portraits portfolio on my website. The last seven images are new. It may be time to edit out some older material and reorganize the new ones. If you see anything you think should come out or be placed in a different order, either send me an e-mail or leave a message. Thanks!

Finally, on Thursday night, January 23, I spent some time up on a rooftop around the time of sunset to try to get a night shot for one of our clients at work. When they put in the request last month, I spent a few nights following what time the sun starts to set so I could get an idea for when I'd need to show up for my shot. I figured it'd be around 4:30 - 5:00.

I ended up showing up at about 4:45, which was still way too early. I sent my girlfriend a text asking her to google what time the sunset that night would be, since I didn't think to do it before I left my apartment. She replied with 5:01. So I did a good job of guessing what time sunset was. But the natural, fading sunlight didn't really balance with the tungesten lighting coming from the building until about 5:45. I'll have to keep that in mind for the next time I need a night shot.

Next time I have a night shoot, I'll have to see if the light balances again about 45 minutes after sunset or if it varies depending on the type of lighting in the building and other factors. I'm thinking it'll vary a little, but not much, really only making a difference if the building is extremely well lit inside.

A storm is on the horizon...

2009-01-20T17:50:00.004-05:00

...and it's heading my way - literally. No, this isn't your average snow storm or Nor Easter typical of this time of year. It's the new Blackberry Storm. I decided it was time to take the plunge and go into full time connectivity. With this phone, I plan on being available all the time to clients with e-mail and text messaging straight to my phone.

Aside from that though, I now have a virtual pocket-sized portfolio, since this phone can surf the web and I can pull up my web page any time. Now I'll never miss an opportunity to show off my work to a potential client.

Other benefits are that there's a voice recorder built into the phone. There's a 3.2 mega pixel camera for those times when I leave my professional gear at home but need or want to make an image. And, it does video. I know the photos are decent. I'm not sure about the video or voice recording modes. I wonder if I can use them to make some multimedia pieces. I only fooled around with the phone for a few minutes in the store on two separate occasions.

I did plenty of research, reading all types of phone reviews. Many of the complaints were about the lack of Wifi, but I don't really see that as too much of a problem. I hear the phone sometimes makes phone calls when it's in your pocket, and it sometimes does weird stuff w/ the touch/click screen if you try to hold it to your ear with your shoulder instead of your hand. I think the benefits for me far outweigh any downsides to the phone.

I can't wait to get it and try it out some more. I'm having it shipped form MA, so it's supposed to arrive on Thursday.

Got it!

2009-01-19T17:09:00.013-05:00

Well, the NYT may have gotten the photo I was really hoping to get, but I went back the very next day and got some great photos. After seeing the plane had been pulled from the water in the early morning hours, I was afraid I might have missed my chance, but luck was on my side and the plane was still resting on the barge right where it was raised from the river.

I went and checked my e-mail that morning. The previous night I spent sending out e-mails with links to my blog/photos to some newspapers and news wires and other photographers. I had a reply from Sipa Press, wondering if I had stuck around and gotten the plane coming out of the water. The e-mail said they believed the plane was still on the barge near the shore. I wrote them back saying I could probably make my way up to the same roof and get some more photos if they would like. A few minutes later I had a reply saying yes, please try to get some photos and send them along.

So I rushed to gather all my gear again and head on out. Below are a few more pictures that I got that day.

Thank god yesterday wasn't as cold as the day before. Plus, there was no waiting involved, since the plane was already above water, so all I had to do was show up and snap away. Once I finished up with the aerials, I went back down to the street to take some of the action surrounding the site. There were some small crowds of people snapping away with their cameras along the water front.

Also, from the ground level I was able to get some nice close up shots of the investig- ators who were working on the plane. You could see some of the damage to the plane. My favorite photograph was this final image of this one guy walking by the damaged engine of the air craft.

I've never worked with a Wire Service before, so hopefully the images will make me a few sales. I had great access to a spot nobody else had. I'm hoping that little advantage will help me out.

Darn!

2009-01-18T11:59:00.003-05:00

The plane came out of the water at about 1:30 AM this morning. Here's the story on the New York Times website.

Flight 1549 aerial photos

2009-01-17T17:23:00.007-05:00

The U.S. Coast Guard was set to remove the plane from the Hudson River today, but weather and the difficulty of the task at hand still has the plane sitting in the water near Battery Park City.

I heard that the plane was supposed to be lifted from the waters by a floating crane around 10 AM this morning. I had a good feeling that it would probably happen a little later than that, but I didn't want to miss this moment if it did go off as planned. So I set off for Battery Park around 8 AM this morning to try to find a good spot to take pictures from.

Well, the police were keeping everyone back again. There was no good vantage point from the ground. I tried asking a few buildings if I could get up on their roof, but had no luck at first. Most of the building managers had sent out memos to their staff to make sure no one got in.

I continued walking along the ground, until I came upon the wing of the plane. I framed it up with the police officer in in the picture to add some interest to the photo. Newspapers like to see people in their photographs. After making a decent picture, I went searching for a better view.

Well, I have my ways, and I found my way up on top of a building. No is probably the most common word I hear when trying to take photos. A good photojournalist never gives up, so I was pretty much thinking, "well if mom says no, ask dad." It wasn't the best vantage point, but it was pretty good. I had an excellent view of the cranes, but limited view of the plane. I could really only see the tail of the plane from where I was.

In the photograph above, you can see the tail of the airplane sticking above the icy waters. A tiny pedestrian (in the center at the bottom) walking along the river gives you some perspective on the size of the tail. And below, you can see the perch where some of the competition were able to get to. Apparently they were reports/photographers from the NYT and AP. Another photographer told me they were lucky enough to have staff members who live in the building. Not sure how true that is, but sounded believable.

Eventually, a second crane was brought in. This one was much larger than the first. The cranes came from NJ, from a company called, Weeks. It took two tug boats to move this sucker!He was moved into place right along side the first crane as seen here.

The boom are of the crane began to move out over the water toward the airplane, and I began to cross my fingers hoping the "pick" (construction worker lingo, for when a crane lifts something up) would happen that day. I had my doubts, and then I saw the arm swing back over to its starting position.

Well, it's about 5:45 pm right now, and crews are still working to get the plane out of the water. They're going to be working through the night. I was getting really cold though and it was time to head home. It was only 6 degrees today and it's a lot colder when you're up that high on a building. Here are some of the people who sat along the shore to watch this once in a lifetime happening! What a miracle no one died when it first happened. We have so many heroes to thank for that. The cops, the firefights, EMTs, and even some ferrie boats who all rushed to the scenes and helped aid in the rescue.