Category Archives: Commercial Photography

Jun 26 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Craftsmen, Lighting

High Speed…

HiViz electronic MT2

HiViz MT2 ©2012 Ken Lavey

I do not fear exploring electronic devices that do not work. I open them the way a surgeon might open a patient. Slowly, step-by-step, piece-by-piece, I remove the parts, taking careful note of plugs, screws, colors and shapes. I once disassembled my laptop and replaced the logic board, which meant complete disassembly. And, with the exception of two screws, reassembled it to working condition (I never did find out what those screws were for).

I’ve also built computers from the ground up, purchasing components and creating a fully functioning workstation. And, although it’s been awhile now, I’ve just finished assembling a light and sound trigger for high-speed photography from a bag full of resistors, capacitors, potentiometers, and microchips.

HiViz MT2 components

Components mounted and ready for wiring © 2012 Ken Lavey

The kit came from HiViz and, so far, it’s a brilliant little device (we’ve only done preliminary tests and it’s working quite well). And, with the help of my SVA intern, Ken Lavey, I (we?) even found a minor wiring mistake that kept the light trigger from working the first time around (Ken was a great second pair of eyes).

Soon it will be time to play, splash water, to throw food, toss toys and miscellaneous paraphernalia in front of the camera to see what happens. And, maybe I’ll step to the next abyss and get some Arduino controllers and learn to write code. I could do that.

More to come…

HiViz MT2 completed and in the box ready for high speed photography

Completed HiViz MT2 “waterproofed” in plastic wrap © 2012 Ken Lavey

Mar 08 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Lighting, Personal Photography

Risk Becomes Technique

Getting Ready ©2012 D.A.Wagner

It only made sense that I started out assisting fashion guys, since I attended the Fashion Institute of Technology. But through a series of fateful events, I ended up assisting the brilliant photographer and lighting master, Ben Somoroff. Ben is one of the photographers whose career and vision blossomed under the tutelage of Alexey Brodovitch of Harper’s Bazaar fame. Brodovitch also influenced the likes of Art Kane, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, to name just a few of the ground-breaking photographers in that elite circle.

Ben shot fashion. He shot still life. He directed television commercials. He was a master craftsman and I was his apprentice. And while he was inventive and clever, patient and thoughtful, he was also easygoing and immensely likable. Remarkable traits in an incredibly challenging industry (polite words for stressful). During my time with Ben we worked with Milton Glaser, Walter Bernard and Gael Greene from New York Magazine, and Madison Avenue icon David Deutsch, who designed my first business cards because I asked (I didn’t know who he was). I was sponsored into NABET (National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, a union) by Mel Sokolsky’s studio manager (and former B&W printer for Avedon), Frank Finocchio, so I could work with Ben on TV commercials as a prop man. Ben taught me so very much over those years and I’m still learning today. I owe him a debt of gratitude, but regrettably can not give it. Ben died in ’84.

I never saw Ben loose his temper. Not even when I accidentally ruined a batch of film by washing it in near boiling water. He wasn’t happy, but I didn’t get fired either. I was a pretty lucky kid. Over the years, Ben has increasingly come to mind in my work. I now see and think in ways that allow me to take bigger risks. Ben did that all the time, he went with the flow. Now I find I’m doing that, too, and with a bit of patience as well. Some risks fail, fall short or look routine, while others succeed.

Eventually the risks become technique. Technique becomes style and style becomes vision. I’m taking even more risks these days, because even now, there’s so much more to learn. So why not reach out and explore?

The heydays of photography may be long since gone, but the challenges of reaching for greatness never change. Be complacent or take risks. It’s a choice. I’ll keep walking on that ledge to see what happens.

And if I fail or fall short, I’ll get right back up and try again. Boy, have I been there before.

Feb 04 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Personal Photography, Photography, Portfolio

A Hasselblad Masters Finalist. Who, Me?

2010 Hasselblad Master Competition D.A.Wagner

The Hasselblad Masters Competition Web Page

I’m humbled. I’m a Hasselblad Masters Finalist.

No, really, I am. Some time around the middle of last year I entered the Hasselblad Masters Competition and promptly forgot about it.

Then I got a “congratulations” email from Hasselblad. And, thinking that everyone who entered got one, thought nothing of it until I went to the website and discovered I’m in an elite group of 110 finalists selected from of a field of over 2500 entrants. Hey, I have better odds of winning this than I do playing the state lottery, where my chances of being struck by lightning are better.

The winner gets to work on a “Masters” project supported by Hasselblad.

Cool.

Click here to vote for my photos. The voting process is wonky to say the least. But once you’ve muddled through, They fixed the voting and now it’s a breeze, so please give me five points if you don’t mind. It’s appreciated. You have until October 31st, 2011, which has to be one of the longest voting windows ever for a photo contest.

Now, get out there and vote.

Sep 16 1 comments
Brain, Commercial Photography, Thinking

Creative Thinking And Hard Work

Simply Thinking...

During one of my recent web dalliances to read more about how photographers, or humans in general, are creative, I found a 2004 paper published in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review called, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity by Arne Dietrich, who is at the American University of Beirut, in Lebanon. He’s actually a very funny Ph.D. specializing in the neurobiology of creativity who writes about himself in self-deprecating fashion. His papers are however quite serious and he is well respected.

As it opens, he writes that creativity includes two significant characteristics: The production of work that is “original and unexpected” and “useful.” As a photographer, I understand original and unexpected, but useful? I’m not to sure how useful photographs are versus, let’s say, an artificial heart valve in the shape of a pretzel.

He goes on to say that creativity requires the ability to maintain a decent attention span (that made me nervous). If our brain can store what we’re thinking long enough so that a creative solution – those original and unexpected and useful thoughts that solve the problem at hand – can evolve, primarily in our prefrontal cortex, we have the ability to be highly creative.

Now, what I was going to say?

Oh, yes. I love his description of creative thinking – “novelty production.” That sounds like someone who invents cheap ten cent toys you might find in Chinatown, or some very clever photographers.

Anyway, he continues to write that research studies show “creativity goes beyond the rational” and there is a link between creativity and bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He references that with a half dozen studies but then in his next sentence, counters that with other studies that demonstrate, “creative work can also be the result of laborious trial and error.”

Now, that sounds like photography.

Aug 31 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Dolls, Props

Playing with Dolls

Doll Splashing down into water

Making a Splash

I grew up playing deep-sea diver, cowboys and Indians, and playing war games. My parents encouraged it, I don’t know why. I would have never called dolls I owned “dolls” but soldiers and warriors and my time was spent setting them up to kill the bad guys.

So here I am, years later, still playing with dolls, no longer playing war but instead tossing them into a tank of water, adding bubbles and watching what happens over and over again as I capture a fleeting nanosecond of time with my camera at different heights, at different speeds and stuffed with different amounts of lead shot.

This could just be the greatest job in the world next to being the guys out there mapping the Titanic in 3D.

Jul 12 3 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Food Photography, Lighting, Portfolio, Props, Twitter

Twitter Works. Really. It Does.

Dumpling in Oil

Gyoza in Oil (After Dennis Dunbar)

Twitter works. Maybe in mysterious ways, but it works.

Since I started tweeting a little less than a year ago I have been asked to write for Leaf Digital, Photocrew, The Photo Argus and other photo communities and blogs. I’ve met some pretty interesting photographers, retouchers, assistants and art directors. Many are just people I follow or who are following me, and then there are the dialogs that have turned into great friendships.

Take for example, Dennis Dunbar, a terrific retoucher from L.A. He’s a founding member of UPDIG (Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines) and is an ever-present constant in the world of Photoshop retouching known for his tutorials and lectures. Out of the blue one day, I find Dennis is following me. I check out his creds and start to follow him. Pretty standard stuff until we start DMing about each other’s projects and he suggests we work on a personal project or two. Okay, Dennis, I’m in.

I’ve got this series I’m working on with water tanks and there are challenges to deal with. Water is always cleverly unpredictable, no matter how well planned, or there can be food particulate in the water, and then there are a lot of foods that are buoyant. Water is a challenge. Fun, but a challenge.

Dumpling in Oil (Before Dennis Dunbar)

Gyoza in Oil (Before Dennis Dunbar)

Photography with a creative team is always exciting and now Dennis was coming in fresh as a key player, so there would be a new dynamic with the results. I had worked out a stylized shot of a single dumpling being fried in oil with stylist, Corey Earling. Couldn’t really shoot it in boiling oil (I guess we could have, but the idea of working with boiling oil seemed kind of dicey), so we gelled the lights on the water, pinned the dumpling into the strainer and connected a couple of airstones to a fishtank pump for the “boiling” oil. So far so good, but not good enough. As always, I wanted more out of this shot. So I upload the select dumpling shot with notes and suggestions onto my FTP site for Dennis. What followed was a truly collaborative dialog of exploration and expertise, what proved to be an amazing transition from original to final.

3000 miles separate me and Dennis, yet we were able to meet, collaborate, communicate and produce an effective final image.

Hey, Twitter, what else you got for me?

Mar 18 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Food Photography, Portfolio

A New Quest

Akamaru Modern Ramen at Ippudo, NYC

01/09/2010 - Akamaru Modern Ramen at Ippudo, NYC

I put an ad up on Craigslist in February for a food stylist and much to my surprise, there were responses from 2 chefs: Corey Earling, the third place runner up from Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen (season four) and Rob Endelman, a wonderful natural food chef and educator.

These responses plus responses from 5 other established food stylists and one dessert chef left me stunned. I never expected such great talent to respond to my posting.

This winter I started making my own udon and ramen at home. I’d been eating out regularly at Setagaya Ramen, Rai Rai Ken and Ippudo, each within a few blocks of each other, and each bowl of ramen is so very different in taste and appearance, it intrigued me. So it was bound to happen; this all started to migrate to my home cooking and somewhere along the way, I got the notion to shoot food and thus, the posting on Craigslist.

Everyone is so thrilled to be collaborating toward a vision and style that expands each of our individual books. I’m really looking forward to this new endeavor.

And I love the fact that digital food photography isn’t something that can be done with 3-D.

Mar 02 1 comments
Back Pain, Commercial Photography

Back Pain… Only a Memory

Injury and Recovery, Back Pain

After a lifetime of back pain, I am now starting my third year of life, pain-free. A little over two years ago, Dr. Doug Schottenstein, treated my chronic back pain with a facet block. The procedure is called radiofrequency (RF) rhizotomy and basically, he just disabled the nerves and the pain stopped almost overnight.

As a photographer, this was a lifetime of debilitating pain that was relentless and constantly affected my ability to work. Simply breathing could feel like a raw nerve being poked with an electrical cable and it got worse from there.  I worked in fear, always wondering when I would have my next episode of raw, knee buckling, back pain.

It’s gone now and I’ve nearly forgotten what it’s like, except for the occasional reminder of a twinge.

That’s okay. It’s humbling instead of debilitating.

Feb 09 2 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Food, Organic, Slow Food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio # 11

A Rutabaga and a Pair of Diamond and Green Amethyst Earrings Set in Gold

My fruits and vegetables have taken on a new purpose as props for expensive jewelry. I love the earthy quality of root vegetables against the gloss and glow of gemstones set in precious metal. And in this case, I just love the word – rutabaga. I think Bugs Bunny used the word once in a football cheer.

What’s next? Now I’m looking for artisans with hand made jewelry. And maybe asparagus, but that’s out of season. What looks good with asparagus anyway? Tiaras?

Feb 02 0 comments
Business, Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Marketing

What Do You Sell?

Last Stop Coney Island

I don’t know if there are any formulas, books or websites for quitting, like there are for starting businesses. I didn’t see, “When to Quit Investing in Your Losing Business Venture,” on Amazon.  But I did a search for those words and what did I get? Mostly I found links to information on starting a business, finding or borrowing money, entrepreneur guides, articles on bootstrapping and little about quitting. It appears as if quitting isn’t a really popular topic.

There was one story.  It’s an April, 2009, BusinessWeek.com article called, When It’s Time to Shutter Your Business. In it, Joe Kennedy, author of The Small Business Owner’s Manual, says, “maybe it’s time when you’ve already unleashed your best products and ideas into the market and they did not work out well.” How can that apply to an industry where we essentially make customized solutions and not “products” as defined by a consumer market?

What would be our best products and ideas? Our last job? Our last good job?

It shouldn’t be a job at all. It should be ideas. The images we produce as examples of our skills, the ones that we exhibit on the web or via other promotional vehicles, to introduce potential buyers to our interests should go far beyond looking like a product we sell. They should represent ideas, motivation, our interests –  because what we create is so deeply personal, just showing samples is not enough to create interest in you. Shoot, shoot and shoot more until there’s a body of work that says, “I have ideas, good ideas.” It’s work, planning what you shoot and what you show and what you don’t show, but then a great body of work says volumes about who you are.

We don’t really sell photography, we sell trust, creativity, reliability, insight, and let’s not forget quality. If you’re not selling that, you’re just selling pictures. These days, you can get those anywhere.

“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War