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.

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?

Petey. If the studio had a mascot, it would be Petey.

There is a chunk of nearly every day dedicated to writing, reading and exploring. When I launched this blog last July, it felt like a chore to keep up all my marketing efforts. Twitter. Facebook. The blog, and all the other places I’m active. Now, what it’s become is a morning routine. This isn’t a bad thing. I’ve read various articles and postings on the value of social media, and I can’t say that it’s brought me work, but what I can say is, it’s brought me discipline. It keeps me current with the rapidly changing face of commercial photography and offers up opportunities, if I choose to take them on. The web is a level playing field and that’s what I have loved about it since I built my first website in 1995.

This week, The Photo Argus featured D.A.Wagner photography and a D.A.Wagner Photoshop tutorial, both a direct outgrowth of my social medial efforts. Social media works. just not the way I had imagined it would.

It just keeps coming together.

Petey, here, seems to have a different opinion. But I beg to differ.