Fresh Beets © 2012 D.A.Wagner

For years I’ve entertained the idea of pursuing a line of kitchen art. I even toyed with a shop on Etsy for a while called Kitchen Graphics. Now, after shooting thousands of personal photos of fruits and veggies, both in the studio and out, these berries,hot peppers, sprouts and assorted salad fixin’s are available online as museum wrapped prints from Somerset House Fine Art in their Kitchen Decor category. I have them in my kitchen. Why aren’t they in yours?

I (very loosely) use Richard Avedon’s series of Nos as a guideline to capturing my produce - “No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narratives.” This allowed Avedon to get to the raw unadorned beauty of his subjects. I apply this approach to appliances and products as well. (Is there no shame?)

Well, it had to happen sometime.

Gold and Silver Wristwatch - Detail

(I can’t say who the client is, but it has something to do with telling time.)

Shooting virtual, 360º objects is one of those skills I honed in another lifetime. I’ve shot 360s of corporate jets, firetrucks, model trains and couches, but never 360s of small, highly reflective (basically mirrors, really) jewelry. And shooting a mirror (yes, I know, it’s a watch, but you get the point) as it rotates  is a bit of a challenge. It means lighting that doesn’t burn out, or reflect me, my camera or the studio. This recent assignment meant shooting more than a hundred of them, and well, let’s just say it was work. (On the upside of this, I’m still in shock that I now have a remarkable 10,000 square foot studio and this shoot was almost a relaxing event. Really. More details on the new studio to come…)

In the end, the client was gracious and loved the results.

And me? I loved every minute of it.

D.A.

P.S. Hat’s off to Jim Galvin and Jim Anders for their help – above and beyond the call of duty. You guys are my heroes.

Since I’m sidetracked right now with teaching my classes, this blog post is dedicated to my design students.

It’s the cold war. It’s the year after Sputnik was launched by the Soviets.

This 1958 film saluting the stylists of the automotive, industrial, interior and architectural design industry reflects the American obsession with consumerism and the future. It proposes that the American dream is here now. The opening features Finnish born and French educated Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center in Michigan, bathed in the light of a sunset before fading into a teenager picking up a Swedish designed Ericofon–a phone that Bell Telephone (today’s Verizon) aggressively blocked from import to the U.S. market for years. Ah, yes, the American dream of “fifties atomic-age minimalism.”

With it’s quirky, theatrical, dramatic, lighthearted, sometimes angelic and very 1950s music soundtrack, the film is filled with hundreds of wonderful designs – some of which our parents or grandparents discarded quickly after purchase, some which we still covet today.

This is only part 1 of American Look. You can find part 2 and 3 at the archive.org web site. Archive.org is one of my favorite places for ephemera.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to test out a couple of Broncolor’s Scoro A4S packs. These pricey, high-speed,computer controlled flash units (about $28,000US for two packs and two heads) are unbeatable when it comes to short flash duration. It froze everything we shot as crisp and sharp as one could expect and, no, I’m not going to make any freezy jokes. As always, turning many of the images sideways and upside down made for the most interesting splash results. And I couldn’t resist throwing in (quite literally) some of the toy figures sitting around from recent jobs.

Lemon Drops

It was a fun day in the studio. Thanks to Steve Warren, my assistant, for the extra Canon 5D to shoot the behind the scenes video. And special thanks to Tim Hawkings at Cheeky Little Monkey for making it all happen.

D.A.

C.J. Pascoe’s Sandusky, Ohio photography studio in the late 1800s

Light

Before 1880 being a photographer entailed a fair amount of knowledge in chemistry, science and physics in order to make a camera, mix up a batch of emulsion (film), and develop and print the photos. Light was almost exclusively relegated to the great outdoors and those privileged enough for studios with oversized windows and skylights. The alternative was controlled explosives. Still life photography was mostly a daylight hours event. (Hey, I’m a still life guy, so this is my take on it.)

And although Humphry Davy invented the very first documented light bulb around 1800 and Englishman Sir Joseph Swan invented and patented the first incandescent light bulb in 1878, it wasn’t until 1880 that Thomas Edison developed his light bulb with a brighter, longer lasting filament. Even today, one hundred and thirty years later, we still use that basic design (fluorescents, however, are taking over). Edison’s light bulb and his concept of an integrated system of underground distribution of electric light into private houses made his invention successful, starting with Pearl Street in New York City in 1882.

Photography

Coincidentally in 1880, George Eastman of Kodak fame, introduced his first “dry plates,” a precursor to ready-to-use roll film and the hand held, pre-loaded Kodak camera (originally with 100 exposures!), which eventually made photography available to the masses, lessening the amount of technical knowledge necessary to take photographs to nearly zero. You bought the Kodak camera. You took your photographs. You sent it back to Kodak for developing and prints. (Oh, the horror! Now everyone can do it.)

Convergence

It was at this point in time that amateur photography started to evolve into a nerdy hobby, eventually transforming basements and bathrooms around the world into darkrooms for developing and printing everything from family portraits to pornography. Some of these amateurs became notable professionals, like Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky (the Annie Leibovitz of his day), introduced in my last posting.This convergence of these inventions eventually led to the widespread use of controlled artificial lighting in professional photography and the emergence of the motion picture industry.

Note: I’m skipping over my personal hero, Harold (Doc) Edgerton (with all due respect), the inventor of the modern pulsed xenon strobe, because that’s a different story involving M.I.T.

Anyway, this history lesson is now over.

But on a personal note, what is all this griping about digital cameras, Photoshop and computers making it easy to be a photographer? It makes it easy to take pictures.

Being a photographer? Now, that’s hard.

Embrace change.

C.J. Pascoe’s Sandusky, Ohio photography studio in the late 1800s

Light

Before 1880 being a photographer entailed a fair amount of knowledge in chemistry, science and physics in order to make a camera, mix up a batch of emulsion (film), and develop and print the photos. Light was almost exclusively relegated to the great outdoors and those privileged enough for studios with oversized windows and skylights. The alternative was controlled explosives. Still life photography was mostly a daylight hours event. (Hey, I’m a still life guy, so this is my take on it.)

And although Humphry Davy invented the very first documented light bulb around 1800 and Englishman Sir Joseph Swan invented and patented the first incandescent light bulb in 1878, it wasn’t until 1880 that Thomas Edison developed his light bulb with a brighter, longer lasting filament. Even today, one hundred and thirty years later, we still use that basic design (fluorescents, however, are taking over). Edison’s light bulb and his concept of an integrated system of underground distribution of electric light into private houses made his invention successful, starting with Pearl Street in New York City in 1882.

Photography

Coincidentally in 1880, George Eastman of Kodak fame, introduced his first “dry plates,” a precursor to ready-to-use roll film and the hand held, pre-loaded Kodak camera (originally with 100 exposures!), which eventually made photography available to the masses, lessening the amount of technical knowledge necessary to take photographs to nearly zero. You bought the Kodak camera. You took your photographs. You sent it back to Kodak for developing and prints. (Oh, the horror! Now everyone can do it.)

Convergence

It was at this point in time that amateur photography started to evolve into a nerdy hobby, eventually transforming basements and bathrooms around the world into darkrooms for developing and printing everything from family portraits to pornography. Some of these amateurs became notable professionals, like Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky (the Annie Leibovitz of his day), introduced in my last posting.This convergence of these inventions eventually led to the widespread use of controlled artificial lighting in professional photography and the emergence of the motion picture industry.

Note: I’m skipping over my personal hero, Harold (Doc) Edgerton (with all due respect), the inventor of the modern pulsed xenon strobe, because that’s a different story involving M.I.T.

Anyway, this history lesson is now over.

But on a personal note, what is all this griping about digital cameras, Photoshop and computers making it easy to be a photographer? It makes it easy to take pictures.

Being a photographer? Now, that’s hard.

Embrace change.