Recently

I recently shot these rings for a client; she's submitting her work to big book of rings. I think these rings are pretty cool. I didn't actually try them on, so I'm not sure if they're comfortable. But maybe it doesn't matter.

This composition is fun! I can see why this shot gets done over and over again. With rings and cookies and bread and frisbees and whatever else you can stack.

...but you really need more than two I guess.

Gems are funny things. I know the first thing anybody does when looking at a gem is wiggle it around. Which, of course, you can't do in a still photograph. So there's that. But also, they reflect light, they absorb light, they transmit light.

You could probably spend a lifetime figuring out the best way to photograph gems.

On Client Lists

Ray Massey on client lists: "He is able to offer a long and tedious list of impressive clients from around the world, guaranteed to send the most diligent art buyer to sleep."

What do client lists mean, after all? Are they merely an ego boost for the photographer himself?

Running

Took a step outside to do some more running shots.... I wanted to create charts in landscapes, to suggest performance improvement, challenge, increasing difficulty, that kind of thing. So far, people are having a hard time seeing the charts, so I s'pose I should be glad I didn't get to the Venn diagram.

Had superb weather out at Battery Alexander. It was hard to find stairs I liked, without a railing, going in the right direction, but Ron found them. I loved the gritty feel as well.

We had to delay the Bernal Hill shoot one day, because of rain. But the following day was a major show with all the fast-moving clouds. This black hill shot fairly heavily photoshopped, as I didn't get a figure/clouds combination that I truly liked, but all these other shots are not too different from the way I shot them.

And now...with actual people. I figured since I was at these lovely places with these great models I ought to get some pickup stuff. I felt totally out of my element, so that was good.

It feels pretty strange to work with available light. I wanted to just be loose, not even use fill. It's certainly uncomplicated, but of course you're limited in the things you can do. It was kind of nice, but I don't know if I want to make a career out of it. I actually prefer adjusting lighting obsessively.

I used strobe on these shots, and didn't worry too much about things looking natural. It's not really my milieu, after all. Natural, I mean.

Big thanks to models Sarah Hallas, Erich Wegscheider, assistants Jamey Thomas, Karl Nielsen, and location scout Ron Ison.

How to Be Successful in Advertising

As a freelancer, it's real easy to get off track. Keri Smith lays out a structure to help avoid that. "Ignore cool. Successful people do not try to be hip, they just do work that excites them."

Secrets of the Self-Employed

Exclusivity of Ideas

Further on whether or not ideas are 'mine'. I listened to Radiolab in December, in which Kevin Kelly described how multiple patents for the telephone were claimed in a short span of time. Same for light bulbs.

The gist of the Radiolab discussion is that, with technology, at least, once the conditions become right for the invention of something, many people will try to invent it at the same time. For example, to invent the light bulb, a bunch of things had to have been discovered already: electricity, partial vacuum, filaments.

So I'm thinking that this is probably true culturally, as well. Think zeitgeist. And photographically, think Cuba, porn stars, or the Bonneville Salt Flats.

For a long while I thought that all these similar photo projects showing up around the same time was just a bunch of people glomming on to one guy's good idea, but the Radiolab discussion made me think otherwise. Sometimes, the photographs show up pretty close together in time, and the projects are fairly long-term, which suggests that everybody got started around the same time. And of course, the coincidental manifestations of similar ideas often look very different.

These three images came out within a couple months of each other. I hadn't seen either of the others, and I'm sure they hadn't seen mine.

Rob Prideaux

Adam Voorhes

Brad Wenner

So these ideas appear in the window...this window which I think of as mine, but it's a portal, and what's beyond the windowframe isn't mine any more than you own the atmosphere outside your house. That atmosphere, I think, is common, shared amongst us all.

And that's where ideas live. So who owns ideas? No one.

Ideas own themselves. When I am working at my best, I am working in service to the idea. Are the props good enough for this idea? Does the lighting support the idea? Is this the right composition for this idea? Am I working at the right pace, am I aligned with the idea, am I listening well?

Which is where any kind of "ownership" comes in. I own my response to the idea, and that's pretty much it, but it's not small.