In honor of the fact that I saw the movie, didn’t completely follow it, and am actually not yet sure whether I liked it or not…but am STILL thinking about it…I thought I’d throw up a tiny slice of virtual inspired by the Maritime Hotel in Manhattan.
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Sarah and I met at SFO on the way to Europe. In 2006. And we haven’t seen one another since. Small world coincidences worked their magic, and she asked me to take some photos of her this weekend, which I was more than happy to do! The shoot basically amounted to our first (and only, I suppose) in-person catch-up session. The weather was typically summery for San Francisco….blustery, 60′s, and foggy. But we still had lots fun. And who knows, we might hang out again before another 4 years passes.
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Last night, I just needed to create an image. I guess it was a really rough week…
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It’s HOT in New York! But so much fun. From High Lines to Jersey BBQ’s to Broadway shows to Brooklyn butterflies, I feel like I got more than my money’s worth over the holiday weekend in the Big Apple.
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Beautiful work Dana. You have a girl, I’m happily married, so don’t take this the wrong way, but I would LOVE to meet you and talk photography one day…that would be the coolest!Hooray! I got my first image published this spring. A UK-based digital photography magazine called Digital Camera Essentials ran it in a recent feature of reader images. Pretty exciting. For all the looking I did in bookstores on both coasts, I never found a paper copy. Of course, I receive two of DCE’s sister magazines in the mail each month, but have never subscribed to DCE. iPad to the rescue! Now DCE has an app…that lets you download back issues…so I downloaded it at 2:30am PDT today. The actual image can be found in the opening slideshow of my main site, Dana’s Eye. Now all I have to do is prove that it wasn’t a mountain of luck by making it happen again!
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Malaya came out dressed to support from head to toe for San Francisco’s Gay Pride parade. After a morning of marching, she made time in her busy schedule to meet up for lunch. With mommy Heather. She looks more like mommy every day (see final pic).
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It took me a while to post these. I wasn’t really happy with them. Last weekend, I attended a Hip Hop dance competition called City vs City. It was like something out of a movie. If you have seen the movie “You Got Served” this competition really was just like the last dance scene in the movie (minus Lil Kim and the bright lights). It was an interesting day, because I pretty much hated everything I shot while I was there. But the day turned out to be a good thing for me. First of all, it allowed me to try to shoot something that I’m just not at all good at capturing. And second, it really was a good ego check. I had been a little less humble about my skills with a camera lately. Most of the photogs I know will agree that any sense of satisfaction with their images is completely ephemeral. I think I’d like to restate it: if you love all your pictures, you’re not shooting enough. Which has definitely been the case lately. So I went and stunk up the joint to the tune of 1500 images. These are some of my faves. I really want to thank KBev for inviting me to tag along and for showing me some of his tricks to capturing the best action, even though I wasn’t able to come close to emulating his great photos.
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Last weekend, a couple of friends and I made the trip to Boulder Colorado to participate in a workshop led by the incredible Tyler Stableford. To say that I love his work would be a huge understatement. I can’t remember in which magazine I first saw his work, but it was a few years ago, when I was just stumbling into photography. If you haven’t already clicked on the link above, you owe it to yourself to spend some time perusing his site. It is amazing.
What I wanted to get out of this workshop were some tips on working with clients and models, some of his processing secrets, and maybe some great shots. But Tyler was so great about taking time to understand where each of us were as photographers and encouraging us to push that boundary. For me, that meant thinking much more about the story that my image composition tells, how each element in an image either enhances or detracts from that story, and developing a process for arbitrating the two. If you cannot already tell, I loved it. I got so much more out of the weekend than I anticipated. And I’m planning to attend Tyler’s next workshop in Arches National Park!
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This weekend I met and photographed New Jersey-based recording artist Ant Grant and his producer, Tomas Ramos. Thanks to Akintayo Adewole, one of my closest friends and Creative Director of Akande Music, for making the introduction. Ant is a phenomenal subject and an even better guy. After the first couple shots, it was obvious he had done it before. In addition to being a recording artist, Ant is an actor, and was immediately comfortable in front of the camera. I could write a lot…a whole lot…about what I learned on this shoot. I experimented with shooting into the sun with high speed sync, was saved a couple of times by my new Lastolite diffusers/reflectors, pushed my flashes to the limit on a rooftop in 90-degree weather, stood on the ledge of a 5-story building to gey an intersection into the background, wished I had brought water (several times), pined for a Hoodman Loupe so that I could see my LCD in the blazing sun, fell even more in love with my 24-foot ETTL cable, and was VERY thankful that I bought the third set of 4 rechargeable AA’s. Actually, there’s a lot more that I learned on the photography side, but the best part of the day was meeting Ant, Thomas, and their manager, Darren. Yesterday was a timely reminder of how good it feels to be surrounded by like-minded Black males who are as passionate about their art as I feel I am about photography. A fantastic day. I’m looking forward to doing it again. And Ant does smile…I have pictures to prove it.
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Lighting geekery alert: I don’t typically get much into how I took a certain shot, but the mood struck today. Over the weekend, I received what I think will become one of my favorite accessories: a 24-foot long “off-camera” ETTL cord for Canon flashes. Basically, this means that I can place a flash that is hard wired to my camera over 20 feet away from me when I’m shooting. I didn’t even know they existed until Syl Arena mentioned it at a workshop I recently attended. So, for this image…I shot with a Canon 5D Mark II on a tripod & a Canon 24-105 Lens at 35mm, f/4, 1/200s, ISO 640. The key light, a Canon 580 EX II, was connected to the 5D hotshoe via the new cable and attached to a light stand at camera left, approx 12 feet from the subject. The key light was also gridded, gelled with a 1/2 CTB gel, and half-snooted (to prevent the wall from being illuminated by the key light).. all with Honl flash accessories (also worth their weight in gold). The key light was manually fired at 1/4 power. A second 580 EX II, gelled with a 1/4 CTO gel, was placed low, camera right to create the shadow on the wall and fired manually at 1/132 power. The whole thing took about 15 minutes of shooting and a little tweaking in Lightroom/CS5.
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This image of a woman lit by votives was taken in Stephansdom, a cathedral in Vienna, Austria. Although I was a bit conflicted about disrupting her moment of reflection and invading her privacy, it clearly wasn’t much of a deterrent. I took this image about 18 months ago but didn’t really think much of it until I was doing some image library housekeeping (which is never-ending) this weekend. Yet another example of something that really appeals to me now but not so much back then. Or maybe I’m just rationalizing the fact that I’m horrible at deleting images that clearly won’t ever see the light of day.
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People who have seen my work before know that I love to experiment with stitching. And HDR. And split-toning. So why not all three at once? For this image, I used a Canon 16-35mm lens. The final image is actually a stitch of 6 images taken while swinging the camera in a rainbow arc to create the severe distortion (pausing for each exposure, of course). Trinity Church stands in stark contrast to its much taller lower Manhattan neighbors. Its also surprisingly peaceful, despite its proximity to Wall Street; just entering the courtyard felt insulating. I worked a few blocks away in the late ’90s, but never set foot inside until this year.
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I don’t think I’d seem Lem since college. And I have only seen Sam once in the last 15 years. But this weekend the three of us got together in frigid Minneapolis. A gathering of the fellas to talk about…anything and everything. Both Lem and Sam were grad students whom I met as a freshman at Northwestern. They were great role models then and are even better ones now. Seeing Lem’s family (his wife was actually my freshman Chemistry TA) was especially fun, and you can see from the pics that none of his 3 kids is especially camera shy.
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We had the chance to see Raul Midòn perform at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts Theater recently. He is incredible. Take a look at this video to see how fantastic a performer he is. I also had never attended the SF Jazz concert series. Joshua Redman at Grace Cathedral (!!!), Bobby McFerrin (who amazed me in concert when I was 11 and I would have loved to see again), Maceo Parker, Booker T…you get it…the lineup is ridiculous. Damn! Just saw that the Bela Fleck show is sold out! Anybody got extras??
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This weekend I attended a lighting workshop with Canon speedliter Syl Arena. Actually it was much more a seminar than a workshop in that I took exactly zero pictures. But it was great for reinforcing some of the stuff that I’d picked up about lighting over the past couple of years. My kit doesnt come close to scratching the surface of what Syl carries in his gearbag. Probably never will. But that didn’t stop me from coming home and trying to rig up some relatively elaborate (with my normal lighting scheme as the baseline) setup to get a shot that I had been thinking about since seeing reading Joe McNally’s book The Hot Shoe Diaries. Both Syl and McNally are lighting savants, and if I ever thought either would come within 100 mouseclicks of my blog, I wouldn’t dare attach his name to this attempt in any way. The image didn’t live up to the lofty goals I had for it when it was just in my head. But this is what you get when you have two speedlites with no wireless trigger and have to bounce a pre-flash signal around a corner and down a hallway with the help of reflectors, mirrors, and foamcore. I definitely had it coming.
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Last weekend I met Dr. Vanessa Perez. Vanessa is a NYC-based professor of 19th and early 20th Caribbean Literature. The moment she said that my mind started racing to see whether I could come up with some author that might fit into that category. Not even close, so I kept my mouth shut and kept shooting. Vanessa wanted some headshots to gear up for (and maybe include in) her upcoming book: Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration: Narratives of Displacement. It turned out to be a glorious day in the park, so I shot way more than a few images. Vanessa was a fantastic subject and was even thoughtful enough to bring bottles of water for the shoot, which would have been a really nice touch for the photographer to have taken care of. Hmm. I can’t say that I learned much about Caribbean Lit, though. Maybe I’ll have to pick up a copy of the book when it debuts later this year. Congratulations, Vanessa. And of course a special shout out to Serene, my very capable assistant, for helping me with lighting, gear, and entertaining the talent.
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I decided to go mono in NY this weekend, and here is some of the best that I captured. As you can see, it helps to have great subjects.
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I was lucky enough to meet and photograph this BEAUTIFUL little girl over the weekend! Leila Louise is clearly adorable and one of the most patient 10-month olds I’ve ever met. Thanks to Lolomi and Dennis for inviting me down to San Jose to capture these images and for being so cool during the shoot. What made this shoot even cooler is that Lolomi is a longtime friend. It’s a real treat to see her building a wonderful family of her own. See you soon, Leila!
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I spent the middle part of last week in St. Louis, working and visiting good friends. Oh, and taking pictures. It was 85 glorious, sunshiny, humidity-free degrees for the entire trip. Here are a few from Wednesday’s 2-1 Cardinals victory over the Houston Astros, including an impromptu shoot of Casey done by the light of one bank of fluorescent bulbs underneath Busch Stadium. Good thing John showed up to take us home when he did, because, despite the class and restraint shown in these pics, Casey’s modeling “style” had the Cardinals staff in stitches. I’ve obviously filtered the results to protect the silly (that would be me and Casey).
An young autograph seeker waits patiently above the Cardinals dugout…
Hunter Pence preps for batting practice…and posing, I guess. Jackie (on the right, of course) and her mother, age 90, sit next to the Cardinals dugout and haven’t missed a home game in three seasons. I spoke with them for a few minutes, and they were just fine posing for a picture (or 5). John, the teams Assistant GM, actually knows them, although he doesn’t remember singing happy birthday to Jackie’s mother with the other 46k fans last June. I’m more and more impressed with the Cardinals fans and organization every time I visit.
Fro a second, I thought this dude was Rick Dempsey, former Baltimore Oriole and 1983 World Series MVP. Alas…nope.
David Freese, Cardinals 3rd baseman (Jackie told me who he was), made some kid happy. As Freese walked away, the kid’s dad asked, “Who was that?”
Fluorescent Casey…
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Just my favorite image from hanging out with friends in Washington, D.C. last weekend.
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This week, for the first time, I saw one of my sold pieces hanging on someone’s wall. I really love the piece, which can be seen in full here (before I divided it into a triptych for this client). It’s about 9 feet wide and almost 3 feet tall. I was so proud and happy to see it that I took about 100 pictures of it. Its really surprising how challenging it seemed to get a good image of an image. I am not sure that I’ve done it justice, but it looked great on the wall, and I was really lucky to get to take a look at it yesterday.
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This weekend I visited family back home in Maryland. Jordan, my niece (age 8), performed in the Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately its not pictured here…I missed her performance by 5 minutes. But I was able to spend a lot of time with the kids (part of which included Serene and I chasing them around the yard with a camera and an umbrella-mounted flash), my sister Nicole, and my brother-in-law Troy. It’s also a real shame that I didn’t capture the faces of the losing team after a NameBurst showdown. The ladies (Mom, Nicole, Serene, and Jordan) suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the guys (Karl, Troy, Joshua, and me). It wasn’t pretty.
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I know I should delete more photos. I know it. Dealing with too many at once slows down my machine, I can’t tag them all before filing them away, and literally 95 out of 100 never get seen more than once. But every deletion party has its rediscoveries. Moment’s when I wonder what I was thinking to have passed over a certain shot the first time around. Maybe I thought another in the series was better. Or it wasn’t what I thought the client might like. Or maybe I’m just in a different mood. While deleting 1200+ images last night, as each called out to be spared for the chance at a future moment of fickle fondness, I was stopped in my tracks by this portrait. The wall’s textures, the dramatic shadows, the highlights in Lisa’s hair…I love it all. For some reason, I moved right past it the first time around. It didn’t even make it to the second round. Totally unconsidered. Oh well. Today, its a winner. I can’t say that my mood always impacts what I like to look at, but what I just described happens often enough for me to know that it definitely plays a part. And that’s one of the things that I love about photography…one of its most powerful little secrets. Like any language, you can learn as much or more about the person behind the camera as the subject if you “talk” to their photos long enough.
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We were pretty excited about this weekend on the mountain. Especially when we got upgraded to an awesome 2BR suite upon arrival Friday night. Of course we made some time to goof around in the suite between long days on the mountain. The snow was ok too, although there were a few runs in whiteout blizzard conditions (not caught on camera). On the drive back to Vancouver, we were lucky enough to catch an incredible sunset…just moments before our Avis rental car decided to stop running, stranding us for 2 hours. A great weekend overall. So glad I brought the lighting gear. And nobody is a more patient and willing subject than Serene. As you can see, she is always putting up with (and sometimes contributing to) all my crazy ideas and really makes the images better.
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This week, another in a line of questionable (to put it nicely) things happened. Someone pretty senior at my company, at least two levels about me, saw me with my black skullcap on and said, “Why are you wearing that hat? You look like a hoodlum. You look like one of kids in this neighborhood.” In my mind, she made a total ass of herself. I’ve written plenty about situations like these and how I have handled them in the past. In fact, in my first month at the company, someone made what I considered an inappropriate comment to get a laugh (which they did). I wrote about that incident in my 365 journal. This time, I just raised my hand, as if to say ‘You’ve said enough. Really.’ But I actually said, “I’m going to choose to walk away and ignore the words you just said.” Her response: “Oh, was that a racist comment?” What I WANTED to reply was: “If you have to ask…you already know better. So yes, its clearly a racist comment. And if you’d like to talk about this any more, I’m going to need our VP of HR in the room. For now, I’m leaving.” But what I actually did was just repeat myself. I posted the incident on my Facebook page and got lots of responses…most of them sympathetic (including my sister clearly “winning” the sibling rivalry for worst workplace insult by sharing that her boss had once called her Buckwheat). But the most interesting comments were from those who seemed completely shocked that people at my job have such racist attitudes. “Where do you work?!?” was one of the responses I got. Well, I work in America. Where there is plenty of prejudice to go around. And I would bet that most of us have ready access to people who posses racist attitudes. That’s a fact of life. But racist attitudes are different from racist behavior or racist statements. The latter are not things I can tolerate in silence. So I say something at work. And I share on Facebook, in public, where coworkers can see how I feel. It helps me stay focused on my personal priorities and hopefully sets an expectation that keeps me sane and excited about showing up everyday. And hopefully it means that I don’t wake up thinking about it or worry about managing someone else’s comfort when I see them at the office (I woke up thinking about this on Friday and found myself going out of my way to make sure she was comfortable around me when I saw her later in the day…there is not enough space on the page to get into what I think about that phenomenon, but I will just say that its a big part of why all this feels mentally burdensome). But even after I came home, I was still thinking about it. So, I’m hoping a little photographic therapy is just what I need. As for the attitudes…behavior is one thing, but trying to impact racist attitudes is, in my experience, a far more difficult and emotionally taxing endeavor (as we saw during last year’s Professor Gates debacle), and I don’t even think about trying to do it at work. I just feel like I need to ask for the baseline level of respect to which we’re all entitled. And that does not include being compared, in any way, to someone’s notion of a hoodlum.
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Another photographic adventure this weekend. In true obsessive fashion, I brought my new light stand/umbrella combo to Boise. Yesterday, we went out into the same fields we visited last summer to take some dusk shots with the new gear. Then today, we took a drive out to an abandoned, rusted-out car to get some more sunset shots. Well worth it. The gear worked great. Especially the gorillapod. I have to give Natalie and Greg a special shout-out for that one. Thanks, guys. One downside to trying out new gear…it makes me crave even more new gear. A cruel cycle that never fails.
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Serene, Emma, and I made the quick trip up to Boise to get in some time with family and on the mountain. Emma wasn’t interested in having her picture taken, but nobody else seemed to mind. I was especially excited about taking some shots up on the hill with a camera that I’d never used before, the Canon S90. I’d bought the camera for work but hadn’t really had a chance to take a look at what it could do. All the outdoor shots here were taken with it, and I’m even more impressed with it than I was when I first read the reviews. Not sure it could sub for the G11, but its definitely a ton of capability in a really small package. I also took the liberty of adding a new panoramic of Bogus Basin ski area to the slideshow up above…a stitched image of 6 shots taken with the S90.
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I haven’t decided what I want to make of this new blog. Sometimes I think it should be a home for random thoughts, accompanied by pictures, but at other times I wonder whether confining it to professional shooting would be best. For now, I’m just going to keep it as general as possible. Speaking of being conflicted, I am definitely experiencing a little identity crisis about work. It is getting to be an amazing amount of incredibly interesting work, but the emphasis belongs to its ridiculous volume instead of its engaging nature. There seems to be lots of opportunity for me to take on a bunch more responsibility, but I am not sure about embracing that. All kinds of pluses and minuses and no answers. It reminds me of what a friend said once: “Do you want your ease now or do you want it later?” Yes.
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I was so glad to get home yesterday. 11 days on the road hasn’t been kind, and the work week is coming too fast. I haven’t even had the energy to deal with the things that I’ve been neglecting for the past three weeks. “Eventually” might be the answer to when I’ll clean the house, but its definitely not fit for dealing with other people.
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Marco Island, FL. There are so many things going on for us at AGBT. I have felt overwhelmed by all my tasks here, from demonstrating the instrument that I’ve worked on for a year to helping our CTO with his presentation. There has been MORE than enough to keep me (and dozens of colleagues) busy all week. Today something really cool happened. Actually two very cool things happened. First, we unveiled the instrument. As the instrument product manager, I was pretty proud as I watched our founder present. Second, and even cooler to me, is that I got to do some photography for the company. Not only that, I took the ONLY picture of the instrument in circulation. It happened after a PR request late last night. Between introducing the instrument at this morning’s demos, I had 10 minutes to set up and get a shot. I’m so lucky that I am able to do stuff like this at work. Last week, I also got to shoot some of our other products. Even though its been completely unplanned, I can’t believe that I’ve been able to so easily combine what I do with what I love!
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Today was a seriously long day. I am at a conference for work and feel completely delirious. My eyes are crossing, my feet are aching, and I cant help thinking that I’m just getting old. Man, I’m looking forward to getting through the week and back home.
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February 19. Today seemed to have a bit of everything. A very close friend, whose family has already suffered terribly, said goodbye to his brother. My heart goes out to him and his mother. I cannot imagine what they are going through right now. Three blocks down from the service, at 301 Lyndhurst Street, was the house that my mother grew up in…where I got to know my grandparents. They passed a few years ago, but I went by the house just to show Serene, take a look, and because with their graves in South Carolina, it was a bit of a way to visit them. The house is in horrible shape. I couldn’t help thinking that my grandparents would never approve of its condition. The backyard, where my grandfather used to grow award-winning vegetables, was a mess, even under the cover of two feet of snow. One of the things that I remember hating about that house was that it overlooked a massive cemetery. As a child I feared catching even an unintentional glimpse of it. It was scary. But yesterday, for some reason…maybe it was the blue skies and bright sunshine…or maybe because it seemed to be aligned with the other events of the day…I was comforted by the sight of that cemetery. Or maybe it was because it was the one thing that seemed unchanged after 15 years.
I also had a chance to visit my alma mater, Gilman School. My parents’ choice to send me to Gilman for grades 7-12 is still one of the most influential things they ever did for me. As I signed in at the front desk, I asked whether or not Mr. Holley’s (pictured below) office was in the building. No. But after taking 3 steps into the Common Room, I glanced to my right to see him talking with some alums. Mr. Holley was my Af-Am Lit teacher and my baseball coach and a fantastic role model for ALL the boys in the Upper School. I also got a chance to say hello to Mr. Schmick, the new Headmaster, who seemed perplexed by the fact that I had actually grown, Mr. Foreman, my very first teacher at Gilman in 7th grade science class, and Donell Thompson, from the class of ’91, now a teacher in the middle school. Even teachers whose classes I had never taken stopped to greet me in the hallways. Gilman is a such special place because of teachers, coaches, and mentors like them, and it felt so much like being at home.
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In a couple of hours, I’ll be gone ’til March, leaving a trail of smoke behind me. The first part of my trip is pretty melancholy, but I am very thankful to be able to support a friend and his family. Then on to much warmer weather (although work might literally keep me from direct sunlight). Tonight, I finally decided to try some smoke trails. I have been meaning to for months, and here are my first results.
Fraternal Twins
Burning Trio
Wafting
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February 15, 2010. I definitely enjoyed my weekend without work….until I boarded my 6am flight this morning. Sometimes its pretty hard to see how great my work situation is. Especially when its as busy as the last few weeks have been. I’m hoping that when February ends, the pace will slow down. But in the meantime, it looks like I need to do some fancy shootin’ for a big project at the office…and quick. How lucky could I get?!
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I spent this weekend in frigid New York City to celebrate our anniversary, spend some time with friends, and take a really, REALLY needed break from work. While Serene was grocery shopping, I negotiated a trashcan from the security guard to capture an HDR image of Lincoln Center. Lisa was kind and patient enough to put up with me blasting a flash in her face (at Panang, an upper west side restaurant), and Serene captured a great high contrast image of me that I couldn’t resist sharing.
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I was contacted recently by someone with whom I have a mutual friend about getting some shots done for her job. Turns out we went to undergrad together. And business school. But had never met. The shoot was a great time and the shots came out ok, too. If only all shoots could be so fun and feel so easy.
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Jason and Demet welcomed Ela in December. She is a beautiful, healthy girl, and I got to meet her for her first official photoshoot. Thanks J & D for giving me the privilege!
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Dana's Eye Photography
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