Most Recent Great Client: Angela Adams

North Haven, Maine, 2008 ©Russell Kaye

I've had this post lying around for a while - I was waiting to let the client show them first. Which they still haven't done but I have permission to use a few of the images here and I'm not sure if I mentioned this quote before - but in the previously-mentioned Sean Kernan workshop, Jay Maisel offered a quote that really summed up commercial photography for me:

"...while it takes a great photographer to make a great photograph, it takes a great client to actually use them."

I've been lucky to have a number of great clients. My most recent great client is Angela Adams. We had a blast of a shoot out on North Haven Island this summer - a series of ads of her new couture rugs and images for her "stock" files. I promised not to show the couture rugs yet but I wanted to show a few of the other images.

North Haven, Maine, 2008 ©Russell Kaye

North Haven, Maine, 2008 ©Russell Kaye

Call Your Representatives in DC Today

It is time to voice your opinion either way. Up or down. It's time to read about the bailout. Ask questions and get educated. Here's a good read by Jim Quinn.

It's time to call your representatives in DC.

Here's a quote from Ron Paul that sums it up pretty well for me:

"The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?"

Well do we? I believe pretty firmly in the free market. It's all the tinkering with interest rates to avert recessions combined with past bailouts that are coming back to bite us on the ass and it's gotta stop. We can stop now or after we throw $700 Billion at the "crisis."

I'm glad to see such outrage from normal Americans and not looking forward to the certain economic slowdown, but in the end, our kids we'll thank us if we have the guts to say no.

No Pop!Tech for us!

The big show here at the Camden Opera House next month is something called Pop!Tech.
Sandi and I were asked if we'd be interested in photographing it. It's a series of speakers at podiums- three days of 12 hour shoot days for $5,000 - not terribly fun work and not too terribly well-paid, but work nonetheless. (Some good speakers and attendees that I was looking forward to meeting like Singer John Legend, Artist Jonathan Harris, Fisherman Ted Ames, and Carl "Slow" Honore. There were rumors as well that Martha Stewart and Stephen Colbert would be attending. Oh I forgot, also Chris Jordan is performing (I do enjoy his images -he's the photographer that does the large pictures of trash and discarded cell phones )

We found out last night that we weren't hired. That's fine - no sour grapes here - they found someone who specializes in conference pictures. It seems they're going with a specialist named Kris Krug from Vancouver.

Two things about this. And again, please don't call me a sore looser - This happens all the time in our business and PopTech is certainly allowed to spend their hard-earned dollars in any country it chooses - these are just a few observations about our community and our times.

First, PopTech prides itself on being a forward-thinking, "carbon neutral" conference. In fact this year's theme is "The Human Impact." there's plenty of ways to offset KK's jetfuel - and besides his plane would come here whether or not he was aboard. I hope the caterers still get to bring napkins.

And second, I thought, let me Google him, he must be an amazing photographer and I wanted to see what set him apart that PopTech would want to bring him all the way to Maine instead of using not just me and Sandi but any of the other fine local photographers
(local web designer Jim Dugan has a list of only about 200 Maine photographers)

So I did Google Kris Krug to take a look at his work and instead of finding his pictures right away - I found a picture of Kris Himself in a moment of total wardrobe failure.

Kris Krug atop the Great Wall of China - from his own Flickr Page:

link to KK at flickr- KK wants to have shots of himself naked on top of all of the world Great Wonders,

Addendum: Pop!Tech did apologize for putting us through the painful way they make decisions and I 'm also thinking that Kris' stunt does merit an award for bravery - imagine how many years he could've gotten in a Chinese prison if caught with his package peeled open atop their sacred wall!

The 5d Mark II has landed

It's finally here- the still camera that shoots such high quality video that we won't shoot stills anymore. I can't wait to see how it changes my working method. I imagine the backend workflow for editing might be a bit time consuming- 7 seconds of video is 210 frames - imagine editing a few minutes of video looking for the perfect frame.

from Vincent Laforet's Blog:

"the quality of this video is so high - that I see you pulling stills from it - and not needing to shoot still unless there are special circumstances ( i.e. you need to run the image vertically on a cover… or you need to stop fast action such as sports)"

Vincent snagged a camera for the weekend and rented a helicopter and made a small-budget movie - he's promised to put up some video once he's figured out the bandwidth issue.

Check out his excitement over this camera - (and the 350 comments since Saturday afternoon) his post makes him sound like a schoolboy finding his his Dad's Playboy collection.

Damien Hirst Loves Art

Quote of the day by Damien Hirst who yesterday did an end-around on the dealers and galleries and took his work right to Sotheby's and cleared $178 Million:

"I think the market is bigger than anyone knows. I love art and this proves I'm not alone, and the future looks great for everyone."

Great article over at the Financial Times

x-ray man

from "Light, More Light" ©Bryan Whitney, 2008

I just got an invitation to Bryan Whitney's newest installation of x-ray photographs.
More information here

Object of Desire

Canon just announced the 5D mark II and it's certainly my object of desire for today. (Thanks, Jason.)

Full frame, 21MP, and 1080P video (and stereo audio) at 30fps for 12 minutes. And only $2700. Woot! I bet Chase Jarvis will even want a couple of them to go with his new D90

Read the Gizmodo review here