Had a chance to photograph the surfers at Montauk. Usually the light is not good for photographing surfers because it comes form the wrong angle, plus the bluffs create a shadow on the water where the best surfing is. However today the photo gods were in my favor and the lighting worked out. I hope you enjoy the photos.
Well it’s been a busy summer and not much time for photography. That’s the way it is in the Hamptons. Summer brings guest, barbecues, the beach and I still have to work. However I got a couple of photos I grabbed while driving on the North Fork of Long Island.
The Peconic River at Indian Island
Barn in wheat field
Recently I came across these two covers and thought it might be interesting to show the work I did in the 1980’s. Especially since I have been too busy with work, yard chores and having fun, to update the website with new photography. I have been working on some new ideas for projects but haven’t picked up the camera in weeks.
When I had a commercial photo studio the majority of the work I did was pretty boring, but occasionally I would get more interesting assignments. Recently I came across these two old covers for a trade magazine Beverage World. Beverage World was a trade magazine for everything related to the beverage industry. I photographic covers for them for several years. Both covers were shot with 4 X 5 slide film and strobe lights in the studio. All work was done in the camera there was no retouching.
On the beer cover we went through almost a case of beer trying to get the right head on the beer. It also required filtering the rear projection to correct color since the projector bulb is very yellow compared to the flash tubes. It also required three exposures one for each light source. The light sources were the projector, the light through the window and the light on the beer.
The fish in the bottle was much easier. I used a translucent background material and placed the main light behind it. Then a fill light next to the camera give the fish a little color. It took a lot of exposures to get the fish in the right places.
I hope you enjoy these. When I get some new work done I will be sure to post what I am up to. Thanks.
While I’ve been busy getting ready for the last two exhibits I took a little time to process a couple of black and white negatives in the scanner and photoshop. The first is an example of work I did a long time ago based on our conceptions of masculinity and femininity. The second an old negative that was never printed because it didn’t fit into any projects I was working on.
The first was taken with a wide angle lens to purposely distort the hands and hips in the image and challenge our concepts of beauty. The hand looks very masculine while the pose is very feminine.
The second is a classic pose used by many fashion and portrait photographers for editorial type images. I hope you enjoy them and take a little look into some things I did in the past.
My wife Ann is an extremely talented artist. She had a career as a fashion illustrator just after studying art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, (FIT). In recent years she has been studying Classical Realism. Below is a couple examples of her paintings. I hope you can come out and see more of Ann’s painters at the exhibit “People Places Things” April 19 and 20. Until then enjoy these images of her paintings. Thanks.
Sam the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever
Many photographers have a muse. A person who inspires them to create works of art. I don’t know if Sam qualifies as a true muse, but he needs a couple of walks a day. When he is getting into trouble around the house it is time to take hime out for a good run, and what better place then the beach in winter. Taking Sam for these beach runs gets me out of the house. On these trips I try to bring a camera. Sam loves to run, and will run back and forth on the sand. Many times he will run right into a photo ruining the composition with his foot prints, eager smile, or both. I have countless photos of Sam’s dog prints. One day it might be fun to have an exhibit of his footprints. I felt as a good assistant he deserved his credit, and wanted to share his happy face with others. Thanks
Yesterday March 2nd we had the reception for the exhibit at The Rosalie Dimon Gallery at The Jamesport Manor Inn. The threat of a major snowstorm hurt the attendance, but we still had a good turnout and everyone had a good time. The wine and artisan cheeses were exceptional and The Jamesport Manor Inn staff were excellent host. The exhibit is up until April 30th. If you didn’t make it yesterday because of the weather there is plenty of time to see the exhibit. Thank you to everyone who made it.
Sunday is the reception for the exhibit at The Jamesport Manor 3-5pm. They will be serving local wine and artisanal cheeses and all are welcomed.
These are the original images before processing in the post below. As can be seen here there is a real lack of detail in the shadows. Both images were exposed for the highlights and processed for the blacks. In traditional film the workflow was expose for the shadows and print for the highlights. When I was shooting both film and digital it would get confusing at times.
Below are two images that I recently captured at Montauk in Camp Hero, the park on the ocean side of the point. I was unable to upload the unedited images due to problems it created in the galleries. In both images the foreground shadows are very deep with what appears tom be little our no detail. Originally shot in color and exposed to preserve the highlights then processed in Lightroom, Photoshop and Nik softwares. Besides the obvious conversion to black and white I was able to extract a great amount of detail in the shadows. These are not a HDR images, (high dynamic range). HDR images are a merge of several different exposures.
