Happy Holidays 2011

OK, it's been quite awhile since I updated my blog, but I've been really busy through the fall and into the winter. Some of that work will make it's way here and / or my web site and portfolio. In the meantime , above was our family holiday card. I've done a holiday card with Christmas lights since I turned pro, and when my son came around it seemed like a logical extension to photograph him with lights. He's now 11 so this is number 12 in series. 

Below was this years Xmas gift from the wonderful Emily who does my heavy lifting in Photoshop....

Blast from the past

I got a call from a minister who works with military veterans and their families about getting a print of this picture for a fund raising auction. She offered to buy a copy, but of course I gladly donated a print. I'm happy to offer my support for our military veterans. I feel very fortunate that I didn't have to serve in the military or an armed conflict, and I am grateful for the service of others who have.

One of the interesting things about this picture now is, how they found it and me: It's been several, several years since I've had this picture out in public with my name attached to it, but somehow it got cataloged with google images. While it's fortunate in this case, it's kind of creepy too that the google database works as well as it does - in that I/we don't have control over our work, or what's associated with us. Not sure how I really feel about it.... other than being temporarily pleased to be able to lend a tiny bit of support to a good cause.

There's an app for that

I recently shot this for an editorial assignment.  The photography is pretty straight forward, this one isn't about that. It's more that I suddenly realized how much our phones are doing and will be doing. 

I'm typically an early adopter of Apple hardware: first mac was Powerbook 160, (that was System 6) had one of the first iPods, iPads and iPhones, but I pretty much use my phone to call people, play music and find places for the first time while driving, along with a few games for my son. I'm not a big App guy. But I thought this was pretty cool, it's a serious tool. You can now use your phone to take your blood pressure. The phone actually powers the device and if you need to keep track of your blood pressure it has a database of your history. I, thankfully, have normal blood pressure and pulse, so for me it's just another App I played with once. But seeing this brought it home to me that our phones really are turing into those tri-corders they had on Star Trek. I'm looking forward to Tea. Early Gray. Hot.

Slice of life

I recently got an email from Gallery Stock, the stock agency that has some of my images on files. They were looking for a backlit orange slice. We were in pre-production mode for another project and were shopping for stuff, so I added oranges to the list and spent an hour or so cutting up and shooting orange slices. Wish I would have had more time, but when I got the email -  in less that 24 hours there were going to be several people at my studio who were paying for my undivided attention expecting to see something other that orange slices...  Each slice was different would have been interesting to really investigate some options. I like this one though. 

Would you like to get small, really small?

I do some macro type work, I like to see my images larger than life size. A friend of mine, John Notte, has me way trumped in that department though. He's a research scientist for Carl Ziess, (Zeiss makes my Hasselblad lenses...) developing the "Orion Hellium Ion Microscope" to see really really small things. Think atomic level. Very cool and important work. He recently sent me some pictures, which I liked as abstract images; knowing what they are takes it to another place though - included in italics is his technical description. 

These 4 pictures came about after we were discussing sparklers around 4th of July...

"I had incidentally mentioned that the smoke from the sparklers burns into magnesium oxide which often has an amazingly perfect cubical form.  Here are some helium ion microscope images of the smoke that we made at the office a couple of years ago.  They are cubical because the Mg and the O atoms like to arrange themselves in an alternating pattern:  Mg atoms like to have O atoms for neighbors.  The O atoms like to have Mg atoms for neighbors.   And when they are hot, they have enough mobility to meander around until they come to their favorite positions, and then they cool off, and can no longer move.  Think of it like musical chairs.  In some cases, when the angle is just right you can see the crystal becomes almost transparent because all the atoms are lined up and our helium ions shoot right through.    Most of these images are projection images, really just showing the silhouette - but enough to convince us that they are cubical. "

Empty

I've been photographing empty containers. With these two I like the random quality of what's left in them, kind of a skin for catching the light

5 minutes at O'hare

Killing time at O'Hare with my iPhone, kind of mesmerizing and one of favorite pieces of music...

Light Bulb

From a recent editorial shoot featuring new hi tech products. Was fun to shoot an assignment in the same style that I've been doing on my personal projects.

Recycling

I've been saving things headed for the recycling bin for a photo opp. Besides being amazed and sorta pissed at how much stuff we simply discard after one use, I'm interested in the industrial design and forms inherent in our throw away packaging. I like the x-ray kind of quality to these from being entirely backlit. More either here and/or on my website soon.

A couple more from Suzanne's collection of vintage packages....

Details

I've long been intrigued by the engineering in packaging that delivers the products that we use. Simple everyday stuff. I've been collecting my own recycling for a couple months and started examining some of it. I like to shoot things as I find them, something about the chance element of how it arrived to me makes it precious and needs to be preserved. It's about looking and lighting, for me that's pure photography.

One thing worth mentioning as it might not be apparent on the web: These objects are tack sharp front to back, you can see every little thread, piece of lint, fuzz, etc. Those kinds of details are interesting to me. 

Tech Talk: To get these completely in focus requires several exposures, front focus, mid focus and back focus. When you change the focus, the image size changes - as you back focus the image gets smaller, at this size, around 1.5%. We used to manually adjust and resize each exposure, it's a tedious chore. Thankfully I found some software that will do it automatically, and it works well most of the time. I think that's pretty amazing that someone could write an algorithm to find the sharp detail in a series of different exposures, separate that detail from the soft areas, and then resize them to create one single sharp image. 

Another tech detail about my process: I shoot with a multi-shot back. Meaning, to create a digital file it's sampled 4 times. There are 4 exposures recorded to create a single image. A brief explanation: Imagine a grid with 39 million pixels, dots. To create color information there is an RGB filter grid in front of those pixels. Imagine a square that has a red, green, blue and another green filter, each the size of one pixel, then that grid is repeated to cover the entire sensor area. When you photograph something that is predominately say, blue - the red and green pixels don't record much, if any, information. The software has to interpolate what colors those red and green pixels are based on what's being recorded around them. There is software interpolation of the color and detail, that's the way all single shot CCD chips work. With multi-shot technology that filter grid is shifted one pixel at a time so each quadrant on the grid is sampled accurately. Since these is no software interpolation of the color and detail, the digital files are much smoother and have a much higher level of detail. A problem is the subject can't move, when we're shooting everyone in the shooting area has stay completely still. With a subject like these, the slightest breeze causes movement in the subject. It can be a patient process, but I feel worth it as the detail really is incredible.

There's more of these on my web site.

Fresh Fruit

Recently shot some fruit and then made mutant versions of them in Photoshop, ads for a cancer drug. Finals with type will be on my web site in "awhile." Wanted to show one of them off while they're still fresh. Was a fun project, finding fresh strawberries in April in Boston was a challenge though. With the client's deadline, we were a few weeks early for peak season. Actually found a food stylist in LA to pick some for us, even then was tough to find our hero strawberry with fresh looking green leafy tops. Had literally hundreds of strawberries in the studio, smelled like a fruit stand for a few days. I think we fared pretty well with these two. The mutant version below is a combination of a 3 different strawberries.

10s

These are from an editorial project I recently completed, options for the cover image. The magazine isn't out yet so I'm keeping details mum for now. Except to say was a lot of fun, and using a jig saw to cut frozen meat is not a good idea.

A friend stopped by the studio while we were figuring out how to pull a vacuum over the 10 forms. He's a retired Orthopedic Surgeon, remarked that my job seemed like a lot more fun than listening to people complain about back pain... I pointed out it probably doesn't pay as well, but made me realize that, yeah, I do have a good job.

End of March

One of my lucky luxuries is an indoor garage space at my studio....

Old Fashioned

I've been slowly shooting pieces of Suzanne Sease's vintage packaging collection, this was yesterday's effort...

Squirt Hockey

I spend a good chunk of my weekends watching a Squirt level hockey team, that's 9-10 year olds. They play in a local weekend tournament every year, since we have several games in a short time span I rent equipment and take pictures of the kids. (My Hasselblad multi-shot camera isn't appropriate for this kind of thing.) I thought the above shot of the coaches kid was terrific. That badge of honor on his butt: give it your all, get knocked down, get back up is what it's all about. Below is my son displaying his inherited perfect form....

Liquid Market

I recently had to find and photograph a hornet's nest. I didn't even call on a prop stylist for this one. To my surprise in our initial research I discovered there is a liquid market in hornets nests on ebay. I hadn't seen one of these up close before, they really are amazing objects. Kind of smell though.... like feet that have been in shoes for too long....

HIgh Adventure

I am a fan of Platon... check this out.

Starting Over

I found this clipping that my dad saved, he died last year. I was going through his stuff as an end of the year / era ritual. This newspaper clipping is an editorial that his father, my grandfather wrote. While I would have liked to have found something more directly attributed to my father, this seems appropriate for a broader view of things. I don't know specifically when it was written, I'm guessing mid 20th century. Grandpa Peterson was a pretty bright guy. Both he and my dad were men that attained a respectable degree of intellectual accomplishment. Grandpa was a chemist, Dad a judge.

Both of them spent their childhood summers working an Iowa farm - without mechanical aid, with horses and their own muscles. Farm people of that era were pretty straight forward, self reliant, no nonsense types. Excruciating work, with or against the forces of nature provides a very "real" world view. That sense of telling it like it is - comes through in Grandpa's editorial. While the specifics of what he's citing are no longer current, the concept certainly still is. Click on it, it's worth reading.

It's a good place to start my new blog.