Available light

This is a "robot" that performs surgery. Boston Magazine ran an article about innovators in the Boston area and BU Medical Center has one of these Da Vinci machines. I don't do lots of location work, at one time I did, but this seemed appealing to me so I accepted the assignment. I scouted the place a few days in advance, got a tour of the operating rooms and places where we could photograph this thing. I was surprised how small and cluttered operating rooms are, this is a big machine, like the size of refrigerator. Then the good part was, we could have it for one hour - it's a busy place and photo shoots aren't their highest priority. I asked for the largest room available, and they graciously complied, we could have it from 6-7AM.

It wasn't going to be easy to light in those cramped rooms. I'm looking around and see three lights hanging from the ceiling, much better versions of what you stare at while you're at the dentist. I think I freaked out the photo editor a bit when I explained - we're going available light on this one.

Worked out well - and was fun to wing it, more time would have been nice, but I can say that about most projects...

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