For the Professional Photo Productionist
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Winter 2010
www.jackstudios.com Phone: (212) 367-7590 Fax: (212) 367-8376 email: info@jackstudios.com 601 W. 26th street, 12th floor, neW York, nY 10001
Stunning daylight, blackout, & cyc StudioS new fully-equipped digital department modern furniture & Set wallS unobStructed ViewS of the manhattan Skyline plus new 6,000 Sq. ft double cyc Super Studio
2
TABLE OF CONTENT WINTER 2010 2
Table of Contents: Whetting your appetite.
8
Masthead: aka, the Rogue Gallery.
14
Letter from the Editors: We love you.
16
Letters to the Editors: You love us.
20
Etiquette: Kiss that ass. Both cheeks if your client is French.
23
Resource Guide to: iPhone Apps. Collect ‘em all!
28
Industry Tale: The Heist. Stealing and reselling award-winning photos.
30
Trick of the Trade: Concert Photographer. Sex, drugs, and photographs of Rock and Roll.
SECTION- PHOTO
32
History: Marilyn Manson. Two pairs of tits = sexy. Three pairs of tits = creepy.
36
Gallery: Stephen Mallon. A flock of geese takes down a plane.
38
Photo Deco-Page: Desert Studies. Solitude and silence. The exact opposite of our lives.
40
Technique: Tim Hogan on Shooting Jewelry. How to make your bling sing.
42
Interview: Timothy White. We want Brad Pitt on speed dial too!
44
Mini Feature: The Craigslist Critique (part 2). Between Craig’s prices and those Internet sex freaks... you’re sure to get something out of this.
SECTION- CREW
48
How to: Clean a Sensor. Suck or blow? Wet or dry?
50
Event: Photo East Expo. Under the big top. Trade show photo circus.
52
Interview: Kate Chase. Chasing down the Retouching gods.
54
Mission: Ranexa. Andy Glass refines the hills of New Zealand.
57
Locations: Arcades. Pacman, Frogger, Galaga, and Asteroids make for great backdrops.
62
Mini Feature: Mixers. In between cocktails and make-out sessions, did you ever wonder what it is all about?
SECTION- STUDIO/EQ
66
Dawn of the Industry: Fast Ashley’s. It wasn’t the Wild West, but these pioneers were the first in Brooklyn.
68
Interview: Craig Strong. Lensbaby is his baby.
70
Development: Factory Studios. Grip and lights replace factory machines in this new Brooklyn studio.
72
Tech, EQ & Flow: Digital Firms + Cowboys. We haven’t seen a shootout like this since OK Coral.
SECTION- AGENCY
74
Birth of a Campaign: Pantone Color Guide Book. Somewhere, over the rainbow...
76
Interview: Wax Poetics editors. Wax on. Wax off.
78
Mini Feature: Of Content and its Discontents. What happened to film archives?
nyc’s most beautiful studios.
205 hudson street (entrance on canal), penthouse, new york, ny 10013 • 212.344.1999 • www.tribecaskyline.com
F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S
86
Resource Magazine’s Studio 54 Guide. Marc Benecke would be proud of who we let in.
94
Photo Essay: Casting Call. Come as you are, as I want you to be.
104
Production of the World: Turks & Caicos. Ever eaten conch penis? We did.
SECTION- REVIEWS
118
Where to Take your Clients Out: Blue Ribbon Downing Street Bar and Joseph Leonard. One place to send
122
Book Review: Adland: Searching For The Meaning of Life On a Branded Planet and The Art of Writing
Advertising. The real Mad Men.
126
Movie Review: Wes Anderson’s Festival. Watch out prop stylists, Mr. Anderson is in the house.
128
Directory: People we’ve used and re-used and used again.
136
End Page. PG-13.
your client home shit-faced and one place to send them home full.
Cover and End Images by Hiroki Kobayashi: www.hirokikobayashi.com
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1st Day
Add’l Day
3 Day Wknd
full Week
1st Day
Add’l Day
3 Day Wknd
full Week
HD VIDEO CAMERAS
MEDIUM FORMAT CAMERAS (CONT’)
Sony PMW-EX3 w/16 GB Card .............. $225 $205 $275 $925
H Series 100mm F2.8.......................... $45
$40
$50
$135
Sony PMW-EX1 w/16 GB Card .............. $195 $175 $225 $795
H Series 120mm Macro F4 ................... $55
$50
$60
$170
Sony HVR Z1U HD Video Camera........... $170 $145 $190 $495
H Series 150mm F3.2........................... $45
$40
$50
$135
Sony HVR-A1U HD Video Camera .......... $125 $115 $135 $365
H Series 210mm F4.............................. $40
$35
$50
$130
Panasonic AG-HVX 200AP HD Video Cam......... $155 $130 $195 $595
H Series 300mm F4.5........................... $85
$80
$95
$250
Canon XL H1A HD Video Camera........... $215 $185 $275 $895
H Series 50-110mm F3.5-4.5............... $70
$65
$80
$200
Canon XL HA1 HD Video Camera........... $145 $115 $185 $550
Hasselblad 555ELD............................... $35
$30
$40
$110
Canon HV40 Video Camera ................... $50
Hasselblad 503CW................................ $25
$20
$30
$70
$35
$60
$175
VIDEO ACCESSORIES Red Rock Micro DSLR Cinema Bundle w/Matt Box. $75
$65
$85
$295
Shoulder Mount Eyespy Rig w/Finder.... $55
$45
$65
$225
Sennheiser Wireless Mic Set................. $15
$10
$20
$50
Sennheiser Shot-Gun Mic XLR .............. $15
$10
$20
$50
BeachTek XLR Adapter for 5D Mark II ............. $12
$10
$15
$35
Marshall 7” HDMI Monitor..................... $55
$40
$70
$195
DIGITAL BACKS Phase One P25+................................... $365 $340 $395 $1050 Phase One P30+................................... $320 $300 $355 $975 Phase One P40+................................... $405 $385 $450 $1175 Phase One P45+................................... $425 $405 $475 $1250 Phase One P65+................................... $455 $425 $495 $1325 Phase One Adapter for Mamiya RZ67.... $35
$30
$40
Hass Winder CW................................... $15
$13
$20
$45
Hass 30mm CF..................................... $35
$30
$40
$100
Hass 40mm CFE F5.6 ........................... $30
$25
$35
$80
Hass 60mm CFI .................................... $20
$15
$25
$60
Hass 80mm CFE ................................... $20
$15
$25
$60
Hass 100mm CFI .................................. $20
$15
$25
$60
Hass 120mm CFI .................................. $20
$15
$25
$60
Hass 150mm CFI .................................. $20
$15
$25
$60
Hass 180mm CFI .................................. $20
$15
$25
$60
Hasselblad PM 45 DEG Prism................ $15
$13
$20
$45
COMPUTERS/MONITORS Apple Mac Pro 8-Core........................... $275 $250 $300 $795 Apple Mac Book Pro 15"....................... $105 $85
$135 $390
Eizo CG243W 24" Monitor .................... $125 $110 $135 $365 Apple Cinema Display 30" .................... $100 $85
$135 $300
$100 DIGITAL CAMERAS & LENSES
MEDIUM FORMAT CAMERAS
Canon 1DS Mark III ............................... $125 $105 $160 $495
Leica S2-P Body................................... $315 $275 $405 $1365
Canon 1DS Mark II................................ $95
$80
$125 $425
Leica 70mm/2.5 CS Lens ..................... $50
$220
Canon 1D Mark IV................................. $105 $85
$135 $425
$45
$65
Leica 180mm/3.5 CS Lens.................... $60
$55
$80
$265
$75 $60 Canon 5D Mark II.................................. $75
$95
$275
Leica 120mm/2.5 CS Lens.................... $60
$55
$80
$265
Canon 7D ............................................. $60
$45
$85
$225
Leica 35mm/2.5 CS Lens...................... $50
$45
$65
$220
Canon 50D ........................................... $45
$35
$60
$175
Hasselblad H2 Body w/80mm Lens....... $75
$70
$85
$225
Canon 100 2.8 Macro L IS .................... $20
$17
$23
$65
Hasselblad H2 Body Only...................... $55
$45
$70
$175
Canon 135 2.0 L ........................................ $20......$15
$25
$70
H Series 35mm F3.5............................. $45
$40
$50
$130
Canon 16-35 2.8 L II.................................. $24......$22
$26
$75
$23
$65
$45
$125
H Series 50mm F3.5............................. $40
$35
$45
$110
Canon 24 1.4 L ........................................$22 .....$20
H Series 80mm F2.8............................. $30
$25
$35
$80
Canon 24 3.5 L TS-E II .............................$40 .....$35
Adorama has offered the best prices for retail photo equipment for the past 30 years. Now we're doing the same thing for rental equipment. e new Adorama Rental Co. has simplified things. We'll give you one price that should work with even your most challenging budgets. In order to keep pace with the constant shi of the media marketplace, ARC has invested over two million dollars worth of new equipment and upgrades to our regular inventory, which we constantly rotate. We invite you to check out our new prices and equipment with the confidence you'll receive up-to-date equipment and the best pricing in the industry.
$200 $75 OLD PRICE:
NEW PRICE:
1st Day
Add’l Day
3 Day Wknd
full Week
1st Day
Add’l Day
3 Day Wknd
full Week
Canon 24-105 4 L IS............................. $22
$19
$29
$70
Arri 650W Fresnel Fixture...................... $16
$13
$20
$55
Canon 24-70 2.8 L ............................... $24
$21
Canon 300 2.8 IS L ............................... $50
$45
$31
$70
Broncolor Kobold 200W PAR HMI .......... $90
$75
$115 $350
$55
$150
Lowel Pro Light w/Barndoors 250W...... $10
$8
$12
Canon 35 1.4 L ..................................... $21
$35
ADORAMA RENTAL CO
$20
$23
$65
Dedolight Self Contained Head w/Accessories.....$20
$15
$25
$70
Canon 45 2.8 TS-E................................ $24
$22
$26
$75
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Canon 50 1.2 L ..................................... $25
$21
$32
$90
STROBES
Canon 70-200/2.8 IS L ......................... $24
$22
$26
$75
Profoto Pro 8A Air 2400 Pack + Head Kit .............$85
$80
$90
$250
Canon 85 1.2 L II .................................. $32
$28
$41
$100
Profoto Pro 7A 2400 Pack+ Head Kit .... $65
$55
$70
$185
Canon 580EX II Speedlight.................... $15
$12
$20
$55
DIGITAL CAMERAS & LENSES (CONT’)
CONTINUOS LIGHTS (CONT’)
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$50
$65
$165
Profoto Acute 2R 2400 + Head Kit ........ $45
$40
$50
$125
Nikon D3 .............................................. $125 $110 $165 $530
Profoto Acute 2R 1200 + Head Kit ........ $35
$30
$40
$120
Nikon D3S ............................................ $110 $90
$140 $440
Profoto Pro 7 B2 KIT ............................. $80
$70
$90
$235
Nikon D90 ............................................ $35
$25
$45
$135
Profoto Acute 600B Kit.......................... $55
$50
$60
$160
Nikon 105/2.8 G ED VR Micro ............... $20
$18
$23
$65
Profoto 600 Compact Kit....................... $35
$25
$28
$115
Nikon 14-24 2.8 G ED........................... $28
$26
$30
$80
Profoto 300 Compact Kit....................... $30
$25
$30
$105
Nikon 14/2.8 D ..................................... $24
$22
$26
$75
Profoto Pro 7A Bi-tube Head ................. $45
$35
$50
$135
Nikon 17-55 2.8 DX.............................. $24
$22
$26
$75
Profoto Pro Ring Flash 2 (New Style) ..... $55
$45
$60
$190
Nikon 24 PC 3.5.................................... $23
$21
$25
$75
Profoto Acute Ring Flash ....................... $25
$20
$30
$70
Nikon 24-70 2.8G ED-IF AF-S ............... $24
$22
$26
$75
Lumedyne 400WS Kit ........................... $30
$25
$25
$105
Nikon 300 2.8 G-ED VR......................... $48
$42
$50
$150
Lumedyne 400WS Booster.................... $10
$9
$12
$40
Nikon 400 2.8G AF-S VR ....................... $105 $98
$113 $325
Lumedyne Signature Series Flash Head $12
$11
$15
$40
Nikon 45 2.8 PC-E Micro ...................... $21
$20
$23
$70
Lumedyne 1600 Ring Flash Head.......... $25
$20
$30
$75
Nikon 70-200 2.8 VR II.......................... $35
$30
$40
$110
Nikon 80-400 4.5-5.6 VR...................... $24
$22
$26
$75
GRIP EQUIPMENT
Nikon 85 1.4 D ..................................... $24
$22
$26
$75
Avenger 40" C-Stand............................ $7
$6
$8
$25
Nikon SB 900 Flash .............................. $15
$12
$17
$55
Avenger Medium Roller w/Griphead ...... $10
$8
$12
$35
CONTINUOS LIGHTS
Bogen Mega Boom ............................... $35
$30
$38
$105
Bogen Super Boom............................... $17
$16
$20
$55
Litepanels LP-Micro.............................. $15
$13
$20
$55
Avenger Mini Boom .............................. $7
$6
$8
$20
Litepanels 1x1 Bi-Color Flood or 1x1 Bi-Focus... $65
$55
$75
$275
12X12 Modular Frame Complete........... $35
$30
$40
$100
Litepanels Miniplus-One Lite Kit............ $45
$40
$50
$175
12x12 Silk Full Stop.............................. $15
$14
$18
$55
Litepanels Ringlite Mini Kit.................... $65
$55
$75
$275
Mag Liner w/Tray.................................. $35
$30
$45
$135
2x4 Kino ............................................... $45
$40
$50
$185
Reel FX II Fan........................................ $35
$30
$40
$110
4x4 Kino ............................................... $50
$45
$55
$195
K5600 Joker Bug 400........................... $90
$75
$115 $350
Arri Compact Fresnel 1200W HMI ......... $125 $115 $160 $475
ANNOUNCING NEW PRICING WITH DISCOUNTS INCLUDED
Profoto Pro 7A 1200 Pack+ Head Kit..... $55
Nikon D3X ............................................ $145 $125 $185 $625
WEEKEND = Thursday after 4:30 PM until Monday before 9:30 AM. This is a partial list and prices ARE subject to change without notice. Please view our complete line of products at adoramarental.com.
NEW PRICES. NEW EQUIPMENT. CLEAR AND SIMPLE. NEW LINES OF EQUIPMENT – UPGRADED INVENTORY – STREAMLINED PRICING…
Resource Magazine is a quarterly publication from REMAG Inc. 139 Norfolk Street #A - NY, NY 10002 info@resourcemagonline.com
Winter 2010 Issue EDITORS IN CHIEF Alexandra Niki, Aurelie Jezequel CREATIVE DIRECTORS Alexandra Niki, Aurelie Jezequel
Subscriptions: $30 in the US, US$50 in Canada, and US$60 globally. For subscription inquiries, please email info@resourcemagonline.com
ART DIRECTOR Sharon Gamss
Special thanks to: Eduardo Citrinblum, Mark Chin, Adam Davids, Katie Dineen, David Hemphill, Mazdack Rassi
COPY EDITORS Sara Ciaverelli, Maggie Flood, Kate Hope, Michael T. Wilcox DESIGN Paula Blum, Sharon Gamss, Katie Iberle, Pao-Lung Lee, Katherine Lo, Maria Camila Pava, Emil Rivera CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Joseph Cultice, Kevin Faulkner, Nick Ferrari, Carolyn Fong, Andrew Fornasier, Andy Glass, Timothy Hogan, Hiroki Kobayashi, Stephen Kosloff, Elizabeth Leitzell, Steve Lopez, Daymion Mardel, Stephen Mallon, Disco Meisch, Ryan Morris, Prakash, Adam Sherwin, Craig Strong, Todd Warnock, Jon Wasserman
We welcome letters and comments. Please send any correspondence to info@resourcemagonline. com The entire contents of this magazine are ©2010, REMAG Inc. and may not be reproduced, downloaded, republished, or transferred in any form or by any means, without written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved. For more info, please visit our website, www.resourcemagonline.com FIND US IN BARNES & NOBLES AND BORDERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY!
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sophia Betz, Marc Cadiente, Teddy Cohn, Emily Anne Epstein, Charlie Fish, Maggie Flood, Alec Kerr, Stephen Kosloff, Marla Lacherza, Elizabeth Leitzell, Lou Lesko, Sharoz Makarechi, Disco Meisch, Ryan Morris, Justin Muschong, Stephanie Nikolopoulos, Jeff Siti, Feifei Sun, Timothy Sutton, Kenny Ulloa, Michael T. Wilcox, Sachi Yoshii CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Horatio Baltz, Gabriella D’Alessandro, Katherine Lo, Emil Rivera INTERNS Paula Blum, Asaberry R.R. Coleman, Brooke Eastburn, Vince Eng, Maggie Flood, Steve Lopez, Maria Camila Pava, Jenny Hannah Roche PUBLISHER REMAG Inc. DISTRIBUTION info@resourcemagonline.com ADVERTISING Alexandra Niki alex@resourcemagonline.com Aurelie Jezequel aurelie@resourcemagonline.com
Kenny Ulloa - Hotdogs. Grilled cheese sandwiches. Sicilian pizza. Chocolate milkshakes. Power Rangers. Spiderman. Playstation. Chocolate chip cookies. Markers. Marvel. WWF. UFOs. French toast. Glasses. Sekina Perkins. Gorditas. Bear claws. Handball. Newports. Pokémon. BMX. Jordans. Oreos.
Camila Pava is a Colombian girl who came to New York as an intern and left as a Graphic Designer. She will still contribute for Resource and hopes to come back one day. She will miss Resource and Resource will miss her.
Carolyn Fong is a photographer in NY. She’s able to make a living (some months more so than others...) doing what she loves and feels extraordinarily lucky to be able to say that. www.carolynfongphotography.com
Lou Lesko writes from California where he is a Hollywood hyphenate; photographer-director-writer. An absurd job description if you think of it. He also owns Blinkbid software, PhotoCine News, and is currently dodging Interpol for an incident that occurred in Paris.
Daymion Mardel is a NY-based photographer who is grateful to be working in this recession. Some of his favorite recent projects have included portraits for Vogue and being the first photographer for J. Crew to have billboards around NYC for their Fall ‘09 ad campaign. www.daymion.com
www.bathhousestudios.com
BathHouseStudios 212.388.1111 • 540 East 11th St. NYC
Studio A
4,000 sq ft • 20ft ceilings • 26x30 ft cyc with 14 ft grid above • street level load-in • drive-in access • client area
Studio B
Introducing
1,800 sq ft • 15x15 ft cyc • street level load-in • hair/makeup area w/shower • wardrobe room • cafe w/full kitchen
www.bathhousemiami.com
BathH useMiami 541 Jefferson Ave Miami Beach FL • 305.538.7767
UNPRECEDENTED RENTAL PRODUCT SELECTION
Now there are even more reasons to rent from Calumet! Calumet is continually upgrading its rental inventory with the latest models of digital SLR cameras and lenses, medium format digital backs, lighting and grip equipment. If by chance we don’t have the equipment you’re looking for, just ask us and we will do our best to add it to our rental inventory. In order to make sure that your rental experience with Calumet is successful, all rental items are completely tested before you pick up your order so there are no surprises on the job. Our experienced staff will also make sure that you are comfortable with your equipment before you leave our door. All gear is available at great daily and weekly rates. Call one of our retail locations below for availability and rates. THINK RENTAL. THINK CALUMET.
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1.800.CALUMET (225.8638)
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calumetphoto.com
NEW YORK, NY 212.989.8500 CAMBRIDGE, MA 617.576.2600 PHILADELPHIA, PA 215.399.2155 CHICAGO, IL 312.440.4920 OAK BROOK, IL 630.860.7458 SAN FRANCISCO, CA 415.643.9275 SANTA ANA, CA 714.285.0143 LOS ANGELES, CA 323.466.1238 SAN DIEGO, CA 760.737.6002 STORE HOURS: Call location for times or visit our website.
14
Horoscopes are not fool-proof. They’ll get your day right, but your mood wrong; your mind right, but your personality wrong; your ethics right, but your desires wrong. Yet there will be one horoscope that seems to nail it. It describes your life, your day, your moment, or you, like a sweet poem written by your very own subconscious. The little devil and angel on your shoulder will be telling you how it is and how to do it. The strange thing is that a phenomenon that can be so right or so wrong could change a life. Reading predictions could push you toward a life-changing decision. Life defined by a sign? Fortunes decided by the Zodiac gods above? By a fluke?
Resource won’t play God with you, but we will offer you some sound advice. Remember that life changes every day. Some random events will turn your life upside down and inside out. Some changes are good, some changes bad. But no matter what you’re going through in life, don’t forget that this industry is based on friendships. Don’t be scared to get help, advice, and support from those around you. We’re an industry of loners, so if we can’t be family to each other…what good are we? Spin your partner round and round.
Aurelie ©Jonas Cuénin
Alex and Aurélie
16
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS:
You love us Broke as a bug. (Broke and bug just sound nice together) Purchased the Fall 09 issue, was thoroughly impressed. Crave more. Thanks, Ani Djai www.anidjai.com www.flickr.com/anidjai
Tell us what you think! Email us at info@resourcemagonline.com.
I am insane for Resource Mag. It is seriously THE most informative and inspiring one out there for me. I salivate when I see it. Cybelle Codish Photographer/Proprieter Studio [c] 905 Henry Street Detroit, Mi 48201 www.cybellecodish.com www.iamstudioc.com
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20
ETIQUETTE:
Kiss that ass By Kenny Ulloa I Illustration by Katherine Lo
T
he air is trailing with electronic rumbling beats, the salmon is fresher than you expected and cute modish interns act as sufficient eye candy to get you through the day. It’s one of those “I love this job!” moments, and you thank the heavens for making you a boundless creative type. “Pressed cotton suit” isn’t even in your lexicon and corporate performance reviews only happen on television. If it wasn’t for those pumping dance hits, you’d swear there were birds chirping somewhere in those vast empty white spaces. How else could you make money while simultaneously wearing dirty Converses and socializing with the beautiful people? This rosy charm might be a bright spot in a recent college graduate’s life but for the rest of us, there’s a harsh reality around that cyclorama’s corner. We all work for the Man, and to get to the top you have to ass-kiss like you’ve never ass-kissed before. You need to be the half-a-Splenda to your photographer’s Latte; a synthetic delight indistinguishable from the real thing. Cautiously sweetened of course, because laying it on thick will turn this fine drink into a saccharine disaster.
Find out background information. Check out the photographer’s past work, find out if he has a family, his sexual orientationanything you can unearth. The best way to lie is to focus on the truth, which means narrowing down your comments of admiration to things you at the very least kind of believe in. Describing a particular photograph sounds much more genuine than just throwing out vague expressions like, “love your work.”
Make a bunch of jokes. It’s nice every once in a while to throw in some quirky comments (i.e. yelling, “We got the shot!” on the very first image), but it’s never a good idea to outshine the person writing your check. Also, no one likes the goofy guy on set. When that second hour of overtime hits, those cheesy anecdotes are like tiny HMIs burning a hole inside our eardrums.
“Yes and” rule. Make your speaker feel important. Always respond with a positive, almost open-ended comment. If the photographer is talking about how awesome his trip to the Hamptons was, refrain from making bitter self-deprecating comments that can ruin the vibe of even the most skillful ass-kissing session.
Pretend to know about things. It’s fun to be smart. However, a photo school dropout desperately trying to make British comedy references to impress London clients is just bloody sad.
Mirror his values. What is important to your photographer and client is equally as important to you. Yes, you might not understand the worth of high fashion goodness, but never doubt the power of the advertising gods in a room full of art directors.
Ask a million questions. This isn’t 60 Minutes, so asking a ton of questions won’t make your subject get involved in your calculated thoughtful conversation. Anything beyond the typical, “Where are you originally from?”or “How long have you been in this [select city]?” strays into personal territory and will make your ass-kissing seem just plain creepy. When in doubt, stick to safe subjects such as the quality of today’s catering, the weather, or ridiculing celebrities (unless there is one present).
Katherine Lo : www.katsoupdesign.com
Time the frequency of your compliments. Sprinkle them throughout the day. Spice up your typical praise by using cliché and ironic phrases that are both flattering and funny. Glance at the glowing screen and say something like, “Avedon, eat your heart out,“ then follow it with a heavy-handed wink. *Note: French clients are impervious to dry-humor.
End up talking about yourself. No one wants to hear about your current projects or future goals right now. Focus on putting your clients on a pedestal and skip the chit-chat about the one editorial you have in some obscure bimonthly fashion mag no one has ever heard of.
STOPassisting the rise of new photography
Stop Assisting provides photo assistants and emerging photographers with an open forum to help you get to the next stage of your career. Led by Adorama, Profoto, Resource Magazine and Tribeca Skyline Studios, Stop Assisting is your way into the industry and out of assisting. We are here to connect, facilitate and provide for the rise of new photography. Join the community. Go to www.stopassisting.com to get updates on our events and register for our Winter session, starting in February 2010.
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RESOURCE GUIDE TO:
iPhone Apps By Justin Muschong The iPhone is widely heralded as a modern marvel, the apotheosis of cell phones and a harbinger of where we are heading not only in terms of technology, but as a society based on social interaction. Too bad about that battery life, though, huh? Anyway, the amazingness of the iPhone means that geeks and nerds (read: your future overlords) can create third-party applications, or, in the parlance of the day, “apps,” that can then be purchased and downloaded onto the phone, just like someone would do with their computer. If you’ve ever seen the Apple commercials where they endlessly recite, “There’s an app for that” and wondered what they meant, now you know, Grandma. We at Resource have done you the favor of parsing the extensive list of available apps to highlight those most applicable to the modern day photo production professional. Below you’ll find a wide range of tool that will help you perform your job and generally succeed at life. Caveat Emptor: Unless it’s noted otherwise, each application requires the user to have the 3.0 version of the iPhone’s operating system installed.
PHOTO-RELATED Adobe Photoshop CS4: Learn by Video Pearson Education - $1.99 Got two hours to kill? Have an undying desire to master Adobe Photoshop CS4? Download this app for riveting video tutorials that will have you on the edge of your seat.
Exposure Calc Venkatramanan Krishnamani - $1.99 (iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later) Location photographers can rely on Exposure Calc to calculate choice exposure settings, effectively serving as an incident light meter.
ARC Rental Adorama Rental Co. - Free! Need equipment? Adorama Rental Co. is the first photo and video equipment rental company to offer an app for its customers. Reference contact information, get current hours, check pick up and return schedules, and place reservations over your iPhone.
f/8 DoF Calculator Bitwerkz - $3.99 (iPhone OS 2.0 or later) Photojournalists can easily calculate their depth-of-field and hyper-focal distances for over 800 preset camera models, including film and cinematographic formats.
Camera Genius Jeff McMorris - $0.99 Enhance the iPhoto with Camera Genius, an application that provides neat-o add-on technology like timers or signals for group photos, anti-shake stabilization, and the all important zoom. Camera Zoom 2 KendiTech - $0.99 The ranks of the paparazzi considerably expanded with the release of this app, which turns the iPhone’s slider into a zoom function and the volume button into a picture snapper. Now you can take surreptitious photos of celebrities, criminals, crushes, and the random crazy people you keep on telling your friends about. ColorBUG by Seachanger Client Ocean Thin Films, Inc.- Free! This software requires you to have the colorBUG device to really do you any good. However, once you have this nifty little thing you can measure color, illuminance, and color temperature, and have all the info wirelessly transmitted straight to your iPhone door. Also check out the Seachanger website for more colorBUG info: www.seachangeronline.com DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition onOne Software - $19.99 Merely connect your Canon EOS or Nikon DSLR camera to a Wi-Fi enabled computer and you can remotely take command of it. Eliminate the quaint awkwardness of timed group shots by adjusting settings and previewing, snapping, and reviewing pictures on your iPhone.
FNDMobile (Film is Not Dead) Bambooapps - $0.99 (iPhone 2.0 or later) An invaluable resource for all those stalwarts who continue to develop their precious, increasingly rare film. This stores the times, dilutions, and temperatures for seventeen types of film and several developing solutions. GrayCard Pixelexip - $0.99 You’ll never have to carry white balance tools again once you download GrayCard, which serves as an adjustable stand-in for any scene setting or effect. May as well get rid of your assistant too. Helios Sun Position Calculator Chemical Wedding - $29.99 When shooting in natural light, this will predict the sun’s position throughout the day and the size of the resulting shadows that objects will cast. Finally, man has conquered the sun. Hitchcock Cinemek Inc. - $19.99 Hitchcock allows you to markup photographs with traditional storyboard notes (e.g., dolly, track, zoom, pan). Appease your inner auteur by intricately planning that film you keep telling everyone will happen just as soon as everything falls into place, you know? Leaf Capture Remote Leaf Imaging Ltd. - Free! This is the first app that makes it possible to view, zoom and pan hi-res Leaf RAW images on your iPhone while you shoot. Ideal for photographers and digital techs alike, it quickly and easily bring images from Capture to print.
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PRODUCTION/SCOUTING-RELATED Min-U Guide Nikon D90 Min-U Guides - $2.99 All users of the Nikon D90 can chuck their weighty camera guide in favor of the Min-U Guide. Everything you could possibly want to know about the D90 is now containable within your cell phone. Tripod Camera MK HQ- $1.99 A built in tripod. The Tripod Camera will make your photos level to the horizon. With its incredible power it can also tell if you’re shaky and will automatically snap when you’re still. You can now take good photos even with a hangover. Pano Debacle Software - $2.99 With Pano, you can stitch together up to sixteen individual photographs to create one sterling panorama shot that will look much better than any of your other vacation pictures. Pixelpipe Pixelpipe - Free! Uploads your iPhone photos to the social network of your choice, no matter how obscure or fetishy. Polarize Christopher Comair - Free! (iPhone 2.2 or later) Now with an iPhone, you don’t have to be a photographer to act like one. Polarize transforms iPhone photographs into virtual Polaroid pictures in a pixel-by-pixel process. Users can even write on the bottom of the photos, ensuring complete nostalgia. Tack Sharp Tack Sharp - $0.99 (iPhone 2.2.1 or later) Tack Sharp provides photographers with quick estimations of the range of sharp focus for a slew of camera settings, customized for different formats, units, and other settings. TiltShift Michael Krause - $1.99 By installing this application, the iPhone’s camera can imitate a tilt-shift lens, the kind that makes real life objects and locations resemble a miniature world of toy models. TiltShift Generator Takayuki Fukatsu - $2.99 Remember toy cameras? Neither do I. But apparently photographers love the holy hell out of them because their plastic, inexpensive lenses can be manipulated into producing coo-coo-crazy effects. TiltShift Generator replicates those same effects on the modern-day iPhone so gadget heads can turn the ho-hum into the fashionably countercultural. Twilight Compass Vito’s - $0.99 It tells you all the details you could possibly want to know about the sun rising or setting. If the company is really smart, they’ll find a way to peddle it to excitable adolescents.
Currency Jeffrey Grossman - Free! (iPhone OS 2.2 or later) Currency lets users look up the latest exchange rate information for over ninety currencies and a hundred countries—handy for when you visit shady currency exchange businesses.
Find a Photographer 1337pwn.com - Free! (iPhone 2.2.1 or later) This app connects you to the database of members in the American Society of Media Photographers. The next time you need media photographed, run, don’t walk, to this app to find out the contact information you desire! FlightTrack - Live Flight Status Tracker Ben Kazez - $4.99 FlightTrack provides real-time status for international flights. Feel like God Almighty as you track planefuls of innocents across the face of your iPhone like so many ants crossing the pavement. Creepy!
GeoLogTag Galarina - $4.00 When you want the world to know the precise location of where you took that picture of your cat doing something adorable, use GeoLogTag—a GPS data logger that tags the coordinates onto every photograph you take with your iPhone. Perfect for location scouts.
GPS Text Big Hill Software - $1.99 The title does not lie: this simple but extremely useful app sends text messages containing the sender’s exact geographic location. Handy for letting friends, family, and stalkers know your precise coordinates in case of emergency. HopStop HopStop.com, inc. - Free! When you’re visiting San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, or the New York Tri-State area, you’ll definitely want HopStop in your hands. It provides public transit information and directions—including bus, subway, taxi, or walking—to your destinations. iTranslate Outer Space Apps - Free! Can’t understand that e-mail in Spanish or that website in Esperanto? iTranslate will decipher words and sentences from forty-three languages, thereby making it easier for colleagues to effectively curse you out in their mother tongues, where it sounds so much more poetic.
myStarbucks Starbucks Coffee Company - Free! Toss your hipster principles out the window and embrace myStarbucks, the official store finder iPhone application from Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee company that brings warmth and deliciousness to America’s street corners at a reasonable price! Starbucks! Because why bother with something new? OpenTable OpenTable, Inc. - Free! OpenTable provides all the information you need to find a suitable restaurant and make reservations. Bathroom information, however, remains a dream on the horizon.
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FOR EVERYONE Take Me To My Car Eldar Sadikov - Free! Never forget where you left the car again with Take Me To My Car, which marks your vehicle’s position and even provides walking directions in case you wander too far. Everybody who needs this app knows exactly who they are... The Weather Channel The Weather Channel - Free! (iPhone OS 2.0 or later) The Weather Channel on TV provides viewers with local weather information every ten minutes—far too long to wait in our fastpaced environment. Eliminate the hassle of sitting through the history of hurricanes and the forced perkiness of the morning show by downloading its iPhone counterpart. Traffic.com uLocate Communications - Free! This app takes the information from the website Traffic.com and puts it at your fingertips for a faster, or at least more informed, commute. UrbanDaddy UrbanDaddy - Free! If you’re in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago, or Miami for a night on the town, tell UrbanDaddy who you’re with and what you’re in the mood for, and it will tell you the perfect club, restaurant, or bar for whatever sick debauchery you enjoy. Where uLocate Communications - Free! This app contains a wealth of information regarding whatever area you happen to be in, including the whereabouts of restaurants, Starbucks, movie theaters, and gas stations. It’s sort of like Google with less keywords.
SET/PROP-RELATED Converter (unit conversions) Architechies- $0.99 Just because it only has to last the duration of a photo shoot, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be built accurately. Improve your measuring skills by having your iPhone do it for you! Convert inches to centimeters, meters to inches, etc, etc. You never know when you’ll have a French photographer giving you set sizes in meters. iHandy Level Free iHandySoft Inc. - Free! Once the iHandy Level app is calibrated, it serves as the perfect high-tech level (that thing with the bubble) for any carpentry needs. One less tool on set. MyPantone Pantone - $9.99 Chuck that book of paint samples away in favor of myPantone, which provides access to Pantone’s color library and allows you to build color palettes. Whatever that means. Ask your set designer.
Air Sharing Avatron Software - $4.99 One of the more popular and useful apps available today, Air Sharing allows you to store and view computer documents on the iPhone. A Personal Assistant Pageonce, Inc. - Free! With over half a million downloads, A Personal Assistant has proven popular for people who can’t afford to hire an actual assistant to berate. It manages ten “essential life management applications,” including credit card control, bank account status, investment portfolio, bill management, and, most importantly, Netflix queue. Awesome Note (+Todo) BRID - $3.99 for full version or Free! Most people write down notes to remind themselves of chores and tasks they need to accomplish. But those written-down notes are sorely lacking in awesomeness. Luckily, Awesome Note is here to melt our faces with its note-taking and taskmanaging Awesomeness. You’ll want to tell all your friends about how sidesplittingly awesome Awesome Note is! Awesome! Business Car Reader Shape Services- $5.99 Although the technology is not 100% perfected, once you get the hang of this app life becomes much easier. After all of your hardcore networking party nights, take those business cards out of your pocket and put them straight into your iPhone address book. FileApp DigiDNA - Free! Another app for uploading computer documents to your iPhone for management, storage, and reading while on the road. IScanIt iKKooN - $2.99 Makes iPhone photographs mimic the look of documents sent through a flatbed scanner, sharpening image and colors in the process. The resulting pages can be saved as PDFs and stored on the iPhone or e-mailed to colleagues. Invoices straight from our iPhone? Our clients will love us for it. Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite Quickoffice, Inc. - $9.99 Do you like Microsoft Word and Excel? Sure you do. Download this application so you can’t use “I wasn’t near a computer” as your excuse for not updating and sending that spreadsheet, you lazy bastard. SitOrSquat Jonathan Glanz / Densebrain, Inc. - Free! SitOrSquat is a Wiki tool (as in all the content is created by users) that records global public bathroom locations and information. It is quite possibly mankind’s greatest invention.
450 w 15tH st, 8tH Fl, NEw YoRk, NY 10011
tEl 212.645.2797 FAX 212.206.1347
855 N cAHuENGA BlVd, los ANGElEs, cA 90038
tEl 323.469.8900 FAX 323.469.8901
iNFo-NY@milkstudios.com iNFo-lA@milkstudios.com www.milkstudios.com
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INDUSTRY TALES:
The Heist As told to Jeff Siti | Illustration by Gabriella D’Alessandro
“Remember the thirty million dollars worth of jewelry you shot last year?” “Sure do.” “They were stolen.” “The jewels?” “No, not the jewels. The jewelry is fine, as far as I know. Forget about the jewelry.” “So what, no heist? We’re not talking about a jewel heist, here?” “Heist? What? No. There was no jewel heist. What is this, a Matt Damon movie? I’m talking about your photos. Your photos have been stolen.” Things had been going so well before I answered the phone that day. I had recently gotten back from my summer holiday, fall was coming and I had that new jacket, and the luxury jewelry editorial I had shot months earlier, though I had no idea at the time, would go on to win a 2009 IPA. I was a lucky man. I felt good about things—about life and work and everyone around me. I had lived by that too often forgotten American maxim that hard work and moral fiber lead to success, and after more than fourteen years in the business the gods seemed to be smiling in my direction. But as I sat in my studio that day listening to my agent’s story, the one about me that I had never heard, I began to feel nauseous. I felt like an amputee. Like my legs had been taken while I slept and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. The entire deal was just too bizarre, like a hoax, but not remotely as absurd as it would turn out. I went through every stage of grief several times during the conversation, minus acceptance, and landed squarely on disbelief each time. I’m still not sure I believe it. So this is what happened. Aside from being my agent, Lew also has a production company. He had received an interesting call from a guy named M. Z. who claimed to be a photographer in need of a producer. M. gave Lew his website, as you do, and enthusiastically recommended he
check out his portfolio, of which he was quite proud. Lew does, and is immediately drawn to several black and white photos. It doesn’t take long for the shock, or some variation on shock, to set in. He could swear that he’d seen the jewelry before. That exact same jewelry, in fact. And he’d seen the exact same jewelry on the exact same model in the exact same poses under the exact same lighting. What the hell? He was stunned but still knew that he was looking at the most blatant case of theft in the history of cameras. Not to mention copyright infringement and fourteen or so other very sensible laws I’d never heard of before. Above each photo, prominently displayed, was something that Lew had never seen or heard—the name M. Z. No, Lew thought. There’s no way. It can’t be. There’s no way someone could be this stupid. “He scanned them.” “Scanned them?” “With a scanner.” “Yeah, I get it.” “Right out of the magazine.” “Right out of the magazine? What is he, fucking crazy? It’s not like they were in Guns & Ammo in 1972. They were published in January.” “I know. Total moron. You can see the captions as they appear on the page.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This M. Z., whoever he was, had scanned photos that I had shot less than a year ago, which had been recently published, and was now soliciting my agent based primarily on those photos. And not even real photos—just pages from a magazine. It was like returning to the scene of the crime with the bloody knife. It was an episode of the Twilight Zone. I couldn’t think straight. Who would do such a thing? What kind of person is even capable of thinking such a thing is remotely normal?
“So then he uploaded the files, inserted his name, and put them on his website.” “To pass them off as his own.” “Yes.” “And no mention of my name? You’re sure that my name appears nowhere on his site?” “Nowhere.” “Jesus. So he just stole the photos.” “And put his name on them. I know. I couldn’t believe it.” “Who is this guy?” “M. Z.. Never heard of him. I think he’s from Syria or something.” “So then what happened?” “I called him back.” I can only imagine how that conversation went. Based on the several weeks of weirdness that followed, my guess is: not well. Lew threatened M. Z. with legal action. M. Z. didn’t seem to care or to get it and started calling my studio on a semi-constant basis. I wanted no part of it. I just wanted the matter resolved, whatever that meant. We finally agreed that in exchange for a settlement and his immediate removal of my photos from his website, I would keep the story quiet. But instead of keeping his end of the deal, he continued to act like a nutcase. I didn’t know what to do. The money had nothing to do with the situation. I didn’t care about the money. What really pissed me off was that he just didn’t seem to care. He seemed to have no idea that what he did was wrong. It began to look as if I was going to have to meet this sociopath face to face, which I most certainly did not want to do. Between the phone calls and everything Lew told me, I didn’t know what this guy was capable of. He sounded a little crazy. There was no way I was going to meet him alone. So I formed what could only be described as the toughest crew on the face of the planet since the Vikings. Together with my agent, producer, and two assistants, all armed with pens and loose-leaf paper, we got ready. I wanted witnesses. I wanted to document this summit, if for no other reason than to prove to myself in the future that it actually happened. I kept telling myself that I was in a dream, a fugue state or a parallel universe. I began hoping that I had contracted some weird virus while on vacation and that this was all just a crazy malaria-induced dream. That maybe I was really just shivering on my bathroom floor, hallucinating like a junky. But then he was standing in my office. M. Z. instantly became real and my stomach dropped. No malaria. I was very uncomfortable. I think all of us were. M. Z., however, looked perfectly calm. Without realizing it, I began a stirring sermon about moral values, ethics, professionalism, and an overall level of respect for other humans that I have attempted to uphold throughout my life and career. I told him about my struggles, the hard work, all the jobs I lost over the years because I wanted to do things the right way. And how there was no shortcut to success. How what he did was not only illegal, which wasn’t even my real concern, but that it showed his utter disregard for mankind.
I felt good getting these things off my chest. Like I’d been washed in healing waters. But the euphoria quickly passed as M. Z. seemed wholly unfazed, like a cool kid in detention. “In other words,” my assistant said, attempting to simplify things, “what he is saying is that it seems your ethics are quite flexible, and his are not. Do you understand?” And that’s when M.Z. said what he said. “I’m very sorry. If I had known that you were alive, let alone working in my city, I would have never done this.” Holy shit. What? What just happened? Those healing waters I mentioned, the ones that had just filled me with a sense of inner peace and tranquility, oneness and all that, they were gone. M. Z. destroyed them. He obliterated them. He wasn’t sorry. He was just sorry that he had gotten caught. I felt like screaming in his face, “If I were alive? Working in your city? Your city? Are you crazy? I’ve been here for fourteen years, psycho. Who do you think you are?” I didn’t think it was possible, but after meeting M. Z. I felt far worse than before. I had honestly thought I could get through to him. I had based my life and career on treating other people fairly and now found myself having thoughts that wholly conflicted with that philosophy. Did I hate him? No, not really. How can you hate a guy who steals internationally award-winning photographs directly out of an internationally read magazine and then attempts to pass them off as his own to the agent who represents the photographer who shot them and then tells that photographer to his face he thought he was dead? You can’t. It’s not possible. Whatever feelings I had for M. Z.—which, like a lot of facts surrounding this story, are still unidentifiable—have been replaced by pity. And that’s much worse. Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had gotten away with his crime. That after all he did to me his life hadn’t changed in the slightest. I needed closure of some sort. I needed to know that I had defended myself and my property. Then the phone in my studio rang. I now get a little nervous when the phone rings. It’s like an old song people attach to a horrible memory. “Who was it?” I asked my assistant. “Some photography magazine. Wanted to know if you had any stories to tell.”
Concert Photographer By Feifei Sun I Photo by Kevin Faulkner
Danny Clinch: www.dannyclinch.com
tricks of the trade:
D
anny Clinch’s portfolio is a photographic documentation of nearly every genre of music. Green Day, Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones, Jay-Z, Radiohead, Bjork, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw are just a fraction of the performers the iconic lensman has captured during his twenty-year career. After studying at the New England School of Photography in Boston for two years, Clinch attended a couple of workshops, including the Ansel Adams Gallery one where he met Annie Leibovitz. Shortly after, Clinch started as an intern for Leibovitz, eventually working his way up to an assistant position. The rest, as they say, is history, but Clinch insists his career had humble beginnings. “I was just a teenager who started taking my camera to concerts,” he said. “I always loved music and photography, so I thought, maybe I could combine the two.” Here, Clinch shares his tricks of the concert photography trade. Lights, Camera, Magic! “If you want to tell the true story of a show, you deal with the lights that you’re given,” Clinch says. “The most important thing is to catch the vibe of the show. If you kill ambient light with flash, you’re not catching the vibe. I’m not anti-flash and I think there are people who use it well, like Charles Peterson—there’s always an exception to the rule. But if Trent Reznor is playing the whole show in silhouette, then cool, I’m going to go with that.” Appreciate the Down Time “I love the shots of singers screaming into the mic like anyone else,” Clinch says, “but rather than having that moment, I want to be the guy who caught the moments between sets, when Bruce Springsteen whispers something in Little Steven’s ear and they have a little laugh. A lot of photographers put down their cameras when the bands aren’t playing and wait for them to come back up. I like the down moments—you get something of a surprise…something a little different.” Getting Around Security After shooting for more than two decades, Clinch says he knows just about every guy who works security for various bands and venues. “This business, just like any other industry, is about cultivating relationships. You’ve got to get to know every one of the band members, but also the band’s manager, agent, and publicist.” Thank-You Prints “A lot of photographers want to get the pictures they took to band members, and that’s important,” Clinch says. “But don’t forget the publicists who hooked you up and got you in to shoot. Why not give a print of the show to them with a note that says you appreciate their help? And maybe not next time, but maybe five times down the road, they’ll ask you to come shoot at sound check, and then you start getting access to something special.” Don’t Forget Your Manners “The biggest mistake I see new photographers make is being too aggressive and setting the tone that you’re difficult to deal with,” Clinch says. “There’s a fine line between being properly forceful and being an ass. You have to know when to draw that line because people talk, and once you cross it, everyone will just remember you as the guy who’s a pain in the ass.” There’s No “Right” Way When he first starting shooting concerts, Clinch struggled to define himself as a photographer and to solidify his style. “Bring a unique point of view,” he recommends. “You have to think about what makes you different. If you don’t have a different point of view beside getting the guy singing into the mic, you won’t be any more interesting than the photographer next to you. Figure out what makes you the photographer you are. Don’t focus on how everyone else is doing it. I personally like to shoot with a wide lens and be right in the action—I’d rather be right in Dave Grohl’s face. I like happy accidents. I like pushing my film so it’s really grainy and dirty. And that’s what makes me who I am.”
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HISTORY:
Marilyn Manson By Charlie Fish
Photo by Joseph Cultice, Los Angeles, 1998
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Joseph Cultice: www.josephcultice.com Charlie Fish: www.charliefish.info
nce nothing more than a South Florida underground act, Marilyn Manson took mainstream America by surprise with their 1996 album Antichrist Superstar. The band’s frontman and namesake, made up to look like a demonic, prosthetic-loving Nazi, became a household name when their single, “The Beautiful People,” began airing on MTV. Given the other artists on heavy rotation during the time—The Spice Girls, Snoop Dogg and Hanson—it’s easy to see how the band’s detractors were scared senseless by Manson’s garish makeup, Satanic symbolism, and nihilistic boldness. It didn’t help that the music itself was dark and industrial, heavy and hellish. Marilyn Manson was the Devil’s music, sung by the Devil himself. It wasn’t long before the disaffected and the angstridden were lining up to buy Manson tees at the local Hot Topic, or donning black makeup. Meanwhile, protestors and worried parents alike were lining up with proverbial pitchforks. In 1998, Manson was set to release their third album, Mechanical Animals. Audibly different from its predecessors, Mechanical Animals was 70s glam rock for the modern age. When it came time to photograph the album cover, Marilyn Manson turned to friend and frequent collaborator Joseph Cultice. The resulting image went on to receive awards and critical acclaim, and made Manson a veritable rock ‘n’ roll icon. Resource chatted with Joseph Cultice to hear what he had to say about creating the powerful image, as well as the secret behind Manson’s breasts. Getting the gig: I’d been on the road with Manson for months at a time, working on a film for them, Dead to the World, and having done their press sessions for previous albums. I was spending at least 50% of my photographic time with the band because these big projects would take months to finish. I was definitely in line to shoot the album cover and packaging, but, since this was early in my career and I wasn’t as well known as them yet, they approached Nick Knight and other really big photographers. The photographers all wanted something like $100,000, and the band wasn’t willing to spend that much money on a photo shoot. In the end, they ended up spending nearly that much because of delays. The idea: There had been a few editorials that kind of had the references that Manson wanted: [David Bowie’s] Diamond Dogs, androgyny. That was the idea, to make him a half woman, half man, androgynous Diamond Dogs-esque character. Moving in: After we got the idea, Manson told me to live with him in order to save some money. It was supposed to be for a week, but it turned into me living with Manson and Twiggy [Ramirez, bassist] at their mansion in the Hollywood Hills for about two months. It was pretty crazy. They had just moved to LA and were at their most famous. Everybody from
Sean Penn to Hugh Hefner was inviting them over just to meet them. It was a really crazy time to hang out with them. There was lots of drugs and stuff, but the thing is that they’re also really normal. I always tell people they’re the most normal rock stars I’ve ever hung out with. Manson is really a private guy. He thinks before he speaks. His reputation on stage really precedes him but he’s just a really normal, quiet guy. He’s very smart and he really knows what he wants. I give him lots of credit because I came up with the initial concept [for the album art] but he refined it. Over a two-month period the original idea got more and more complex and crazy. They could get me to [work on the images endlessly] because I was living there. They had the money and they were paying for it. Manson’s anatomy: We hired a guy named Screaming Mad George, who was a Japanese rock star and special effects makeup artist living in LA at the time, to do all the prosthetics. He had worked with Manson on the Antichrist Superstar packaging and he did it for cheap because he was just a big fan of Manson’s. Manson and I would go out to George’s studio in the Valley and have Manson’s chest, feet, and hands cast (at one point we were supposed to have flippers for hands but they didn’t look that sexy). Remus and Romulus: Originally we had three different sets of tits made. There was going to be a shot of Manson on his hands and knees, with his tits hanging down and small Mansons or little alien dogs sucking at them, but the teats looked ridiculous. No matter what retouching we would have done, it still wouldn’t have looked sexy, and Manson wanted it to look sexy. We even had one set up with the three sets of tits one atop of other (with the bigger ones on top, going smaller as they went down) as a standing pose. But it didn’t look sexy; it looked creepy as hell. To keep the nipples, or not: We shot one day in full body makeup with the three sets of tits because Manson was just determined to make it work. It looked horrible. We had luckily made a another pair of tits with nipples on them. When the record company saw
the nipples they had us remove them and put the type over the top of the nipples. There are two different stories actually as the art director says it was his idea to remove the nipples and the guys at the record company said they simply wouldn’t have the nipples. Tim Burton’s former studio: The shoot took four days at Tim Burton’s old studio where he shot Ed Wood and a lot of Mars Attacks. Smashbox had just purchased the space and it was barebones. It was a big, nasty soundstage. There were rats running around; Ed Wood props were still stuck on the rafters. They were doing makeup in the makeup room at one point and a gang of rats ran through the room. Film hijacker: I had hired an assistant who didn’t know me or Manson or any of this cast of characters. After the second day, he was demanding to get paid and was seemingly freaked out. He must’ve been religious or something, I guess. On the fourth and last shoot day, at ten o’clock at night, he shows up and starts screaming and yelling and asking for his money. Manson’s bouncers told him to get the fuck out of there and he leaves. Little do I know that while we’re moving sets, he sneaks back into the studio and grabs the bag of film and holds it for ransom, all $40,000 worth. We had to call the cops at 3 a.m. They go to this kid’s house a few days later because he wouldn’t go down to the station, and they got the film back but they had us sign a release saying we wouldn’t press charges against him. I think they had it in for Manson and all the freaks. Retouching Manson: Manson had great input on how he wanted the final image to look. The last two days of retouching he said, “Take the belly button off. I want to see what it looks like.” We did and it made the image a lot more androgynous. The retouching was done on Barco. Photoshop was already around but it wasn’t nearly as sophisticated. You couldn’t shape someone’s body like that with Photoshop.
34 The liquefy tool didn’t really exist back then. His entire body was reshaped. You could do that with Barco. It was one of the main retouching softwares then. I think they do medical imaging now. The original: The original image will never be seen. I can’t show anyone the raw file because it would be like pulling the curtain out from the Wizard. If you look at it really closely it’s more like an illustration because so much is mushed, blurred and cloned. There’s texture in it. If I did it now with Photoshop, it would look sharper, a lot crisper; it would look like a real person. Mutations: When we retouched the hand, I added an extra finger to it. I just did it without asking anybody or even making it a big deal. It turns out that in Japan that’s considered a mutation. Because of the atomic bomb and all the mutations that occurred afterward, any photograph that depicts mutation is illegal. So the album cover was banned in Japan. Everyone from Interscope Records was mad at me. I never knew until a few years later the reason why it was banned. It’s available now, but when the album first came out, they had to put it in a black sleeve, or who knows what they did...
A woman’s hips: It took me a really long time to figure out how to make him look like a woman. When we were trying to make his hips more feminine, a nearby retoucher was working on a Gilles Bensimon’s picture of Elle Macpherson walking on a beach, coming out of the water. I saw that image and I said, “That’s what a woman’s hips should look like!” They sent a jpeg over and we laid that picture on top of Manson and shaped his hips just like Elle Macpherson’s hips. Manson didn’t even know until a few years ago when I finally told him. Shoot day: It took eight hours to put the outfit with the prosthetics on him because he’s covered from his neck down in a latex-like, rubbery makeup. This stuff was applied to his entire body along with pancake makeup on top to give texture. Manson wore a really tight, white g-string thong that barely kept his junk in. And we had to do his face makeup and his hair at the same time. The eye-band makeup took a long time. His hair, too, was really long up until a week before the shoot. But all these little pieces came together.
On the final product: It is such a monumental image because we had the time to go back and forth. We had chances to experiment with it and make it the best. By having that luxury of time it became that image. Today, we can have one phone call with somebody and a week later you’re shooting. If you think about Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin records, they took eight months to do the packaging back then. Now, everything is done so quickly. Being a Rock ’n’ Roll photographer: KISS was one of my favorite bands. I’ve wanted to be a rock photographer since I was a kid just so I could shoot KISS. Manson was my KISS. They are the last great rock stars; their shows are amazing. He’s one of my favorite people to photograph. He loves being photographed, it’s not a problem for him. I always appreciate the times we get to work together. I always approach rock photography the same way: I don’t try to put people in my photographs; I try to make a photograph for them, whomever I’m photographing at the time. I think I would get really crazy if I shot the same style all the time.
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GALLERY:
Stephen Mallon By Sophia Betz I Artwork courtesy of the artist
O
n the evening of January 15, 2009, just hours after one of the only successful emergency water landings in the history of aviation the ditch of US Airways flight 1549 on the Hudson River industrial photographer Stephen Mallon was in a bar. Conversation flew about the day’s (and what would be the month’s) big news story, when Mallon overheard a bar patron ask, “How are they going to get that thing out of the water?” Mallon leapt up, shocked that he hadn’t had the same thought already, and immediately phoned his contact at the Weeks Marine Crane Company.
In the two weeks that followed, Mallon photographed each step of the recovery effort the scuba divers in heated suits attaching the crane to the aircraft, the barge carrying the plane down the river (“my little wounded animal,” Mallon says, gazing at one of his images, still in awe of the experience), and the plane being transported by truck to a site in New Jersey where it was studied, researched, and taken apart. Because Mallon knew that parts of the craft had to be gradually removed in order to transport and investigate it, he realized the importance of capturing this littlepublicized side of the story. In his words: “For every moment
Stephen Mallon: www.stephenmallon.com
Mallon had photographed for Weeks Marine in the past, capturing various marine construction and dredging jobs for their publicity materials and trade shows. Weeks Marine owns the largest floating crane on the East Coast, so Mallon knew there was a good chance they would get the contract to remove the sinking Airbus from the freezing river. Sure enough, they got the job, and Mallon arrived on Manhattan’s West Side the following afternoon for what turned out to be a 36-hour, sleepless effort to remove the plane from the water. “My heart was just pounding,” he says of arriving on the scene. “I was coming in pretty slow on a barge pulled by a tugboat, and I already knew how incredible this experience was going to be.” Taking many of his initial shots from atop the crane itself, Mallon’s vantage point allowed him to capture images of the plane that no other photographer was able to get. His thoughtful rendering of the recovery effort, as both a part of the story of the flight and a retelling of the landing, is what makes his images of flight 1549 so moving.
that this aircraft was accessible to me, I knew there was going to be a photograph to be made.” Mallon’s remarkable solo show, Brace for Impact: the aftermath of Flight 1549, was shown at Brooklyn’s The Front Room Gallery this past fall. Printed in large Digital-C format, each image reverently captures vivid details of the grand recovery effort, bringing the enormity of the events of January 15th to light in a new way. When asked how long Mallon had been interested in taking photos, his answer came back immediately: “Always.” In high school, Mallon was drawn to photographing construction sites and industrial areas in particular it was “like going back to the sandbox for me,” he says. Mallon’s incredible eye for composition and obvious passion for his work draws the viewer right in to his images in a way you wouldn’t necessarily expect from industrial photography. When Mallon was first starting out as a professional photographer, his unique style did bring him some work, but friends and colleagues told him he would have to incorporate people into his photos to “make [his work] viable in the market.” Adjusting to this critique, Mallon began to include beautiful, quietly emotive portraits of industrial workers in his portfolio, with much success. This transition couldn’t have been too big a stretch for Mallon, though, as he treats even his inanimate subject matter with a reverence and fascination generally reserved for photographing people. In fact, the press release for the show calls Mallon’s shot of the damaged, muddy engine being pulled out of the Hudson a “pseudo-portrait.” Indeed, with the emotional impact of the most successful portraiture, Mallon’s exhibit tells the story of what followed the crash while simultaneously bearing witness to the skill of the flight crew, the experience of the passengers, and the damage sustained
by the aircraft on that harrowing day. Mallon captured many striking shots of the crane crew and the salvage workers, but chose not to include them in the exhibit. Instead, the viewer comes face to face with the aircraft itself. Mallon was only allowed inside the aircraft once during the two weeks of shooting. Those interior images are perhaps the most incredible in the show; they are at once familiar and haunting intimate images of the tray table swirled with mud, the water-damaged cockpit controls, or the plane’s sun-drenched cabin shot from the boarding area. Exhibit-goers will enter the show already knowing the awesome story of US Airways flight 1549, but in the relative quiet of the gallery, without the din of news anchors and printed words surrounding the photographs, another side of the story is told. A renewed appreciation for the scale and gravity of the event, and accomplishment of the crew, emerges. The inherent contrast between the sudden landing of flight 1549 and the slow removal and recovery Mallon’s images convey the scale and the intensity of the story in a way previously unexplored.
Brace for Impact has been received very well by critics and by those who have attended the exhibit. But perhaps the most meaningful response came from a passenger of flight 1549 who attended the show’s opening. Mallon was nervous when he first heard she would be coming, but was proud and relieved to see how moved she was by his work. From an emotional and professional standpoint, Mallon says, “It just made sense for me to follow through with this.”
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PHOTO DECO-PAGE:
Desert Studies Words and Photos by Disco Meisch
I
became fascinated by desert’s extreme landscapes during my first visit to California’s Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley. While I somewhat expected to see the majestic formations common to desert environments, I was struck most by the overwhelming silence vibrating through the open expanses. The otherworldliness of these places surprised me. I am curious to investigate this suspended silence further and to document these seemingly passive landscapes so filled with power. I wish to explore both the natural and supernatural elements of deserts, including their unique flora and fauna, harsh climates, and mystical associations. By their very nature, desert climates force extreme choices: basic questions of survival take priority and decisions become more clear-cut. The desert’s natural wilderness elicits stagnation and adaptation,
but also intense clarity. For thousands of years, spiritual seekers have retreated to this isolation in search of wisdom, strength or meaning. Free from worldly distractions, deserts seem to be a distinct place where psycho-spiritual lines blur together, much like the visual phenomena of a mirage. I hope to have the opportunity to travel to many of the world’s deserts and study their diversity and how their individual characteristics influence visitors in different ways. I feel this study will be a life-long project of mine, mostly expressed through photography but also possibly supported by sound and video installations. Through this project, I hope to translate and simulate the intensity of isolation and inspire the radical reflection that arises from silent but charged encounters.
Disco Meisch: www.discomeisch.com
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TECHNIQUE:
Timothy Hogan on Lighting Jewelry By Elizabeth Leitzell I Artwork courtesy of Timothy Hogan
What was this image for? It was a campaign for Fred Leighton, for the opening of a new store in Beverly Hills. That was fall of last year, I think. Can you describe the lighting set up you used to create this image? A lot of the lighting was done through plexiglass diffusion for the transitions on the metal. We supported the bracelet with a plastic rod under the set which was Photoshopped out. Basically, most of it was just creating the highlight on the left, and then creating the highlight over the top. The hardest thing was the outside curve because it was polished and very, very large. We had to wrap a light around the piece [to make it] look nice and shiny. I used a combination of soft lights (to create those gradations) and hard lights (to give it a little sparkle—I always think things need to have a little pop, otherwise they look too flat). How were you able to make the amber and purple colors glow? The way that the bracelet was constructed, the amethysts and diamonds had little gold cups around them. They caught the light nicely. What we did for the amber stone was to stick a fiberoptic up the back of the bracelet. If I recall, we also put a little diffusion behind it. I usually don’t have the ability to do this, but this piece was an inch by an inch and a half—it was colossal; so we could get the fiber-optic in there to bring in a little extra kick. So you shot a variety of different lighting set ups and then composited them together in Photoshop? Yes, most of the compositing on jewelry images that we do is actually for focus because we’re so close that the depth of field is very shallow. It usually takes between five to twenty different shots to get the whole thing in focus. For me, an image has to be in focus. From a style perspective, a lot of people will have a plane of focus—like in food photography, where everything falls off—but I don’t see that way. I see the whole thing in focus. When you were shooting on film, you would just set it to F64, pulled back a little bit, and you were fine; but you can’t do that anymore. Now we have to do all these focus brackets. What elements are important when creating a really dynamic jewelry shot? I think perspective on the piece itself. A lot of the angles that you see people shoot jewelry from don’t always make the piece look as heroic as it should be. Or people don’t pay attention to scale or anything like that. The dynamics of the composition are super important, as opposed to just sticking the piece down with a piece of fun-tak. I work a lot with low-hero angles to make the
object majestic, or overhead angles to make it graphic. There was no real background on that shot— it’s not sitting on anything— so it’s literally all in the position of the piece. How long did you spend preparing this shoot? I have to really look at the piece [to be able to see the angle it needs to be shot from]. I can’t just look at a ring and say, “Oh, it would be perfect from that angle.” I play with it a lot and look at it off-set for awhile. Once I see the form of it and where the return is, I generally know where the camera needs to be. It’s then just a lot of fine-tuning—the lighting setup is so particular that you have to know exactly where the piece goes and then light around it. Do you have any “secret weapons”? One or two particular tools that you simply couldn’t work without? Lots and lots of plexiglass! Matte-sided plexiglass. When I’m shooting strobes, I actually have a bunch of homemade banks that I use. I hate soft-boxes in general because they’re really boring. The light is just too flat; it doesn’t have enough contrast within it. People will often put jewelry in a big white tent, and then it looks like there’s no black or white anywhere. It’s just a flat, shades-of-gray kind of contrast. I guess that’s the thing about all my photographs, and the jewelry ones in particular: they use the full contrast range, literally from white to black. It doesn’t have pop for me unless it’s the whole thing. I use banks through the plexiglass to make those transitions. It’s very subtle—moving a light the tiniest little degree will take your transition from saying “shiny and polished” to “satin.” It’s trial and error—you’re working until it looks right. You
41 can’t necessarily say, “I’m going to move this here and it’s going to look exactly like that.” Every piece of jewelry is completely different. I almost wish it was more formulaic—it would make things so much easier—but every object is unique. How do you keep colors consistent across product lines? Do you find a lot of variation in silvers and golds? The Hasselblad back is super accurate when it comes to colors, which is great. It doesn’t really get fooled by things too often. It’s a 4-shot back too, a single, 4 and 16-shot back, so the multi-shot exposures are very, very true to color. The biggest thing is, jewelers have their idea of what their gold looks like. At Yurman’s, they like their gold a little bit on the yellower-greener side. Others might like it a little more on the redder side. It comes down to the jewelers’ preference—you just try to nail that as close as possible. We do a lot of color correction with lights on set with a color meter and gels to make certain that everything is really accurate. If you do this, it tends to be foolproof. Fixing it later takes forever. How long have you photographed jewelry? Four years. I literally hadn’t shot any jewelry until we did tests for Yurman, which eventually got us the job. I never assisted anybody who shot jewelry. We had done a couple of watches, but everything was like, “I guess I’ll figure it out.”
Timothy Hogan: timothyhogan.com
Elizabeth Leitzell: edlphotography.com
Do you think there’s just one right way to do jewelry photography? I don’t think so because every piece is different. Once you’ve defined your aesthetic—what you like and what the client wants—then you just try to figure out how to get there. That’s our job—to fill in the gaps and connect the dots until it looks the way it should. I’m sure there’s stuff I’m missing and I’m sure there’s stuff we’re doing right. What inspires you to shoot still-life? Are there any particular photographers who influence your style or who you draw inspiration from? I like the challenge of still-life shoots. I like that each object is different and that you have to kind of pull out its true essence. I think that’s why I do photography in general—to get to the true core of “this puts that in the absolute best light. It shows it off.” Photographers-wise, I’d just go back to the classics, like Penn. I also admire photographers like Nick Knight who may not necessarily have a signature style (because that can get a little repetitive), but who reinvent themselves and push it. What’s the atmosphere like on your shoots? [Laughing] A lot of yelling. No, it’s usually very quiet. We shoot at [Jewel St. Studios in Greenpoint] and I like it to be really relaxed and collaborative—I try anyways. We try to give the client a nice and comfortable experience, hanging out, eating lunch outside, that kind of thing. Still-life shoots can get super intense, really focused. You can get into that trance-like state and time flies. I think my favorite shoots are when it’s me and just one other person—there’s not all the entertaining that usually has to go on. You’re just kind of doing your thing. My super favorites are Sunday afternoons shoots with nobody around. Advice you’d offer to a young photographer trying to make it in the still-life/jewelry business? Do it because you have a fascination with it and you want to do it.
But never do it because somebody else tells you that’s what you should be doing. Doing things just because it will sell is a shortsighted goal. I don’t have this innate love for overly expensive jewelry and have to photograph it. I just love the challenge. That’s why these kinds of assignments speak to me. It’s about trying to pull something off. I think the most important thing—whether shooting jewelry, watches, or anything else—is the way your light has to be focused on those transitions. You could have the same ingredients, the same piece of plexiglass, jewelry, light, and the subtlest little change will make your polished finish look matte. It is such a fine line. It’s really about being able to look at the image and say, “Does that look shiny? Or does that look matte? Does that look as crisp as it should? Does that diamond have enough of the black and the white?” Being able to identify those things is the difference between a “sticking-it-in-the-tent” jewelry shot and a really crafted one. There’s really not a formula for it. Camera and lens: A Rollei xAct II, which is a small little view camera. It’s a monorail view camera, just toned down. A Hasselblad digital back, and a Schneider Macro Digitar 80mm lens.
1K mini
1K
Balcar
1K
1K
1k arri fresnels bouncing off floor through plexi for background. Kept a neutral grey color so as not to wrap around object. Balcar nexus 3200 pack with fiber optic kit snaking in
Balcar underneath the stone for a slight additional glow. Gelled full CTO match other lights. 2x2’ 1/4” matte translucent plexi with mini mole for sublte hilights on top of stones and overall fill Bracelet on plexi rod held by 20” c-stand off set 6”x6” mirror for hilight on right facets of citrine 3x4’ 1/4” matte translucent plexi with 1k from left making grad on lower part of bracelet 3x4’ 1/4” matte translucent plexi with skidderboards on top to control wraparound on cuff
INTERVIEW:
Timothy White By Charlie Fish I Photo by Prakash
T
imothy White could give the Dos Equis “Interesting Man” a run for his title. There aren’t a lot of photographers who can say they’ve shared a helicopter ride with the Colombian President and were later granted access inside the palace grounds. Nor do most shooters talk about their trek across the Mojave Desert on a motorcycle getaway with Brad Pitt. Timothy White can say these things. Not that he’s boasting, but he’s the kind of guy who has Harrison Ford and Nicola Bulgari on speed dial.
White knew early on the meaning of hard work—constantly juggling multiple gigs and establishing a frenetic pace he still follows to this day. It’s that industry acumen that has awarded the photographer with the kind of life where owning a car and motorcycle collection—or, say, even his own private town on Route 66—is commonplace. With a new book due out this year and a recent move toward producing TV shows, it doesn’t look like White will be slowing down any time soon. ResourceRmet with White to chat all things photography, including his approach to working with his high profile subjects, his fast paced lifestyle, and the secret to befriending Brad Pitt. What initially drew you to photography? I was in a band in high school and started taking pictures of musicians and of my band; I was doing it with an Instamatic camera because that’s all I had at the time. I figured out that if I didn’t ask for the prints, when you’d send a roll of film to the drugstore, the negatives would come back and I could enlarge them. So I made a darkroom in my parents’ bathroom and started printing and having fun. So you didn’t always want to be a photographer? I wanted to be a landscape architect so I went to the University of Arizona [to study]. After my first semester I realized I really wasn’t that into the program. It was a lot of science and math and that wasn’t for me. So I applied to RISD for photography and got accepted. I packed up my VW van and my dog and drove across the country. When I arrived in Rhode Island, the experience blew me away because I met people for whom
their art was their life. You’d go to classes during the day and at night you went back to the studio and worked. Not because you had to, but because you wanted to. That motivation is still with me. I’ve got a ton of energy toward what I do. Do you find that your interest in architecture influences your work? I use architectural elements a lot. I still use landscapes a lot. I’m much more comfortable working in an environment than working in a studio, even though I often shoot in studios. In fact, when I’m composing a photograph, I almost always set up the environment first and then include the subject in it. Arizona was a bust, but obviously RISD wasn’t. When I was there I hooked up with an organization that was shooting for modeling agencies. It was kind of low end: I would go in and photograph all their young girls on seamless paper. I would do three changes of outfits and would do like fifty girls a day. It was insanity. It was a factory. But I got this rhythm, this ability to talk to people, to shoot quickly, to think on my feet, to deal with personalities—most of the girls were young, insecure, and had never done this before. To be honest, it still works for me today. What I do now stems from that period when I was working 100 miles an hour and had this ability to make people comfortable and talk them through it and talk myself through it. The pace I developed back then, I still use today. Although I’m very calm and confident on set, in my mind I’m constantly working, looking, examining my frame. It really reverts back to that period. That was amazing training.
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Are you surprised at your level of success and the circles you travel in? My parents always told me that you can have anything you want, as long as you work hard for it. That always stuck with me. It isn’t an ego thing. I have a real love for life and a real appreciation for it all. I have the ability to be comfortable with celebrities. I find them interesting. I find them special. There’s something about that creative person that is really intriguing to me. I have a comfort level and an association with them that is very easy. I’m never in awe of them.
Timothy White: www.timothywhite.com
Charlie Fish:charliefish.info
Don’t you ever get nervous? Well, I still get butterflies or I wouldn’t be doing what I do. It still gets me going. I wouldn’t say nervous, but there’s definitely an excitement on each shoot, still today. What enables you to create these personal friendships with high-profile people? It goes back to my comfort level with people. I think portrait photography is as much about the photographer as it is about the subject. I’m not detached from it by any means. Just the opposite. I am not only involved by the nature of photography and the process itself— I’m composing, I’m lighting, I’m putting forth my point of view—but also by the way I interact with people. I don’t talk about their next movie; I talk about me and things we might have in common. It’s my way of breaking the ice and distracting them. It’s not just about them, or their life, or what they’re projecting; nor is it about their public image, or what they’re selling. It’s about the interaction with somebody. I’m directing how they project themselves because of the way they relate to me. Through that process I get an expression on their faces, or their eyes, or the fact that it’s clear they’re reacting to me. I’ve developed relationships with people because we talk about things that we have in common. I could talk about ballet as easily as I could talk about motorcycles. Whatever they want to talk about. I’ve found a lot of stars who are into many of the same things as I am. We have a connection that develops into a conversation, and often times a relationship. I read about your bike ride photo shoot with Brad Pitt. Tell us more! I was shooting a movie poster with him and we started talking about motorcycles. One of us said, “We should do a motorcycle trip together.” And that went from, “Yeah, that’s
cool!” to, “Yeah, let’s do it!”Four months go by and the phone rings and Brad says, “I have five days next week, wanna do it?” So I call up Sony Pictures and tell them, “I’m going on motorcycle trip with Brad Pitt and I plan to shoot along the way. You pay for it, and I’ll get you pictures that you never thought you’d get.” They were hesitant, but it worked. Brad and I got on motorcycles and rode through the Mojave Desert. My assistants and a stylist followed in a Winnebago. We’d ride, find something cool, pull over, they’d catch up to us, we’d change him into some clothes, and we’d set up, shoot pictures, and take off again. What reactions did you get from these kinds of shoots? Publicists loved the idea. Press Junkets and EPKs are things that actors do to promote their movies, but are a bore. They hate it. If I can go out and do what I do and film it, the studio can use it for press and promotion around the world. I shot seventy contact sheets and sent that to Sony and it blew their minds. The type and range of photography was incredible. I ended up at the Chicken Ranch [a Nevada brothel] with Brad; I got pictures of him with naked hookers. Doing this kind of work is what I enjoy most: mixing environments, celebrity, motorcycles, cars, and everything that interest me. Do you think these excursion shoots will continue to happen? What I tell my clients is if you set up a publicity shoot, you’re going to get a boring publicity shoot. But if you allow me to interact with the talent and give me the freedom to collaborate with them and to do something that we can bind over, I’ll go out and come back with better and more interesting imagery. And the talent is going to be into it because of the collaborative process and because we did something they enjoyed. What can you tell us about your upcoming TV shows? I can tell you about one project. It’s called Man and Machine. I go to shoot people’s collections, their cars, their bikes, or their airplanes… whatever. I’ll ride or fly with them and photograph them enjoying their machines. The process will be filmed in a sort of “fly on the wall” manner so that some of the unbelievable shit that happens can be captured.
Any more books coming out? Yes, in March. I’m collaborating with Jim Marshall, one of my best friends. He’s a legend and a brilliant photographer. Jim and I realized that we have fifty of the same subjects, only shot twenty-five to thirty years apart. As we started to go through our work, we also realized that there were all these compositional similarities and all these other really uncanny things. What we’ve done is something no two photographers have done before, which is to compare their work. Photographers have egos which would normally prohibits this, but our friendship makes this work. We put our work together and we call it Match Prints . It’s one of his images and one of mine. It’s my picture of Robert Mitchum smoking a cigarette next to his of Jim Morrison smoking a cigarette the exact same way. His Eric Clapton from ‘67, my Eric Clapton from 2001. It’s comparing two photographers who have a passion for their photography, as well as for their subjects and their art. We’re doing exhibitions at Staley-Wise in NY, and Fahey/Klein in LA. You’ve shot countless movie posters and CD covers over your career. Yet, your name isn’t outwardly attached to any of that. Does that bother you? What I’ve done through my career has allowed me to develop this amazing archive, and I look at it now as a document of the entertainment industry. It’s not the best document, or the biggest. It’s my own little piece. There’s a historical context to it. No one has photographed Harrison Ford as much as I have. The man has sold more tickets than anyone in the history of film; he’s important. When I’m dead, I don’t care about my name being attached to the work as much as I care about it surviving. I look at my archive, at the size of it, and I see it in the context of Hollywood history. My name doesn’t have to be on it, but I want it preserved in a certain way. Do you think other photographers have similar kinds of relationships with their subjects? I don’t know. I look at photography but I don’t really follow other people’s careers or what’s going on in the industry. I work with blinders on. It would make me neurotic if I thought about other people getting jobs that I could be getting, or about their careers. I’m just interested in my life; and those relationships are a part of my life.
the CraigsList Critique
Words and Photos by Stephen Kosloff
Part 2 of 2
In the fall issue of Resource, I wrote about my efforts to recruit consultants via Craig’s List to help me put together a professional photography website. Given that I’m somewhat new to the field, I wanted guidance from people with experience. Beyond getting my work online, I hoped the meetings would result directly or indirectly in a few assignments. I offered to pay $50 an hour, had dozens of responses, and wound up meeting with five people. As I wrapped up the first article, the consultants had gone through my pool of images (around 350 of them) and given each image a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. After grouping all of my shots based on how many votes they’d received, I cut the pool down to about 100. All of which brings us to the question of the hour: what’s happened since? Taking into account that the primary objective was a website, the effort was a complete success. I’m pleased (for now) with the way stephenkosloffphotography.com has shaped up. I think it will need some tightening and I have some gripes with the template, but I feel like it’s a site I can show to people and even be slightly proud of. As I mentioned in the previous article, one of the main (and unforeseen) benefits of the process was seeing how people–all of them pros–responded to my work. Seeing that consultants X, Y, and Z liked one picture but consultants A, B, and C didn’t was somehow liberating. There were a lot of images to go through and not a lot of time to chat because the $50 per hour meter was running. But even these cursory discussions I had about my work seem to have sharpened my critical eye, or increased my confidence in it. Having gone through this process, I looked at the pool of 100 “maybe” shots and it was easier for me to make the final cuts.
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“I had a group of friends shampoo their hair on a sidewalk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.”
There were other unforeseen benefits to the exercise, the most significant probably being this series of articles. One of the consultants, Roark Dunn, mentioned that Resource might be interested in an article on my Craig’s List crusade. In addition to having some of my work printed, the deadline for the magazine (along with a November trip to Morocco) was an added incentive to get the site launched. An incidental tip from one of the consultants also wound up helping. Lizzie Fischbein, a photo rep, recommended a few blogs for me to check out, including aphotoeditor.com, which I now read regularly. One of the vexing issues for me was the logistics of getting a site up. My original site was based on a crappy template. I spun my wheels for a while looking for a company with better templates and wasn’t making much progress. I briefly considered having a site built from scratch but didn’t want to have to call someone every time I wanted to tweak my site. Then one day on A Photo Editor I noticed a page that featured template companies and found qufoto.com, which I’m using now. The consultations have also changed the way I shoot...a little. I’d been using a 14-24 mm lens to shoot almost everything in 2009. After hearing from several of the consultants that I needed to stop shooting wide angle all the time, I got a 35 mm lens (which I guess is still wide but at least not ultra-wide). As mentioned above, I had plans to go to Morocco. Without the benefit of the consultations, I may have used the 14-24 as my primary lens over there, with a 50 mm as a second lens. I still brought the 14-24 with me, but my two main lenses were the 35 mm and the 50 mm, and I believe my photographs from that trip will be better as a result.
I also used the 35 mm primarily for a photo shoot I put together in mid-October. Over the summer I had an inspiration to take pictures of a woman ironing on the subway. That initial shoot morphed into a series of photographs of people doing things they normally do in their home, but in public. I shot people ironing clothes on the Brooklyn Bridge and hanging laundry on 2nd Avenue with the Roosevelt Island tram floating in the background. For the first series I shot at 35 mm, I had a group of friends shampoo their hair on a sidewalk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Participants reported having a good time, despite the intermittent showers (as in rain). The “shower” for the shampooing was made possible by my upstairs neighbors, Robert, Jamie, and Chris the tall Norwegian, along with one-gallon containers of water and a step-ladder. I brought the 14-24 along and did take some shots, and that’s probably the last time I’ll use it when the main subject of a picture is a person. The distortion at the edges of the frame harshes my mellow and might be a turn-off for potential clients looking at my site. My poor friend Kara’s fingers look as long as her legs–and she has very long legs! The 35, on the other hand, worked like a charm. So at this point you may be saying to yourself, “OK Stephen Sancho Panza Kosloff, you got the website up and you’re shooting at a better focal length, but what about the networking angle? Did any of your contacts assign you a job? Did they refer you to someone else who might assign you a job? Did any of THOSE people assign you a job?” Good questions! The only working photo editor whom I met through the Craig’s List ad, “Jane,” a senior editor at a major magazine who wished to remain anonymous, did not assign me any work.
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“Becoming a professional photographer is the equivalent of a cross-country road-trip. ”
However, Jordan Schapps, the former photo editor of New York magazine, did in fact point me in the direction of two editors. I e-mailed them both, and now only time will tell if anything comes out of it. As of early November I hadn’t heard back from either of them, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they hate my guts. Sometimes it can take a while for editors to get in touch even if they like your work. Here’s another good question: was this idea, this scheme to cast a $50 per hour net into the seething morass of Craig’s List in search of expert opinion, slightly retarded? Or at least slightly retarded as executed by yours truly? In a couple of respects the idea was autistic, if not retarded. I knew from the outset that multiple $50 an hour sessions within the span of a couple of weeks were going to punish my checking account, and they were. And the fact that it was expensive wound up limiting the amount of time I could spend with the consultants. The easy alternative would have been putting up a post offering $20 per hour to see what kind of response I’d get. And of course I could have taken some time to come up with ways to make contacts who wouldn’t charge at all, or very little. Maybe by taking a class or lecture, or even just hitting up people on flickr. I estimate that the Craig’s List effort cost me around $550. Ten-week courses at ICP cost about $880 for thirty hours of instruction, for example, which nets out to about $28 an hour. Both ASMP and APA have resources that might have been helpful. Outside of the big photography organizations, individuals like photographer David Langley teach a variety of classes. There are also many established consultants who look at portfolios for a living whom I did not contact. The Craig’s List gambit, while flawed in some ways, may still have been my best bet. It’s not at all clear that I could
have found a “Build your photography portfolio and learn to market yourself” class that would be starting when I needed it to start, and fit my schedule. As for photo consultants, my sense is that they would have charged more than $50 an hour. Working with one person as opposed to five or six may have resulted in a deeper consideration of my work, but part of the value of the Craig’s List initiative for me was the opportunity to see how different people with different professional backgrounds looked at and responded to my pictures. Now that I’m at the end of this process, I accomplished what I set out to, and even a little more. But I’m left with the somewhat unsettling realization that becoming a professional photographer is the equivalent of a cross-country road-trip, and that, basically, I’ve only made it to Hoboken. Perhaps even more accurately, it’s like taking a cross-country trip in a very old, weathered car. I might have that moment where I kick off my shoes and splash around in the Pacific, or my car might just fucking die. It’s an odd piece of vertigo to get wrapped up in. Yes, I have poured a lot of cash into photography; the consultants, the models, the private jets, the external hard-drives, the quaaludes. But, here’s the thing. This past year has been the best of the twelve years I’ve spent in New York, and that is attributable mostly to photography. To the stout little light-recording boxes I haul around on the train or into the gin joints where I exorcize my demons. Sometimes, when I get my shorts all bunched up worrying about my future, it’s easy to lose sight of how lucky I am to love something–anything–as much as I love taking pictures. [Update: On November 9, Kosloff pitched “Jane” a Moroccan photo essay and her magazine agreed to look at it on spec.]
HOW TO:
By Jeff Siti I Illustration by Horatio Baltz
W
ay back in the Middle Ages, when reasonable people were running around Europe lopping off heads and burning infidels because their god was totally better than other gods, they knew a good hot bath when they saw one. Sure did. In fact, one of the only reasons to walk away from a juicy slaughter was to dip your little piggy toes in a steaming hot salt bath. Get the heathen blood and brain and all that offal from your face and under your nails, say your nightly prayers, and hit the hay. “There’s always more heads out there to be lopped,” fathers would tell their grown sons as they put them to bed—whispering scary stories about how the old man had to wheel cheese down the mountain with no shoes on when he was a boy. But the lesson at hand is to always get a second opinion—something that didn’t exist in those days. When the Pope told the Crusaders to go nuts and cook people throughout the land, they went nuts and cooked people throughout the land. Don’t be like them. When we say, “This is how to clean your digital sensor,” get a second opinion. If done incorrectly, you could seriously damage your camera. Be warned.
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What follows is a method blessed only by the lab monkeys at Resource Magazine; a little something they like to refer to as “blow it and get it wet.” Incidentally, historians believe this method could have derailed the Crusades altogether, if only someone had thought to employ it in time. Step One: Read your manufacturer’s suggested process. If for some unthinkable reason you’d forego their method in favor of ours, read on.
Horatio Baltz: www.mynameishoratiobaltz.com
Step One-A: Create a test image. Take an image of the whitest surface you can find around you work area—a clean white cyc or a white wall work perfectly. It’s best to use an aperture anywhere between F11 and F22 as keeping this tight depth of field helps bring any dust into view. However, a sharp image is not always ideal as it could bring dust from the lens into view and confuse things. Moving the camera slightly during the exposure can help eliminate this problem.
Import the image into the camera RAW software. If you can tether, do so—it makes taking multiple test images quicker and more efficient. Processing raw images can sometimes make smaller dust particles disappear so always do your viewing of test images in the camera RAW software. Finally, adjust your curve in many different directions. Increasing and decreasing contrast can make dust easier to see. Identify the area where the dust is and prepare your work station. Remember, dust appearing in the top left of an image will actually be in the bottom right on the sensor. Step Two: Place yourself, your tools, and your camera in a clean environment. Securely lock your camera on a tripod or tabletop mount. Using compressed air, lightly blow the area around the lens.
Step Three: Clean the chamber, using a chamber cleaner and compressed air. This also works as a preventative measure to get rid of any heathenish dust that could attack the sensor when it is exposed during shooting. Step Four: Here we go. Using a blower, or a combination of blower and brush, lightly clean the sensor. This is where things get risky and potentially expensive, and it isn’t wise to get involved with Step Four unless you’re in a clean environment and know what you’re doing. There are several important and expensive organs in this neighborhood of the camera, and you may want to let a professional take over. If the thought “How bad could I fuck it up?” enters your head, put the camera down and walk away. Step Five: “If you’ve come this far maybe you’re willing to come a little further,” as Andy Dufresne once said to an old pal. To successfully complete this step, whisper “I am a surgeon” many times with your eyes closed until
you believe it or until it actually becomes true. Put two to three drops of Eclipse solution on a sensor swab that matches the width of your sensor. As the solution dries very quickly, move as fast and steady as possible, or risk scratching the sensor with a dry swab. Also, do not use much pressure, only about the same as writing, and move in a side-to-side motion using even leverage. As you get to the end of the sensor, tilt the swab to get complete coverage. Maintaining contact, reverse the swab and repeat. Attempt to complete the process in a single motion. Close the mirror as soon as the cleaning process is finished. Treat a clean sensor like you would an eclipse of the sun: don’t look at it. One of two things will make themselves clear at this point: either your sensor is clean or you’ve ruined all sorts of shit. It’s entirely up to you to risk it. Just remember, no one who stayed home died in the Crusades. Unless the Crusaders found them, in which case they died. So, there you go.
EVENT:
Photo East Expo By Kenny Ulloa I Photos by Steve Lopez
G
lowing familiar logos combine with the low din of polite industry chatter. The floors are littered with brightly colored trinkets and promotional gift bags used to stuff other promotional gift bags. The showroom is inundated with temperamental photo veterans and bright-eyed picture-taking students, each searching for a digital solace within the vinyl booths.
A convention serves as a concentration of idealism, even in the worst of times. We gather in these demonstrations of advancement as a way to place ourselves within the industry’s caste system. The exposition serves as an ephemeral flattened pyramid, essentially giving an equal oppurtunity to anyone willing to buy a ticket. While given the chance to buy, sell, and share information, the obÂserved photo professionals instead focus on the visceral urge to dominate the pictorial landscape.
Photo East Expo serves as a once-a-year event in which insiders talk shop while outsiders catch a glimpse of the inner workings of the photo market. It is a competition to dominate the hyper-real. In convention center, people discuss faster ways to disperse and consume information, trumpeting machines used to physically score the shades and colors of reality. That being said, institutions exist that cater beyond the advertising circles. Photo-journalists are in attendance as well, although with seemingly different intentions. Their images act as historical records, which are presumably archived and reviewed, serving not only as memory but also as proof of past mistakes.
Attention equals identity equals dollars. It’s almost a regression to the early days of advertising, when minimal adjectives sprinkled with airy talk were all one needed to sell out an inventory. Sharper! Cleaner! Brighter! Faster!
Some booths are adorned with spastic blinking lights, others display attractive models held captive with their fenced-in gadgets, but for the powerful minority, men with headsets appear to be the preferred decorative choice. Populating tiny stages, they offer a full frontal onslaught
of self-professed necessary counsel. The flailing salesmen gesture at the screens, as if indicating the exact coordinates of the future. The crowd squints and nods, submitting to retailing forces demonstrating the next necessary tool. The presentation ends, and on to the next booth they go. The attendees shuffle from cube to cube, collecting souvenirs along the way (a manic three-day stride fueled by popcorn and vending
machine snacks). Beyond the foreground of moving heads one can hear Germans wax nostalgic about their impeccable designs. A man leans in and awkwardly grips a camera, obviously heavier than what his worked hands are used to. It is an aspirational brand symbolizing his belief in personal upward mobility. The concept of fiscal responsibility escapes him in these casino-like trenches. His intentions are unclear, yet he feels the need to upgrade, somehow unaware of the product’s dwindling half-life. He will find a means of financing even if it requires lengthy payment plans. He will find comfort in the machine’s solid body. He will gain feelings of security and expertise. From one machine to another, the energy is transposed only to be lost within six to twelve months time. History repeats itself.
INTERVIEW:
Kate Chase
T
hings have gotten weird in the photography industry lately. With the advent of the photocine phenomenon, things are positively looking “Hollywood” for us photographers. We get to start playing director more and shooter less. “Oh you know darling, I used to press the shutter release on the camera, but that was before I discovered cowboy boots and an attitude.” The whole thing is tops as far as I can see, but it brings with it a significant responsibility that should have been made part of the photographer’s playbook about a decade ago: fair delegation of the post-production work to the specialists.
director. You need to conjure and execute a vision that is based on, ahem, someone else’s vision conveniently described in a layout. For this role you will be rewarded with accolades, or get your ass handed to you if it all goes wrong. And go wrong it will if you can’t get your head around the fact that you can’t do everything yourself. Clients’ expectations have risen too high. It doesn’t matter how good you are with Photoshop, you’ll never be as good as a specialist who lives and breathes the application. It’s just not your job anymore. Save your clever cloning tool skills for your aunts and ex-lovers, and leave the real work to the heavies.
Photography has a long and proud history of being a do-ityourself business. We have people like Ansel Adams to thank for that. Go out to a remote location, alone. Shoot long exposures of moonlit granite, alone. Then go back home, process and print your work, alone. It is a profession that has required many technical hats and a do-it-yourself, obsessive-compulsive mentality.
Post-production people are rarely acknowledged. Herb Ritts would not have been the phenomenon that he was without his printers, who are, for the most part, nameless. All you need to do is take a perusal of the Photoshop Disasters website to get an idea of how vital it is to have a solid retoucher. A few months ago I lampooned Annie Liebovitz for a Vanity Fair photo of my favorite actress, Kate Winslet, that was dreadfully retouched. More recently, Microsoft got absolutely lambasted for repurposing an ad for several countries by poorly substituting heads onto existing bodies sitting in a conference room.
Contemporary times require contemporary thinking. The job of a modern-day photographer is much more akin to that of a film
Kate Chase Presents: www.katechase.com Lou Lesko: www.louislesko.com
By Lou Lesko I Photo by Andrew Fornasier I Retouched by Smalldog Imageworks
How do you incorporate your bids into a photographer’s bid? It’s definitely not a one size fits all. From the moment I get an estimate request, we spend an incredible amount of time in due diligence—from discussing the shot list, the digital set-up, the deliverables, to potential calendar, and the very role the photographer will play (i.e., is the retoucher just behind the scenes or out in the open?). It’s pretty custom-tailored each time. Submissionalso depends You are legendary in this business. Give me a little bit of your background. How much time do we have? on the way the photographer views the retouching relationship and how knowledgeable the agent is [laughs] I started as an intern 25-ish years ago with brokering the details of what is being bought. at Wild Studios in Hollywood—where retouching Some reps just take the bottom line [of our cost] and was done with airbrush, bleaches and dyes. I incorporate it into the overall photography bids. It’s [worked there in various capacities]: delivery a tough thing to watch happen because clients then person, secretary, project manager, and general don’t know the scope of the estimate, and that’s the manager. I even moved to San Francisco to start of a potentially very slippery slope. found a satellite office and sell and market to a new audience and breed of artists producing art through computer equipment—specifically Quantel Why don’t photographers defend more retouching overages? Graphic Paintboxes. Basically, I enjoy the social I don’t think it’s intentional, but there are times and problem-solving nature of this business, whereby photographers, and sometimes regardless of the evolution of the tools through clients, just hope that the retoucher will simply software and hardware changes. finish out and reconcile with the pre-estimate, Now on my own as an agent, the founding regardless of all the surprises and obsessive mission statement for Kate Chase Presents is requests that are intrinsic to the post process. to continually educate and raise awareness for It’s always uncomfortable to have that talk. a collection of independent post-production Nevertheless, photographers now understand the artisans. Coordinating creative digital projects process further and take more of a leadership still keeps me excited every day. I also feel like role, recognizing that being accountable to my destiny, to a certain degree, is to carry on the the retoucher is part of their responsibility and legacy of what I witnessed with Charlie and Tim an important piece of the relationship puzzleI Wild. I owe much gratitude to them for fostering It’s getting a lot easier to talk and/or negotiate my love for the craft of the retouching process. I overage situations. love to see the transformation of the images. With my agency, I love that you can call the artists Retouching has been, and continues to be, a direct and that they answer their own phone. I have primarily hourly based business. Passion projects added a motion graphics artist, a book-maker, and aside—and unlike a shoot where you do have that an in-demand digital tech. Not sure what’s next as start and wrap date—retouching knows no such far as roster, but certainly my love of matchmaking boundaries. The best way to make good business decisions boils down to having an hourly rate. I keeps me on the lookout for unique talents to also know we work hard to update clients with agent for. timely status reports. We have a project manager who monitors and manages calendars so that I’ve seen enormous cost savings and reputation no one is surprised when she starts messaging enhancing by giving my work to retouchers. Can you give an example of how utilizing a retoucher is to plan for a smooth ride to an exit ramp. On the flip-side, there are jobs that do run smoothly and good for business? invoice less. Always nice when that happens. I love that you know using a senior and thinking retoucher can be good for business. And the right As ads are becoming more complicated and combination can indeed enhance reputations. If exacting, are retouchers becoming more photographers equate their time with money in any way, taking on retouching and spending hours important again? Well, coming from the historic days when and hours behind the Photoshop wheel—when most of them want to run wild, take pictures, and retouchers would walk 500 miles to school in the snow, ads have always been complicated. The new promote their work—is not the best use of their paradigm is having photographers brokering the time. It seems logical then that they would want retouching and seeing value in outsourcing versus to find and develop strong relationships [with having in-house employees. Retouchers then retouchers] to offset the conflict of having to do are becoming, albeit with a different spotlight, and master both photography and retouching. So this is what kills me: if the retouchers’ job is vital, and they stay in the shadows, why do some photographers throw them under the bus when it comes to money? I asked Kate Chase—the preeminent expert on retouching, and an agent to high-end retouchers—this question, and a whole mess of other ones over a bottle of wine at the Presidio Social Club in San Francisco.
important to the success of photographers [as when] they used to be hand-picked and chosen by art directors. What is the best way for photographers to communicate their vision to a retoucher? Firstly it depends on the length of the relationship and the shorthand that comes with developing a familiarity—how much time has been invested in discovering likes and dislikes as well as common aesthetics. It also depends on how intuitive the retoucher is and their background in the arts, [which will determine] how well they can understand where the photographer or the art director wants to go. For me, all these years later, I equate a retoucher to a master chef. I have seen what’s possible when a master retoucher gets inside the head of a photographer and can take the image and make something with the raw ingredients that you didn’t even think about originally. In our business model, you call the artist direct so that cuts out a middle-man [and any] translation loss or filter. It’s about perfecting one’s relationship skills. Photographers need to: 1. Pre-consult. 2. Be open minded and/or collaborative. 3. And give the retoucher freedom to bring something to the table. What advice do you have for photographers when a client is pushing to handle the post-production process internally? This is a rising concern for many. The old retouching way had Ad Agencies choosing the retoucher and working directly with them, sans photographer—and that model still exists. But now that photographers are more involved in retouching, it’s become crucial that the piece stay with them. There’s a conflict when the agency creative team wants the retouching to be handled by the photographer and the CFO—or someone focused on profit—is mandating an in-house approach, which fragments the creative soul of the project. A solution that works well is to have photographers cover only the first phase of the project—say, one or two rounds of retouching—to ensure that the proper elements are chosen and the vision discussed on-set is followed. Although I know this raises the issues of layered files and losing control of the final vision, it’s a much better situation than being told that bringing your own post-production solutions is a deal breaker.
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MISSION:
Ranexa By Elizabeth Leitzell I Artwork courtesy of Andy Glass
To create a body of water that represents both an anatomically correct and healthy heart.
Where did the idea for this image come from? What were the parameters of the ideal location? The idea was from the agency Giant, from San Francisco, for a pharmaceutical company called Ranexa. The landscape needed to be green and lush. The visual was promoting a drug that increases flow through the heart, so it had to be a positive environment, fresh and healthy. We couldn’t be shooting in a desert or a sand bank or anything like that. It needed to represent life. Other than that we were given very free range. Did you have an idea in mind of where you were going to find this landscape? The layout that Sarah Patterson, the Art Director, came up with, used originally a shot from a landscape in Sweden. We thought, “Fantastic, let’s go to Sweden.“ But there was too much snow still on the ground. Same thing with Canada and Iceland, which we also researched. We then looked at the southern hemisphere.
I work quite a lot down there with a very good production company. We ended up shooting in the Fiordland, in South Island, New Zealand. It’s a series of fiords so there are lots of sea locks and lakes. Perhaps two valleys away, or a short ten minute flight away, we found the main body of water with many, many tributaries and other rivers. They get an enormous amount of run off of water and rain. I could be wrong here but I think that they get the highest rainfall on the planet. So we knew this could be a good place. This was a huge retouching job. The original shot is the shot you have in front of you, if you take out all the water. What camera did you use? I shot on a Hasselblad with a P45+ Phase One back. Was there any trouble keeping the camera steady in the helicopter? No, none at all. We didn’t use a gyroscope. I know some people do but personally I don’t
really like them. I just like to handhold it. We were shooting quite wide, so everything was at infinity, and we had enough light. How long did shooting take? Day one was our scout day and we shot two consecutive days after that. But we were never in the air for very long. [It took time to] get to the location. We had to shoot when the sun was at its highest, but as we were in winter the sun wasn’t up for very long and didn’t get very high. How long did retouching take? The retouching took about a month. I supposed we’d done the majority of the work in about two to three weeks and the rest was really finessing. That was when it got to the client comments and when we really had to make very, very subtle, final changes. How many shots would you say are within this image? How many layers in Photoshop? That’s a really tricky question. I would say
Elizabeth Leitzell: www.edlphotography.com
M ission:
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this ended up being a 5gb file, which is massive. Even in normal retouching that’s a huge file. I think we probably used about fifty different shots here. Layer-wise, I can only imagine; it was around 1,500 layers. It was very intense. The art director was very precise about the appearance of the flow. We had to take out the sand banks because that would have illustrated blockages in the arteries. How many people were involved? We had a producer, Rebecca Vaughan, from OPTNZ; Johnny the pilot; and my assistant. From a retouching point of view, it was such a massive project, there were lots of people preparing masks and working on small sections. But one main person overviewed the whole thing, and when it got to a certain stage Karl Hugill took it over and finished it. We were sharing every stages⎯we’d download hi-res files off a FTP, go through them, and have conference calls pretty regularly.
What was the biggest obstacle you faced in creating this image, and how did you overcome it? The biggest obstacle was just the actual logistics of shooting it: being up there; getting everything in the right perspective, the right lighting; making sure that we covered every single curve and shape. Once we knew where our main shot was going to be made things a little easier, because then you could visualize where you’re going to put the heart, where you’re going to put the tributaries coming into and off the heart. For me that was the most complicated thing⎯mentally keeping track of where everything will go, because in a helicopter you can’t put some retouching together. The other problem is that it was a very, very remote location. It’s a very long car journey to get there. The pilot organized fuel dumps⎯they would drive in or drop in small tankers full of fuel so we could then drop down, refuel, and get enough to fly around shooting some more.
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BRANDING to the MAX. It’s easy as 212.677.0665 www.resourcemagonline.com
Photographer: Andy Glass - www. andyglassphoto.com / www.greenhousereps. com Client: Ranexa Ad Agency: Giant Creative Strategy - www. giantagency.com Art Director: Sarah Patterson Producer: OptNZ (Our Production Team in New Zealand) - www.optnz.co.nz Location Scout: Dave Cromer - davecomer@ xtra.co.nz Photo Assistant: Todd Antony Head Retoucher: Karl Hugill Retouch stats: 1532 Layers 1420 Elements 506 Curves 207 Colour Balances 134 Hue and Saturation Layers 15 Images used One 4.5 GB psb
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a j p r o d u c t i o n s | n y, i n c p r o d u c t io n - c a s t i n g - l o c a t i o n s c o u ting
9 1 7. 2 0 9 . 0 8 2 3 2 1 2 . 9 7 9 . 7 5 8 5 www.a jproductionsny.com ajprodnyc@mac.com
LOCATIONS:
Arcades
Hiroki Kobayashi: www.hirokikobayashi.com
By Michael T. Wilcox I Photos by Hiroki Kobayashi
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ooking in every nook, cranny, and crevice for quarters around the household usually means that I no longer have clean clothes and a visit to the laundromat is necessary. However, there was once a time in my life when collecting quarters meant something else: a visit to the arcade. I fondly remember taking bike rides with my older brother to the local hangout spot for kids not yet old enough to drive. Ignoring the batting cages and putt-putt course, we preferred the arcade with its sticky floor, greasy knobs and buttons, and fried food aroma. Spending hours in a dimly lit room whilst staring at brightly colored, constantly moving screens was likely not good for the eyesight, but it was certainly good for the soul. While the arcades of today aren’t as grimy as those of yesteryear, they possess the same allure. Gamers aren’t scorned there, rather, they are rewarded with high scores and endless strings of tickets to be cashed in for stuffed animals or dollar store prizes. Now that some establishments serve beer, it’s a wonder that people ever leave. I suppose that, at some point, every gamer must go home to hit the reset button.
Barcade 388 Union Ave. - Brooklyn, NY 11224 718-302-6464
3rd Avenue Sports Center 800 3rd Ave. - Brooklyn, NY 11232 718-965-0004 www.3rdavenuesportscenter.com
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Coney Island 1208 Surf Ave. - Brooklyn, NY 11224 718-372-5159 www.coneyisland.com
Kids Action 1149 McDonald Ave. - Brooklyn, NY 11230 www.kidsnaction.com
Museum Of The Moving Image 35th Ave. at 37th St. - Astoria, NY 11106 718-784-4520 www.movingimage.us
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PARTY LIKE A PHOTOSTAR
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By Charlie Fish
Second, you’ve probably noticed while schmoozing with the shutterbugs in New York that Resource was likely at most events. And we probably had surveys with us. Pardon us for mixing statistics with drink-time pleasure, but these surveys were critical in understanding the areas of importance to both attendees and hosts of photography-related soirées and fêtes. From art openings to networking events to downright dance parties, Resource was there to find out what makes a great event. While you chatted up new connections, Resource was gathering data. While you bragged, boasted, and waxed artistic about your latest project, Resource was taking notes and calibrating enjoyment levels. Whether you’re throwing a party or simply attending one, the information below is invaluable. Want to know how the photo industry parties? Read on.
Charlie Fish: www.charliefish.info
If you’ve been to any photo-related event lately, you’ve surely noticed two things. First, there are a lot more industry events out there. This is a no-brainer. It’s also a very good thing. The flowing booze alone acts as a much-needed social lubricant to facilitate the increasingly important act of networking. Plus, with every major industry in some sort of rebirth/restructuring/renaissance, the myriad of ways to cozy up to future bigwigs can only help you. If you haven’t yet made the most of these frequent networking events and gatherings, you should just take your film camera and go back to living under a rock.
63 Noah Bruun’s ideal event would take place at “the Gansevoort Resort in Turks and Caicos Islands to celebrate life and all the great work we get to do with all the great and talented people we’re so privileged to work with. There would be an informal dinner with drinks around the pool and my favorite Lounge DJ Pierre Ravan.”
How did you find out about this event? a. through a friend b. facebook or other social networks c. email invite d. other. Please specify
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20 Sasha Wyroba – Producer says: The most interesting person I ever met at a party is “Tim Dalton! Or someone who once dated my mom…eep!”
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Alys Kenny – Photographer/Photo Editor says: My ideal event would be at “the Biennale in Venice with art, champagne, and interesting people.”
Sean Gomez – Accounting Associate says: The best event I ever attended was “The day I was born!”
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Tony Gale – Photographer says: The most interesting person I met at an event is “Grandmaster Flash.”
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a. networking b. socializing with your peers c. getting laid d. other. Please specify
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NETWORKING TIP FOR PARTY GOERS: Face it. If you want to be where it’s at, when it’s at, and with the right people, then join the Facebook groups of companies that are involved in your circle of business, friends, and associates. For example, Resource Magazine’s Facebook group and page!
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NETWORKING TIP FOR PARTY THROWERS: Be friendly. It’s important for party goers to enjoy themselves as well as network. So don’t underestimate the power of creating a community behind your business and events. Keep it regular, keep it fun, and people will keep coming.
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What kind of event do you enjoy most?
Noah Bruun – Photo Rep says: The most interesting person I’ve met at a party is “Camila Pava from Resource Magazine.”
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DAWN OF THE INDUSTRY:
Fast Ashley’s Studios, American Muscle As told by Michael Masse I Photos courtesy of Fast Ashley’s Studios
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n the industrial heart of North Brooklyn, Fast Ashley’s Studios lives on in a converted muscle car dealership once owned by infamous man-about-town, Todd Ashley, and his partner Christian Carmago. What began in 2002 as a one studio with a two-classic car showroom has evolved into a four-stage three-cyc drive-in studio run by a tight-knit, knowledge-laden crew of ex-photo assistants. The dirt floor and vintage Airstream trailer have given way to a well-stocked equipment cage, poured concrete floors, and a showroom that is modeled after Ralph Lauren’s garage.
The initial use of the space at 95 N. 10th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a mystery to some extent. It hosted horses and carriages in days of yore. The space was also used by an aircraft parts manufacturer and supplier during WWII. The studio ran under Todd’s tutelage for its first two years. Due to its location outside Manhattan, advertising and marketing were key to get Fast Ashley’s off the ground. The studio soon became synonymous with raging nocturnal bashes. The Rumblers, a hot-rod gang, and Brooklyn’s Finest (read, off-duty cops) oversaw security at the “come one, come all” parties. The events were so crowded with people and thick with sweat, dancing, and booze, that a certain notoriety was achieved and the studio started to get jobs. Thanks to the work ethic of the crew, clients eventually stood up and took notice.
Steve and Todd shook hands as Steve purchased the studios. He added the necessary lighting and grip that the studio had lacked up until that point and got down to expanding Fast Ashley’s capacity. This freed Todd to head out West to pursue his true love of cars and celebrity–he and Christian later landed and starred in the MTV hit show Fast Inc.
Studio B, Fast Ashley’s largest cyc studio, was initially a second vintage muscle car showroom, occasionally housing a teepee, a mechanical bull, and brass stripper poles. In 2003, Steve Kalalian of Impact Digital and Industrial Color fame fell in love with the neighborhood and saw the potential to convert the space into a first class studio while keeping the original spirit of Fast Ashley’s alive. During one late night of relative insanity,
Sandwiched between KCDC and Fast Ashley’s stood Blake, aka “the Road Warrior,” who ran a full-fledged wood shop cranking out beautiful handmade furniture and cabinets. Blake’s occasional cigarette brake would lead to him racing up and down N. 10th St., pulling block-long wheelies on his dirt bike. Blake’s love of dogs led him into Fast Ashley’s front door on several occasions to visit the night manager’s pit bull, Bieste. Blake even-
In the midst of its transformation, the studio made acquaintances throughout the neighborhood. Vice Magazine was moving on to the scene–their offices opened at 99 N. 10th Street–and brought more credibility to a still shady but interesting and increasingly vibrant community. Their offices sat above the renowned KCDC skate shop. Photographers shooting in the studio would on occasion shred on KCDC’s half pipe.
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tually moved on and left his space to Fast Ashley’s. The existing drywall was ripped out to reveal the incredible vaulted ceiling and massive timber beams of the space that became Studio C. Another interesting neighbor, Aquatic Creations, was famous for a couple things; they had a giant shark tank and employed a drifter named Steve, a jack of all trades and master of some. His potent red beard and surly, unapproachable nature earned him the monikers “Red Beard” or “the Pirate.” He was an irascible bloke, but after a few beers a gentle nature and willingness to talk would come forth. One night, just before he and his van disappeared from the local scene, Fast Ashley’s night manager gave him a generator and a Lowell DP on a kit stand when he left at midnight. By nine the next morning Red Beard had created a larger than life-sized pristine replica of a bullish and brawny rhino outside of Studio C. It was soon tagged over by a gang of marauding graffiti artists, but the rhino stood, for some time, as an emblem of strength and resilience in the dowdy neighborhood. Aquatic Creations soon became Studio D. After some necessary sandblasting to remove the psychedelic marine floor mural, the studio was whitewashed. HVAC, skylights, and chandeliers were installed. A decision was made to leave the studio as a raw shooting space, sans cyc. This gave Fast Ashley’s four studios with four completely different spaces,
each with its own defining characteristics, its own feeling under an umbrella of muscular American industrial chic. Fast’s Ashley’s transformation into a world-class studio took several years and the dedication of all those who were part of the experience. Today, photographers and clients, from Craig McDean, Mario Testino, Daniel Jackson, and Cedric Buchet, to Barneys, Vogue, or HBO have all called Fast Ashley’s home for a wide range of projects. While the studio has never made claims to being a sound stage, video has recently supplanted much of the still photography, with the introduction of video-enabled DSLRs and cameras like the RED. Water and car shoots also seem to be a favorite at the studio, certainly due to its street level location. Celebrities enjoy the ability to walk in and around the neighborhood without the fuss or concern of shooting in the city. Williamsburg and Greenpoint have witnessed a changing of the guard, from artists looking for big, raw, and cheap spaces aside lower-income locals to fancy chocolatiers, caterers, garden stores, Swedish cafés, and boutiques. Today bars and restaurants dot the local grid and provide more amenities than anyone could have dreamed of seven years ago.
INTERVIEW:
Craig Strong Emily Ann Epstein I Photo by Craig Strong
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upperware. Vacuum hoses. Photography. To Craig Strong, inventor of Lensbaby lenses, it’s all a part of the job. Before his custom kit took on a life of its own, this MacGyver of the industry shot for newspapers and was an award-winning wedding photographer. His creations, the Muse, the Composer, and the Control Freak, have been lauded for inserting the organic into our digital age. Resource chats with the innovator about Lensbaby, his passions, and, of course, his other children.
I understand you used to work in photojournalism. How did working in that field affect your understanding of photography? When I was sent on an editorial assignment, I had very little time to make the images I was expected to bring back. This pressure, and the knowledge that whatever I brought back would have my name under it, pushed me to know my equipment, to always be ready to shoot, and to anticipate moments before they happened. Shooting hundreds of photographs a day allowed me to improve my photography skills very quickly. This was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, so film was the only option. Shooting that many photographs was a luxury limited to those who had time and money, and those of us who were paid to photograph. I was also privileged to learn a great deal from the photographers I worked with. Photojournalism can be very competitive, but getting sage advice and candid feedback while working on staff was something I grew to value highly. What was your kit like back then? As a photojournalist I used Canon L-Series zooms and the brightest Canon prime lenses I could afford. I tended to be much more concerned about the lens quality than the
camera I was putting those excellent lenses on. I preferred prosumer cameras that often had features that the top end cameras didn’t have yet. I didn’t have to worry about the lower priced cameras nearly as much as I would have with a camera body worth three or four times as much money. For diffusers, I would go to Goodwill to buy half a dozen Tupperware containers, and I would hack the lids up into just the right shape so I could pull out the exact flash modifier I needed for any situation. Using strobes in a way that complimented the subject matter while not distracting from the scene was very important to me. Everything I used on a typical photo shoot could be contained in a bag I could strap around my waist. Two bodies, a strobe, and three or four lenses was all the gear I needed. How did you come up with the lenses? A friend of mine had a gallery show featuring 16x16” prints of images she’d created using a Diana camera and slide film she’d crossprocessed. I had spent years working to make my images as perfect as possible, in a National Geographic sense: being an invisible observer, working to ensure that my personal artistic style wouldn’t distract from the subject matter at hand. I was shocked that these motion-blurred, unfocused, contrasty, highly saturated images impacted me so strongly. The artistic style was obvious, yet the images were stronger because of it. They were full of life and increased my vision of how a powerful photograph should look and the process required to make it. When I got my digital SLR I started experimenting with alternative lenses. I did it just because I could [without costing me much of anything]. I put lenses on my Canon D30 that were intended for camcorders, or were fifty to a hundred years old, and made photographs for my clients and for myself that
we loved. Before long I was buying vacuum cleaner hoses at Home Depot, machining holes in body caps, buying cameras off eBay, pulling the lenses off, and using the optical elements from these lenses to put the earliest Lensbaby prototypes together for my own personal and professional work. How did you construct the first Lensbaby lens? The first Lensbaby was made with a piece of ShopVac hose, a body cap with a hole cut in it, and a 101 mm Kodak lens off of an old Speed Graphic camera that had been sitting as an ornament on my bookshelf. How do you incorporate the lenses into your personal and professional photography? When I’m on a job, I’m looking for a way to document what I am seeing, always striving for the goal that my style compliments the subject matter. I want whatever lens I use to be such a good fit for the subject that it helps me communicate to the viewer what I see. I use Lensbaby lenses for about 5% of the images I shoot at weddings, often a higher percentage for portraits. One client hired me exclusively for my Lensbaby photos, and I shot weekly assignments for them over the course of three years using only Lensbaby lenses. For my personal photography, I use whatever prototype I am getting ready for the next batch of Lensbaby accessories, or Lensbaby Optic Swap optics, etc. This means that my family photos have a very different flavor from one year to the next. Most recently I have been photographing with the Soft Focus and Fisheye optics that came out in October ‘09. Trying new things has become an obsession. Do you ever wish you could re-shoot past stories with a Lensbaby lens? The images I shot prior to creating the first Lensbaby came from my photographic vision at that time. My photographic vision is different today, so I don’t really wish I had had
www.lensbabies.com Emily Ann Epstein: www.emilyanneepstein.com
What was your first camera? Did you tinker with photo equipment from an early age? My first camera was a Mamiya 500TL SLR with a 50mm f/2 lens. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. My father gave it to me for graduation from eighth grade and I immediately took on the identity of“Photographer.” As a kid I took apart everything I ever owned, and shortly after getting that camera it got drenched on a camping trip, so I took it apart piece by piece. It was bittersweet, as I never got it to work again. Most things I took apart never worked again, but I sure loved seeing what was inside.
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the tools I have today back then. Photojournalism is about recording history. Seeing my style change through the years is part of that history. I am most interested in going back to Peru to be with the beautiful elderly couple I spent time with in 1995 so I can tell more of their story. When I go back I’ll surely take my Lensbaby lenses, but probably most of the images will be made with prime Nikon glass (I switched to Nikon several years ago) and complimented with images that the Lensbaby optics are uniquely suited to capture well. Do you identify yourself mostly as a photographer, a businessman or an inventor? How do you satisfy each of these identities? I have to say that fisherman was my first identity, even before photographer, and that one has endured and become a big part of my relationship with my kids whom I take fishing as often as possible. When it comes to my career, I’d have to say that photographer is the identity that makes businessman and inventor possible, and being a photographer is the place where I feel most at home. There is no time when I feel more comfortable in my skin than when I’m photographing a wedding. I treasure the process of creating something new and photography allows me to do that a bit faster than inventing so, yes, photographer it is. You talk about how a Lensbaby lens is a way for photographers to be creative without using Photoshop. If we think of Photoshop as a digital darkroom, how to you feel Lensbaby fits in the analog vs. digital realms of photography? Have you gotten feedback from film photographers who use it? Lensbaby adds an organic element to normally sterile digital photography, but some of the most amazing Lensbaby images I’ve seen have been shot on my favorite film, TMax 3200. I love what a Lensbaby lens can do on film; the layering of the organic grain with the depth of field effects of the Lensbaby is a stunning combination. How do you feel a lens affects a photographer’s process? I see things uniquely because of my familiarity with each of my camera lenses and knowing the kinds of images each is capable of capturing. This vision is dramatically different with Lensbaby lenses. Seeing in a new way is profound– in photography and in every aspect of life.
Learning any photographic tool has the effect of opening up visual possibilities. I love this about photography. Learning new things and changing how your camera sees can change what and how you see. This is one of the biggest joys I experience in being a photographer, and I look forward to experiencing this kind of learning for the rest of my life. When I look at Lensbaby images I feel like they zero in on moments closer and more intimately than other lenses. Is there a different photographic philosophy when one shoots with a Lensbaby lens? That’s a great observation. I don’t know if the photographic philosophy is different. I do know that I see certain things through my Lensbaby that I don’t see through my other lenses. And finally, which one of your Lensbaby images are you the most proud of and why? The image that I’m currently most proud of is one of my son, Mac, holding up his catch of a rainbow trout in front of a lake on the Oregon Coast where we had spent the day fishing. It’s my favorite Lensbaby image because of the day we had together and how proud I am to be his dad.
DEVELOPMENT:
Factory Studios By Michael T. Wilcox I Photos courtesy of Factory Studio
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uturistic. Pure. Minimal. Community-oriented. Streamlined. Factory Studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, embodies these qualities across all facets of the space, from the lighting to the three partners who run it. In a forward moving world that always holds itself back, Factory separates itself by applying a Thoreauvian minimalist approach to a Blade Runner-esque world. The studio has opened these values up to an artistic community and an industry where science is changing art. As a result, Factory Studios has had an eclectic mix of production shoots in the two months since it opened, including a Reebok commercial, a few fashion shoots, and a “workout” video featuring lots of leather. Carrie White and Eve (pronounced Ev) Lefebvre MacDougall are the women happily hosting the photo/commercial/wacky workout shoots. With their business partner Devin O’Brien, they expanded what was once just a fifth floor photography studio to include a 3,200 square foot soundstage and a rooftop with the graffiti and grit of an under-developed, yet hip urban aesthetic. The first floor soundstage is expansive. The building used to be a textile factory. Each floor was a massive open space with few walls, clearly built to fit large factory equipment. Rather than cramming as much video and photography gear into the wide space, Factory Studios leaves it as empty as possible. One couch and a couple of chairs in a corner, a few more chairs and a tableat the other end of the floor, a couple hundred feet away. In between, a cyc covers much of the distance. This vast emptiness, coupled with fifteen foot tall white walls, twelve inches deep soundproofing, and climate controlling SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels), provides a blank canvass for artists of any walk. The fifth floor studio shares the same blank canvass appeal while providing waves of western and southern light.
What really works for Factory Studios is its understanding of what it takes to build a community made up of individuals with differing backgrounds but with common artistic goals. This is apparent in the trio that puts a face to the Factory Studios name. Devin owns an insulation and soundproofing company, Eve is an architect from Montreal, and Carrie is the only member with extensive experience in production work, having owned a marketing company in Atlanta and run a photo studio in New York. All three bring different skills to their business. The resulting studio embodies a kind of constantly motivated community philosophy. In staying true to said philosophy, the studio always seems to have ongoing construction and enhancements; at press time, video editing suites were still being constructed for a more complete work environment. “It’s about not being bored with what you do,” as Eve puts it. The studio is also surrounded by creative people as artists, dancers, painters, and photographers live and work in the building. Factory shares a communal relationship with them, one of mutual thought and wonder. In holding a genuine interest in all art forms while reflecting a futuristic, boutique aesthetic, Factory Studios accomplishes something that isn’t typically seen. The effect is a nojudgment, no-restriction atmosphere that not many larger studios can offer.
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TECH, EQ & FLOW:
Digital Firms + Cowboys Words and Photo by Ryan Morris
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n the road to becoming a Digital Tech, everyone endures various levels of stress and praise, complexities and decisions, as well as personal and professional decorum. You will be paid the same no matter what, and you will feel that you had little to no effect on the images produced. The field is a competitive one, with many tech-savvy photo assistants putting down the lighting, camera, and grip gear to take the reigns of the computer and the coveted position as the photographer’s right hand. The one advantage that digital has over its predecessor is the means of the medium. Where film falls short as far as turnaround taking costly time to transfer analog to digital, color-correct, and edit the Tech acts as an catalyst, allowing the images to be filtered through a rapid workflow and delivered to clients or retouchers before the end of the shoot day. With film getting more and more scarce, the Digital Tech’s
job is focusing on the preservation of the images. Knowing this, a Tech has only to look around to see what he can do to add value and consistency to his repertoire. What little control you may have in the direction of your professional life will be decided by the level on which you wish to function. There are three possible routes to follow: the first based on service, the second on creative, and the third on personal. Generally,
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staring at a company can be a good foundation to build on before being comfortable enough to make the plunge into the freelance life. The important things to know are the expectations of you as a Tech and the functions and workflow in each situation. Many Digital Firms follow the simple supply and demand equation found in all service businesses. From handling equipment, file management, proofing, editing, processing, and delivery, Tech Houses can eliminate the monotony of producing a shoot and help cover the front end for a Digital Tech. Rental Houses and Studios usually offer this essential service, promoting a Tech’s ability and qualifications through their businesses. Only after a Tech has worked on set for some time with a seasoned veteran and found a workflow that allows him to deliver what the clients need quickly and efficiently, can he join the full-time ranks. A whole other school of Teching focuses on retouching. Companies founded on creative assimilation have developed capture systems based upon a consistent delivery for their clients. These Pre-Press Shops provide direct services to Brands and Ad Agencies alike. Techs on these jobs will usually be required to overlay backgrounds, scale, mask exposures, drop in items, and create multiple image composites for Photographer and Client’s approval. Finally, there are the lone gunmen, or “Cowboys” as they are sometimes referred to. This ideal situation for freelancers allows
you to develop your own client base and frees you from employers essentially cutting out the middleman. These proud few often come from Digital or Retouching Firms and know enough the business that they are able to start their own companies. Jobs are coveted but more personal, allowing them to work one-on-one with a single photographer or production house, resulting in a more seamless project. The quality of their work is easily visible in their portfolios, which are tailored to specific facets of the industry whether it be auto, beauty, fashion, still life, or celebrity photography. As expected at this level of expertise, the Tech becomes as essential to the shoot as the photographer and works consistently with the same clients. Ultimately the route you choose is based upon the level of responsibility you can handle as well as your experience and organizational skills. Though Digital Firms succeed with their production and procedure, the equipment is still the focus of the sales pitch and the service is technical. Retouching Houses cover a portion of the creative field, allowing you to move into the other side, but still require a degree of production and organization out of house. The worst overhead is for the lonesome Cowboys, who will often find they spend more time marketing and billing than on set. One day, they might find that dream client and have their hard work realized. Whatever your situation, all Digital Techs hold and treasure the photographers’ vision and safeguard it in the sanctity of the digital medium.
Agency: Bates 141 Jakarta www.bates141.com
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birth of a campaign:
Creative Director: Hendra Lesmono
Pantone Color Guide Book
Art Director: Andreas Junus & Irawandhani Kamarga
By Marc Cadiente I Artwork courtesy of Bates 141 Jakarta
Copywriter: Iyan Susanto Account Executive: Nitya Priyahita
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ake a look on YouTube—there’s no shortage of bizarre animal behavior or weather footage. And weather marks the beginning of nearly every convivial conversation. Natural phenomena are known to make people stop and take notice. Advertising campaigns aim to do the same thing, so when Basheer Graphic Books asked Bates 141 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to promote the Pantone color guide book to art students and faculty at the local university, the creatives looked to the sky for inspiration. When the team received the brief, they were encouraged to use unconventional media to portray the idea that Pantone has the most color selection for printing guidance. “From there several ideas came to us, but in the end, we asked ourselves, ‘What has the most color?’ Clearly, the rainbow was the answer,” says Andreas Junus, co-art director with Irawandhani Kamarga heading the campaign. Bates 141 Jakarta, the world’s largest Asia-devoted marketing communication agency, has a long history of capturing the essence of products and delivering them to an audience. Ted Bates founded the original agency in 1941 in New York, and his creative partner, Rooser Reeves, was responsible for some of the most important ad campaigns and slogans in history, including M&Ms’ “Melt in your mouth, not in your hand.” The creatives on the Pantone project knew the legacy they had to uphold. The seemingly simple and obvious decision to use the rainbow had to result in something grand, larger than life—and clever. It had to be something that would make people stop and talk. Plans were made to build a structurally stable large rainbow made of Pantone chips and install it in the university’s campus. The engineering included constructing small wood panels that would fit together to compose the arch. “After we drew blueprints of how to construct the rainbow structure, we went around the campus to find the perfect spot to build it. We then picked Pantone colors that matched the color of the real rainbow,” says Junus. “We had to [determine the arrangement] of all the chosen color chips and make a gradient [that mimicked] a rainbow when seen
Photographer: HK from a distance.” Once the colors were selected, printing began. Rather Client: than using real Pantone chips, the team decided to print and cut to size Basheer Graphic Book their own chips to resemble the real thing—but, naturally, they used the Pantone book to match their output. More than 5,000 chips were created and painstakingly applied to the wood panels by hand. The operation took seven days. Once it was complete, the structure was erected and a spectacular rainbow appeared over the local campus park, spanning approximately twenty-six feet and rising nearly fifteen feet into the sky. Stop and take notice—that is exactly what passersby did. Some paused for a quick photograph of, or with, the colorful giant. The curious walked up to the rainbow to examine its paper scales. But others kept walking—straight to Basheer Graphic Books to inquire about the Pantone color guide.
3 unique studios under one roof
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INTERVIEW:
Wax Poetics’ Editor-in-Chief By Stephanie Nikolopoulos I Photo by Jon Wasserman
II
t’s four o’clock, and Andre Torres hasn’t had lunch yet. As usual, this is a busy day for the founder and editor-in-chief of Wax Poetics. Celebrating its eighth anniversary, the music magazine has spun off half a dozen other related ventures that keep Torres hopping from one project to the next. After all, Wax Poetics has filled a void in music documentation, and now readers are clamoring for more, like hungry orphans banging their silverware against worn tables. Just as the Brooklyn Bridge looming outside the magazine’s DUMBO office unifies New York by connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, Wax Poetics bridges the gap between the old and the new, music history and current pop-culture, education and entertainment. It covers the interplay between vintage and contemporary blues, funk, hip-hop, jazz, Latin, R&B, reggae, and soul. In hip-hop music, which is forever sampling from other, oftentimes older, artists, it is especially appropriate—and arguably even necessary for true appreciation—to explore the roots that inspire today’s hits. To satisfy the growl in the pit of readers’ stomachs for more from the bimonthly indie magazine, Wax Poetics has expanded to a full-fledged music media group that includes a record label, a radio program featuring music and interviews with artists, digital downloading, books and films, as well as an offshoot in Japan. Torres has just returned from a radio show. Sandwich in hand, he walks through the office, which looks like a music warehouse overflowing with albums. He shakes some potato chips out of their bag, but quickly becomes so absorbed in telling the story of Wax Poetics that he altogether forgets his long-overdue lunch. You founded the magazine in 2001. How did you get your start? At the time, I was selling software and was very bored. I wanted to do something a little more creative. I got my degree in painting but I got tired of the whole art world in New York so I took a real job…. I was collecting a lot of records and I was looking at the magazines out there but there really wasn’t anything [that covered my music interests]. There was some talk starting to happen on the Internet
about the artists we were passionate about, but it was kind of 101, sort of entry level. So, not knowing anything about publishing, I had the idea to start a magazine about my hobby. It was to be something that would discuss the music I love in a smart way that had the same sort of substance as the music itself. Most record collectors keep their records forever, so I thought, “I want to make a magazine for collectors, something that people would want to hold onto.” How has Wax Poetics changed over the past eight years? Oh, wow. Drastically. We really found our niche, and started to think about other things outside of the magazine. People were dying to get the first editions [of Wax Poetics] so we figured, ”Well, let’s put them in a book.” We wanted to capture their attention at every level, so we started a record label, did books, and launched our own mp3 music store. From that, other opportunities have opened up and grown organically. Can you tell me a little bit more about the new-media initiatives and the difference between the print magazine versus the online version? We were introducing a lot of music that some people were unfamiliar with. We always felt that it would be ideal to have people listen to this stuff while they were reading about it. That eventually led to us building a mp3 music store… Even though we’re primarily record-driven, we knew there were a lot of younger people coming to the digital format. Even older cats no longer wanted to carry around all their records and were beginning to get into the mp3 game.
Where did you get your music knowledge? I’ve always been a big music head. My father owned a record store. In our house there were lots of records. I’d watch [my grandfather] listen to his music. He was a big jazz fan. I heard all these sounds growing up. By the time I was in high school, jazz was not foreign to me but I was also a big hip-hop and classic-rock fan. I knew about enough music that when I started hearing things being sampled in hip-hop I was like, “Wait a minute—I know that song.” Then I wanted to figure out how they did that. How’d you take this old song and make a new song out of it? This was the eighties and it just seemed like these guys were way ahead. I was studying art, Picasso and Braque, and learning about cubism and modernism, and the hip-hop guys were basically collage-ing music. I thought, this is very, very arty. I thought of hip-hop as an art movement, a post-modern sound. When I started the magazine I wanted to take that same approach in the design and layout, and give it that same kind of treatment as if we were talking about Renaissance architecture but instead it’d be Grandmaster Flash. Where do you see the future of Wax Poetics? We’ll continue to dig deeper into everything that we do, with the magazine as the center. We bring stories, artists, and histories to life to a new, younger audience and expose newer artists to people who’ve never heard of some of this stuff. That idea will always be the glue that sticks everything together… People are looking for something very specific. They’re looking for something that’s going to feed their soul on a very personal level. I think that’s what we’ve been able to capture, and we’ll continue moving forward in that spirit.
Wax Poetics: www.waxpoetics.com Stephanie Nikolopoulos: http://asphalteden.blogspot.com Jon Wasserman: www.jonwassermanphotography.com
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Of content and its discontents Art Direction and Words by Timothy Sutton I Photos by Todd Warnock
hat happens when an analog or print-based media company closes its doors or changes course? What happens when a Technicolor stops developing negatives? Or a Duggal stops making contact sheets? After costly delays and false starts, these and countless other imagery giants have taken on digital responsibilities with relish, but there is no question that their collective history has been carved in stone by a medium effectively wiped clean from mainstream usage. And the sprawling spaces—factories, laboratories, warehouses—previously stuffed wall to wall with 20th century curiosities and their keepers, sit forever changed, if not completely empty. Countless boxes, cans, tape cases, and folders stuffed with imagery—some of it historic—pile up at undisclosed locations, to be seen rarely, if ever, again. Altering a company and its mission in this fashion represents the industry’s final abandonment of all things analog (aside from Lomo, of course), as well as an irreparable break in the chain of film photography and film production. This (digital) photography project is concerned with the physical spaces as well as the job descriptions that have been left behind in the name of technology. No longer in need of endless shelves, aluminum cans, archival boxes, and lab equipment, millions of images now fit quietly on sleek hard drives. Once industry standard, sculpturally beautiful machines like projectors, splicers, or editing tables now exist only as museum-quality objects. And then there are the people: the negative cutter no longer has negatives to cut, the tape dubber has no tapes to dub. Now both, and others like them, must become “content specialists,” “digital techs,” “digital inspectors” or, subject to Darwin’s principal, will cease to exist.
Gerry Post, who posed for the project, recently looked back on his career from the vantage point of his newly minted flat screen computer monitor. “My first job was in 1960, apprenticing for an editor at Trident Films, and this may sound stupid, but I miss touching the film. It gave you more of a feeling of doing the work. When you touched film, working on a Steenbeck flatbed or Moviola, and you held the film in your hand, and it would roll in your hand…it was a good feeling, a closeness to the project. A work-print would get cut, torn, taped back up with grease pencils marking where new cuts would go. You could see the work put in; literally, you could see the work on the film. It’s cleaner now. It’s much cleaner now. Which is a good thing, I suppose.” Unfortunately for those who already feel lost without their Polaroid, nostalgia seems not to be an important 21st century sentiment. As technology races ahead without fatigue, there is often little time to look back at the people and process that actually built the industry. Technology is as much about loss as it is gain. The following images depict a craft that has been lost to progress and objects and spaces rendered obsolete.
Todd Warnock: www.toddwarnock.com
W
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The negative cutter no longer has negative to cut, the tape dubber has no tape to dub.
NIKI
PRODUCTIONS.com
photographed by Vincent Dixon
reality is what you make it
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www.shootdigital.com 23 east fourth street, new york, new york 10003 tel +1 212 353-3330 www.shootdigital.com 23 east fourth street, new york, new york 10003 tel +1 212 353-3330 23 east fourth street, new york, new york 10003 tel +1 212 353-3330
Drive In 24
Bathhouse Studios
A Guide to the Greatest Studios in America By Marla Lacherza
What’s with that studio? You might be wondering what exactly is so necessary about shooting in the “right” studio? Well, here at Resource we know that it certainly takes more than just the standard four white walls to make things work. This winter, step inside and cozy up to the warmest creative energy that can only be offered by the country’s finest photo studios. No matter where you are located, we have found you the perfect places where to shoot and produce your best work in 2010.
Neo Studios
Bathhouse Miami
Shoot Digital
Sun West Studios
Aperture
Jack Studios
Root Brooklyn
The Studio
Tribeca Skyline Studios
Brooklyn Studios
Noho Productions
Go Studios
MAPS Production
Studio 225 Chelsea
MILK Studios
CALIFORNIA 1.5th & Sunset LA 310-979-0212 www.5thandsunsetla.com
including a 4,800 square foot sound stage with private mezzanine, and an 11,000 square foot hangar space for shoots, staging, and events.
2. Blue Sky Rental 415-626-7232 www.blueskysf.com 3. Dogpatch Studios 415-641-3017 www.dogpatchstudios.com
Left Space 415-285-5338 www.leftspace.com
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FLORIDA
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7.Siren Studios 323-467-3559 www.sirenstudios.com 8. Smashbox Studios 323-851-5030 www.smashboxstudios.com 5. Lightbox Studio 323-933-2080 www.lightboxstudio.com
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Milk Studios Los Angeles 855 Cahuenga Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90038 323.469.8900 info-la@milkstudios.com www.milkstudios.com
Milk Studios Los Angeles, at 855 Cahuenga Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood’s classic photo district, is a completely renovated, state-of-the-art space comprised of five full service, digitally integrated photography studios,
The Studio contact: Jewely Bennet 6442 Santa Monica Blvd. #202 Los Angeles, CA 90038 jewely@thestudiola.com p. 323-791-7757 f. 323-395-5647 www.thestudiola.com
Aperture Studios Miami contact: Sataro apsrental@yahoo. com info@aperturepro. com 385 NE 95th Street Miami, Florida 33137 p. 305-759-4327 f. 305-759-1198 www.aperturepro.com
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LA’s first full service one-stop shopping “boutique” production facility. Production services, merchandise management and storage, creative and concierge services. Full service equipment and trucks/vans on site or on location 24/7.
Offering 3 great rental spaces and an outdoor shooting area, Aperture has the largest and best maintained still photographic, lighting and grip equipment rental inventory in the Southeast.
Bathhouse Miami contact: John Marin manager@bathhousemiami.com
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john@bathhousemiami.com 541 Jefferson Ave. Miami Beach, Florida 33139 p. 305-538-7767 f. 305-538-7769 www.bathhousemiami.com
Bathhouse Miami offers a studio perfect for shooting, casting calls, meetings, and events. We go above and beyond normal expectations, no matter how unusual or obscure the request; the word “no� does not exist here.
13. Carousel Studios 305-576-3686 www.carouselstudios.com
17. Photopia Studios 305-534-0290 www.photopiamiami.com
14. Little River Studios 305-573-1395 www.littleriverstudios.com
18. Splashlight Miami 305-572-0094 www.splashlight.com
MAPSMobile Arts Production Service contact: Mia Opalka mia@mapsproduction.com 212 Collins Ave. Miami Beach, Florida 33139 p. 305-532-7880 f. 305-532-7673 www.mapsproduction.com
Trendy Studio 786-553-3733 www.trendystudio.net
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MAPS is a modern and chic shooting and event space located in the heart of South Beach. Features include 20 ft. ceilings, a daylight studio and a beautifully landscaped bamboo garden.
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CHICAGO 20. Studio Vogue 773-592-4049 www.studio-vogue.com 21. Think Big Studios 312-432-0095 www.thinkbigchicago.com
MASSACHUSETTS 22. Boston Studio 508-877-5383 www.bostonstudio.com
NEW YORK 12. Big Time Productions 305-672-5117 www.big-time.com
16. One Source Studios 305-751-2556 www.onesourcestudios.com
The 1896 Studios and Stages 718-451-6531 www.the1896.com
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Bathhouse New York contact: David Gipson manager@bathhousestudios. com 540 E. 11th Street New York, NY 10009 p. 212-388-1111 f. 212-388-1713 www.bathhousestudios.com
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Studio 225 Chelsea contact: James Weber james@jamesweberstudio.com 225 W. 28th Street #2 New York, NY 10001 p. 917-882-3724 www.studio225chelsea.com
The premier photo rental house in NYC, Bathhouse Studios is the ideal space for any type of shoot: a car, small table-top or supermodel, we’ll fit you right in.
Drive-In 24 contact: Aldana Oppizzi
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booking@ driveinstudios.com aldana@driveinstudios.com 443 W. 18th Street New York, NY 10011 p. 212-645-2244 f. 212-645-6165 www.driveinstudios.com
DRIVEIN24 is a comfortable and efficient studio in Chelsea offering four large studios with distinct features such as high ceilings, water drainage, daylight, and of course drive in access.
Fashion, Beauty or Still life, Studio 225 Chelsea has the tools you need to do the job... just bring yourself and your camera.
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Brooklyn Studios contact: Joe Grant brooklynstudios@verizon.net 211 Meserole Ave., 2nd Fl. Brooklyn, NY 11222 p. 718-392-1007 f. 718-392-1008 www.brooklynstudios.net
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Factory Studios 718-690-3980 www.factorybrooklyn.com
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Greenpoint Studios 212-741-6864 www.greenpointstudios.com
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Jewel Street Studios 718-383-8200 www.jewelstreetstudios.com
29. Fast Ashley’s 718-782-9300 www.fastashelysstudios.com
Go Studios contact: Halley Ganges
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info@go-studios.com hganges@mac.com 245 W. 29th Street, 7th Floor New York, NY 10001 p.212-564-4084 f. 212-868-3057 www.go-studios.com
Renowned for its modern and welcoming environment, Go Studios boasts three stunning studios and a full line of rental equipment. Clients include Vogue, Elle Decor, Fitness, Brides, and Food & Wine.
31. Good Light Studio 212-629-3764 www.goodlightstudio.com
33. Happy Monkey Studio 212-290-5306 www.happymonkeystudio.com 34. Industria Superstudio 212-366-1114 www.industrianyc.com
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Jack Studios contact: Roy Schwalbach roy@jackstudios. com 601 W. 26th Street, 12th Floor New York, NY 10001 p. 212-367-7590 f. 212-367-8376 www.jackstudios.com
37. Metrodaylight Studio 212-967-2000 www.metrodaylight.com
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MILK/Formula contact: Katie Dineen Katie@milkstudios.com 450 W. 15th Street New York, NY 10011 212-645-2797 www.milkstudios.com
Milk Studios New York, at 450 West 15th Street in the Meatpacking district, is anchored by nine full-service, digitally integrated photography studios spread over 80,000 square feet. Spaces include the Loft, featuring an in-studio kitchen Jack Studios is a 40,000 square and private green room as foot facility with 7 stunning well as the Penthouse, with Daylight, Blackout & Cyc northern daylight cyclorama, a studios. Our new 6000 square 30-foot skylight and expansive foot superstudio is the largest outdoor deck. double cyc studio in Manhattan.
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Neo Studios mail@neostudiosnyc.com bryce@neostudiosnyc.com 628 Broadway #302 New York, NY 10012 p. 212-533-4195 f. 212-533-4465 www.neostudiosnyc.com Neo Studios has something for every production -- convenient location, 2 loft studios with immaculate cycs, complete digital packages, grip & equipment in-house, full kitchens, and a friendly staff.
41. Picture Ray Studios 212-929-6370 www.pictureraystudio.com 42. Pier 59 Studios 212-691-5959 www.pier59studios.com 43. Pure Space 212-937-6041 www.purespacenyc.com
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Noho Productions contact: Jack or Dennis info@nohoproductions.com 636 Broadway, 8th Floor New York, NY p. 212-228-4068 f. 212-228-6648 www.nohoproductions.com
Noho Productions, the rental studio of choice among the world’s leading still life photographers, offers 6 fully equipped digital still life studios and a simplified flat rate billing system.
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Root Brooklyn contact: Kip McQueen bookings@rootbrooklyn.com 131 N. 14th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 p. 718-349-2740 f. 718-349-1958 www.rootbrooklyn.com
ROOT Brooklyn is a 20,000 sq ft one story building ideally situated just across the Williamsburg Bridge, housing four large studios with oversized cyc’s, a full bar and a 24 hour equipment and digital house.
45. Sandbox 212-924-4410 www.sandboxstudio.com
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Shoot Digital contact: Randi Mitev info@shootdigital. com 23 E. 4th Street New York, NY 10003 p. 212-353-3330 f. 212-353-0367 www.shootdigital.com
Beautiful studios. Superb capture services. Exceptional equipment rentals. Gorgeous retouching. Flawless printing. Incredible cgi. Friendly experienced staff. Creative atmosphere. Your work made simple. That’s shootdigital.
54. Zoom Studios 212-243-9663 www.zoomstudios.net Note: Studio numbers do not represent any ratings or ranking.
51. Ten Ton 718-858-1810 www.tentonstudio.com
47. Some Studio 212-691-7663 www.somestudio.com 48. Splashlight Studios 212-268-7247 www.splashlightstudios.com 49. Sun Studios contact: Danielle Borgia sunrentals@sunnyc.com 628 Broadway New York, NY 10012 p. 212-387-7777 ext. 121 f. 212-387-7792 www.sunstudios.com
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Sun West contact: Mezz Assefa sunwestevents@sunnyc.com 450 W. 31st Street New York, NY 10001 p. 212-330-9900 f. 212-330-9800 www.sunstudios.com
Sun West is a daylight studio and event space featuring views of the Hudson and Midtown. Amenities include: commercial kitchen, hardwood floors and 16ft ceilings.
52. The Space 212-929-2442 www.thespaceinc.com
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Tribecca Skyline Studios contact: Serge Nivelle serge@sergenivelle.com 205 Hudson Street, 12th Floor New York, NY 10013 212-344-1999 www.tribeccaskyline.com
Tribeca Skyline Studios is a custom made shooting space designed to inspire creativity in a serene, discreet and elegant environment. This state-of-the-art facility occupies the 12th floor penthouse with southern and western exposure and spectacular views of the Hudson River and lower Manhattan.
PRODUCT GUIDE
COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2010 ISSUE FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO GET YOUR PRODUCT INTO THE NEXT GUIDE PLEASE CONTACT US AT: ALEX@RESOURCEMAGONLINE.COM
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Casting call Natural Beauty No hair and makeup. No fancy clothes. In fact, very little clothes were worn at all. The shoot was all about natural beauty, confidence, and interaction with others. So how did the models react when asked to disrobe and pose? Like true professionals, of course. And while the rest of us weren’t born naturally tall, lean, and gorgeous, we common folks can learn a little something from the models. When asked the secret to appearing confident and sexy while being au natural, they gave these three tips: - Make a connection with the camera and the photographer. - Keep the eyes alive. - Feel it from within. Not bad advice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a salad that needs some eating.
Thank you to Basic Model Management, Code Model Management, Direct New York, Fusion Model Management, IMG Models, Mc2 Model Management, Major Model Management, New York Models, Q New York, Race Model Management, Request Model Management, Trump Model Management and VNY Model Management.
Daymion Mardel: www.daymion.com Charlie Fish: www.charliefish.info
In an industry where retouching is mandatory and hyper-stylizing runs rampant, the stripped-down feel of Resource’s shoot must have been a welcome change for the 100+ models who piled into Splashlight Studios.
By Charlie Fish Photos by Daymion Mardel
Elliott / Q New York Dominique / IMG Models
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Eyen / Direct New York Irsida / Direct New York
Chekesha / ReQuest Romain / ReQuest
Laura Petersen / Q New York Nathan Scott / Major
Melissa K. / NY Models Nicole W. / VNY
Mark / Fusion
Alex G. / Fusion Bruna V. / Mc2 Model Management NY Mark M. / Fusion
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Lloyd W. / ReQuest
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Wei Mu / Race
By Maggie Flood I Photos by Adam Sherwin
Adam Sherwin: www.adamsherwin.com
In 2002, photo producer Cindi Blair headed down to Parrot Cay, a small island off the shore of Turks and Caicos. What began as a diving trip quickly morphed into a business venture and love affair with the translucent waters and cultural wealth of Turks and Caicos, a small cluster of islands situated roughly 550 miles off the southeast coast of Florida. Within the course of a month Blair had established Turks and Caicos Productions, covering all photo production needs on and around the islands. Over the next year and a half, the company grew to represent a large number of private residencies and hotels as photo shoot locations. Today, Turks and Caicos Productions works for clients from Vanity Fair to Target who are attracted by the diversity of the islands. From miles of underground caverns and empty beaches to stunning hotels, historic buildings, and amazingly welcoming businesses and locals, Turks and Caicos provide the perfect location for that “wonder where that is� shot, not to mention the best diving waters in the world.
OUTER ISLANDS/AIR TURKS & CAICOS: Although the main islands offer a ton of great spots and natural phenomena, some of the best locations are found on the smaller islands surrounding Turks and Caicos. Because each island’s terrain is so dramatically distinct, there is no end to what can be found. The outer islands also maintain a plethora of different styles of homes and historic structures, from beach shacks or deserted nineteenth century colonial villages to the work of famous architects. However far away, nothing is inaccessible with the help of Air Turks and Caicos. Located in Provo, the charter company provides small jets ideal for the transportation of equipment and crew around the Caribbean.
Air Turks and Caicos Provenciales 649.946.4999 www.airturksandcaicos.com
LOCAL ATTRACTIONS
BIG BLUE TOURS: Resource explored the island for a day with Big Blue Unlimited eco-friendly tours. The “Heart of the Island� tour first took us snorkeling and kayaking through turquoise waters (which, by the way, provide a great opportunity for some underwater photography). Following that was a quick walking tour of Middle and North Caicos, where we stopped for lunch at the home of Susan Butterfield, an island local who cooked us up some incredible food. Big Blue Unlimited offers various tours across the islands. It supports the Turks and Caicos National Trust, the local economies of the Caicos Islands, and promotes an understanding of the local way of life. Big Blue Unlimited Leeward Marina, Providenciales 649.946.5034 www.bigblue.tc
CONCH BAR CAVES: The environmentally protected Conch Bar Caves wind for miles below North Caicos and are said to run directly into the sea at varying points. The underground expanse is not only enticing to the traveling spelunker or historian, but also provides amazing possibilities for photo ideas and locations. Here ambitious photographers can find all kinds of variations in color and light, including profoundly surreal rock formations that cannot be artificially created in a studio setting.
Turks and Caicos National Parks www.turksandcaicos.tc
All private locatins can be rented and scouted by Blair Productions / Turks + Caicos Productions 315 E. 86th St. New York, NY 10028 212.987.4233 / 917.544.6977 cindi@turksandcaicosproductions.com www.turksandcaicosproductions.com www.cindiblairproductions.com
LOCATIONS
SOMEWHERE CAFÉ AND LOUNGE: Louis Fabara a transplant and owner of Somewhere Café and Lounge, serves up the best margaritas on Provo. The two-floor restaurant on Grace Bay Beach is always up for accommodating large groups in search of some good Tex-Mex food and a post-shoot happy hour. With a great sunset view and a laid-back, lively atmosphere, Somewhere is an appealing spot to bring both clients and crew. Somewhere Café and Lounge Grace Bay Beach, Providenciales 649.941.8260 www.somewherecafeandlounge.com
The Grace Bay Club & Anacoana Restaurant
Gilley’s- Airport Restaurant. Take your crew here for one last taste of the islands or one last bite of fresh conch.
LEMON CAFE: Turks and Caicos is home to a surprisingly wide variety of different types of food. For a Moroccan-Mediterranean feast, Lemon Café not only serves up amazing signature dishes but also offers a beautiful dining experience. Lemon Café The Village at Grace Bay, Providenciales 649.941.4059 www.lemoncafe.tc Somewhere Café And Lounge
Lemon Cafe
DA CONCH SHACK: Conch is a staple, not to mention a specialty, of the local cuisine in Turks and Caicos, and you couldn’t possibly visit without experiencing the many ways it’s prepared. One way to get your fill (literally) is to check out the famous beachside Conch Shack on Provo. This local spot is also home to the Rum Bar, known for its incredible rum punch.
The Grace Bay Club & Anacoana Restaurant
Da Conch Shack
Da Conch Shack Providenciales 649.946.8877 www.conchshack.tc
O’SOLEIL RESTAURANT: Located in the gorgeous Somerset Hotel on Grace Bay, O’Soleil Restaurant plans weekly events on the beach long after the sun goes down. If you can, grab the chance to settle in for a lobster bake and some live music by the bonfire. O’Soleil Restaurant Grace Bay, Providenciales 649.946.5900 www.thesomerset.com
RESTAURANTS Da Conch Shack O’soleil Restaurant
CREW
Big Blue Tours:tour Guide And Kayaking Specialist
Our Photographer Adam Sherwin And Susan
Local Cab Driver On Grand Turks
World’s Most Dependable Pilot For Island Hopping In A Tiny Eight Seater Airplane
THE PROP CLOSET:
A benefit of being connected locally is having your own prop stylist and set builder. Turks and Caicos Productions maintains a prop closet that can provide anything from extra beach chairs, tents, phones, and electrical equipment to individually designed sets and props to meet the needs of even the most demanding client. Turks and Caicos Productions New York, NY 212.987.4233 www.turksandcaicosproductions.com
Susan, The One And Only Lunch Stop On North Caicos Island Included In The Big Blue Tours
Stacie Steensland: Local Assistant, Artist, Stylist, Set Builder And All Around Island Expert
The Grace Bay Club & Anacoana Restaurant
The Grace Bay Club & Anacoana Restaurant
The Palms Regent
Gansevoort Hotel
GANSEVOORT HOTEL Every photo maven based in New York or Miami has at some point been acquainted with her majesty the Gansevoort Hotel. A third branch has recently cropped up in Turks and Caicos. Located on Providenciales, or “Provo,” the establishment lives up to its famous name, sporting some of the whitest stretch of beach on the main island. The hotel also maintains the highly sought-after modern style that its sister locations are known for. But beautiful décor and trendy clientèle aside, the Gansevoort Hotel is an extremely accommodating business for photo shoots and film crews due to its long history as a favored location in other cities. The Gansevoort Hotel Grace Bay Beach, Providenciales 649.941.7555 www.gansevoortturksandcaicos.com
HOTELS
Gansevoort Hotel
Gansevoort Hotel
THE GRACE BAY CLUB & ANACOANA RESTAURANT The Grace Bay Club, overlooking a white sand beach and impossibly blue waters, sits on a large property and offers many opportune spots to answer varied photo aesthetic and needs. The hotel is also home to the phenomenal Anacoana Restaurant and Infiniti Bar, the longest bar in the Caribbean. Stretching an impressive ninety feet across Grace Bay beach all the way to the shore, the bar’s construction provides the illusion of extending indefinitely into the ocean.
The Grace Bay Club & Anacoana Restaurant
The Grace Bay Club Providenciales 649.946.5050 www.gracebayclub.com
The Palms Regent
The Palms Regent
THE PALMS REGENT Many noted photo shoots have taken place at the Palms Regent. Because every hotel on the main island is nestled onto a different strip of beach, each place has an individual and unique setting to offer. One specific characteristic of the Palms Regent of Turks and Caicos is its large (and largely versatile) infinity pool. The Palms Regent Providenciales 649) 946-8666 www.regenthotels.com/thepalms
The Palms Regent
The Grace Bay Club & Anacoana Restaurant
If you’re in search of that bright summer light in the dead of winter, Turks and Caicos not only provide beautiful white sand beaches, unique architecture, and fabulous hotel locations, but also promise a faster trip than a flight to Miami in just under two hours. “One thing you just have to bear in mind,” says Cindi Blair of working in the Caribbean, “is that you’re not in New York. It takes a sense of humor, but eventually things get done, even if you end up at some point working without electricity or Internet.” But the best advice for roughing it on an island is to go with the flow, and with any luck you won’t even notice that despite the 85 degree weather, the winter days are just as short. Blair Productions / Turks + Caicos Productions 315 E. 86th St. New York, NY 10028 212.987.4233 / 917.544.6977 cindi@turksandcaicosproductions.com www.turksandcaicosproductions.com www.cindiblairproductions.com
LIFE ON
THE ISLAND
Stay a Week ... or Stay a Lifetime
85 masterfully designed suites along 820 feet of prime Providenciales beachfront.
Prices begin at $1,395,000.
VISIT OUR SALES OFFICES LOCATED AT THE REGENT PALMS AND THE SANDS.
Toll Free: 1-877-477-9774 Sales Office: (649) 232-1067
www.HartlingGroup.com
To Reserve Your Luxury Vacation at The Regent Palms, Turks and Caicos Islands Reservations: 1-800-967-9044 US/Canada Toll-free (649) 946-8666 www.regenthotels.com/thepalms
CASTING, PRODUCTION + LOCATION MANAGEMENT CONTACT: CINDI@CINDIBLAIRPRODUCTIONS.COM OR CALL 212 987 4233 WWW.CINDIBLAIRPRODUCTIONS.COM WWW.TURKSANDCAICOSPRODUCTIONS.COM
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O O
By Sachi Yoshii I Photos by Carolyn Fong
Where to take your client out:
Joseph Leonard/Blue Ribbon
n the white-washed walls of Joseph Leonard hang black and white photographs of Grandfather Joseph and Grandfather Leonard, owner Gabriel Stulman’s relatives. Complementing photos of the other investors’ grandfathers are arranged neatly atop the U-shaped aluminum bar, framing the homey blue and white checkered napkins and mismatched antique china to perfect the look. A collection of mirrors on the back wall reflect the kitchen stove where a lineup of cooks is preparing dinner, dressed in button-up plaid shirts, aprons, and newsboy caps. Without even a bite of food, you can understand how Gabriel’s newest venture in the West Village has become in only a matter of months the vintage scene to be seen in. The frisée salad ($10) is made up of delicately fresh ingredients, but it’s overwhelmed by an oily vinaigrette and soggy brioche. If you like the fragile, flaky crust of puff pastry, try the shiitake, squash and gruyère tart ($10), served with arugula and a hefty slice of parmesan. The light, buttery crust is a nice alternative to the richer, denser, traditional pate brisée. For entrées, forego the skate wing ($19) with citrus emulsion, frisée, and picholine olives, which leaves nothing special to be remembered. Instead opt for the pan roasted chicken ($19), a hearty plate with creamy mashed potatoes, fava beans and baby carrots⎯perfect to warm you up on a snowy day. Do not leave without feasting on the salted caramel pudding ($6). The dessert fills a small mason jar, sprinkled with sugar cookie crumbles. The description alone might have been too cloying for my taste, but once the velvety notes of vanilla slide past your lips, you’ll refuse to put down your spoon. Come early, since they don’t take reservations and the thirty seats in the entire place can fill up as early as 7pm.
Price $$$ Drinks *** Food ** Ambiance ****
Joseph Leonard 170 Waverly Place (between Christopher St & Grove St) New York, NY 10014 646-429-8383 www.josephleonard.com
Can the best get better?
• Pro-8 vs vs Pro-7 Pro-7 • Pro-8 See it for yourself Pro-8 Recycle time at full power 0.9 sec See it for yourself Pro-8 Recycle 0.05 sec (20 fps) Recycle time time at at low full power 0.9 sec Shortest Flashatduration 1/12,000 Recycle time low power 0.05 sec (20 fps) Power range 51/12,000 – 2400 Ws (10 f/stops) Shortest Flash duration Control 1/10 f/stop Power range 5 – 2400 Ws (10 f/stops) Power Controloutput at lowest power* f/1.4 1/10 f/stop Optional PocketWizard Power output at lowestbuilt-in power* yes f/1.4 *Power measured with standard reflector at 6.6 feet Optional PocketWizard built-in yes *Power measured with standard reflector at 6.6 feet
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Pro-7 1.5 sec Pro-7 0.12 sec (6 fps) 1.5 sec 1/8,000 0.12 sec (6 fps) 75 – 2400 Ws (6 f/stops) 1/8,000 1/3 1/6Ws f/stop 75 –and 2400 (6 f/stops) f/4.5 1/3 and 1/6 f/stop no f/4.5 no
T T
he Bromberg brothers built up a gastronome empire, infiltrating the city with their famous Blue Ribbon breads and pleasing diners with an eclectic and original menu of comfort food. Directly across the famed Bakery on Downing Street rests a small bar with custom-made Dan Kainan lighting, lined in white oak paneling and marble countertops. The wine list is versatile, offering glasses for $9-19 each; half-bottles, ranging from $17 to $90; or ‘Groups,’ which is Blue Ribbonese for wine flights that change seasonally. You’re welcome to sit at the bar for a drink, but it only takes a whiff of the freshly baked bread and a glance at your neighbor’s plate of steak tartare and crostini ($15.50) to stay for dinner.
Try the pulled pork sandwich, topped with grilled fontina, manchego, and roasted tomatoes, and basted lightly with a touch of sweet barbecue sauce or a splash of Blue Ribbon’s Habanero-laced, carrot based, hot sauce ($18). Top off the night sipping on any one of their well-known cocktails ($7 to 14 each), especially the smooth Sazerac, the official cocktail of New Orleans ($10)-Rye, Peychaud bitters, simple syrup, rinsed in Absinthe. Dessert lovers should dive into the chocolate chip bread pudding ($9.50), a cakey version of pain au chocolat, topped with crème anglaise.
Price $$$ Drinks *** Food **** Ambiance ***
Blue Ribbon Downing Street Bar 34 Downing St. (between Bedford & Varick St.) New York, NY 10014 212-691-0404 www.blueribbonrestaurants.com
Carolyn Fong: www.carolynfongphotography.com
Doors open for the after-work crowd at 4pm and the kitchen stays alive until 2am, delivering gruyère and coupole cheese plates (three cheeses for $15) aside orange-speckled caviar egg shooters ($12.50) and bruschetta-ish toasted white Pullman bread, topped with manchego and sweet Mexican autumn blossom honey ($4.50) or smoked sturgeon trout ($9.50). The Downing Street Bar is home to those who know the importance of high-quality classic dishes served with house-made sides, including everything under the sun, from pickled cuaresmeno peppers to pulled pork, all made within the Blue Ribbon doors.
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BOOK REVIEWs:
The Real Mad Men Photos by Nick Ferrari
Adland: Searching For The Meaning of Life On a Branded Planet by James Othmer Review by Teddy Cohn
F
Central to Othmer’s book is an awareness of the fundamental ways in which the advertising world has changed in the few short years since he left it. From TiVo to YouTube to video-on-demand, digital technology has transferred power from the providers of content to the consumers of content—a paradigm shift that has diminished (if not completely undermined) the efficacy of traditional broadcast advertising. While reports of the demise of the 30-second spot have perhaps been exaggerated, the digital revolution has certainly forced advertisers to alter their approach in fundamental ways. According to Othmer, the goal of making brand impressions on essentially passive consumers via traditional media has been replaced by actively engaging consumers with the brand by any means possible. Othmer explores the creative, strategic and cultural repercussions of this change as he visits some of the most prominent institutions in Adland, from agencies like BBDO and Goodby Silverstein and Partners—where he speaks with creative directors, account planners, and media buyers—to the Virginia Brand Center, where the next generation of branding zealots is being incubated.
Along the way, Othmer displays the mordant wit, irreverence and raconteurship one would expect from a former copywriter. Yet he also exhibits a sense of ethical concern and scrupulous fair-mindedness that one might not immediately associate with Madison Avenue. This is neither a glamorizing defense of the ad world nor a scandalous exposé. Instead, what emerges is a nuanced, even-handed assessment—one that acknowledges the inherent dynamism and true (if only intermittently manifested) creative vitality of this inescapable American industry, while raising legitimate concerns about the blurring of boundaries and the unreliability of information in the era of ubiquitous branding. With his participant-observer perspective, irreverent yet earnest tone and keen eye for the false detail, Othmer has created a book that will interest anyone who loves, hates, or (like the author himself) both loves and hates advertising.
Nick Ferrari: www.nferrari.com
or a tour of the contemporary advertising landscape, one would be hard-pressed to find a more entertaining and informative guide than former copywriter James Othmer. His book, Adland: Searching For The Meaning of Life On a Branded Planet, is an engaging hybrid (or, if you will, an “Ad-mixture”) of journalism and memoir. Having left his position as a Creative Director at Y&R about six years ago with the ad world on the threshold of the digital revolution, Othmer punctuates his thematically organized observations and interviews with relevant (and often quite funny) anecdotes from his own career.
1 title
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Styling services. www.ateliertwelve.com
124
The Art of Writing Advertising, Conversations with Masters of the Craft Review by Sharoz Makarechi
M
ore than forty-five years ago, in the spirit of not simply talking about copywriting or copywriters, Advertising Age did something wise, both in theory and execution. Wise enough that even now, after so many years and changes in the industry, the format seems fresh, raw, relevant. James Vincent O’Gara, executive editor of Ad Age, asked Denis Higgins to interview the five advertising “greats” that had thus far been inducted into the Copywriter’s Hall of Fame. Simple enough idea.
Who could shed light on the subject of creating effective advertising but the people who created it? The Art of Writing, Conversations with Masters of the Craft is the result of those sessions. It is not written, rather transcribed; a recording of the thoughts—and more interestingly the mannerisms—of five men who wrote advertising copy back in the day. A few had been in the business thirty-plus years already. Higgins poses the same basic questions during each interview, presumably hoping to find the patterns that would inform and inspire would-be copywriters or marketing executives for generations to come. Where do you get your juju Mr. Ogilvy? A few drinks seems to be his short answer. “I’m not telling you anything and this is a stupid interview,” is what Bernbach may as well have replied. “Pioneers of the Craft” would be a more apt term than “Masters of the Craft” at this point, but who am I to change the sub-title of the book I was asked to review.
how he changed everything. The B! In his own words, live on tape, circa 1965. Perhaps on a bad day. I think the most I got out of his chapter was that Bill had no patience and seemingly little respect for the interviewer. That doesn’t change any of what he’s done or how his legacy influenced me, but for the first time ever, for just a moment, I didn’t feel a pang of regret about not being old enough to have met the man in person.
Bill Bernbach, Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy? Sure I’ve heard of them. But George Gribbin? Rosser Reeves? Who are these guys? Is there still even a Copywriter’s Hall of Fame? Yes, and no. Today it’s more inclusively called the Creative Hall of Fame, but in the early 60s copywriting was still everything, the meat and filler of advertising. Agencies were made up of copywriters aka admen, art men, media men, account men, secretaries, more men, and a few Peggy Olsen types. There is always at least one. But at the core, ours is an industry spurn from sales and research and sensitive psychologically astute pretenders à la Don Draper.
Burnett, while generous with his answers and a natural born storyteller, begins by scoffing at the presence of the tape recorder. George Gribbin and Rosser Reeves provide the most insight into the range of talent and attitudes in the industry, then and now. While Gribbin seems fit to be a mentor for any creative, Reeves appears at best annoyed by the notion that original thinking might be a key ingredient in successful advertising.
When I first picked up the book, I was excited for the Bernbach chapter. The B in DDB, where I worked as a writer and sometimes an art director. Between that and having taught classes on advertising at School of Visual Arts, I thought I knew a good bit about Bernbach’s work, agency, and impact on the industry. I hoped reading the transcribed interview would yield new information, a deeper understanding, and more insights into
A few stills and Higgins’ recorded observations set up the mood. Ogilvy’s descent into his office chair is described as similar to a man lowering himself slowly into a hot bath. Sitting in that chair, he smokes, drinks, and admits to pretending to be a copywriter more so than actually being one, a research-focused man at the core—and yet so ambitious that the idea of one of his lines not running, just one in his entire career, was devastating to him.
Be forewarned, despite the claim on the back cover, “Read it––and start creating the classic ads for the next generation of copywriters,” this is not a book that can teach one how to become a writer or a better writer. It wasn’t in 1965 and it’s not now. I wonder who wrote the copy on the original back cover. I wonder where the original tapes of these interview sessions are. I wonder when Matthew Weiner will think Don Draper is ready to be interviewed for Advertising Age. A read that made me wonder; more than I can say about most books in this category.
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...an experience you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to miss. Have them all and expand your mind.
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es Anderson is a rare modern director who is a true auteur. Since his early films, he has developed a distinct style, tone, and themes that he continues to explore. Anderson’s films are marked by several signature moves. He is particularly fond of slow-motion sequences set to pop tunes, long tracking shots, sweeping pans, shooting things from above, medium shots of actors, first person perspectives of moving vehicles, and Mark Mothersbaugh musical scores. Anderson’s first film, 1996’s Bottle Rocket, was just a starting point that was refined in 1998 with Rushmore, which not only avoided the sophomore slump but heralded a new deadpan voice in movie-making. His next three films—The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited—form a sort-of dysfunctional family trilogy. Life Aquatic is essentially Tenenbaums on a boat, and Darjeeling Limited shifts the setting to a train. I’m waiting for when Anderson takes his themes to space. In Tenenbaums, Gene Hackman’s long-estranged patriarch tries to weasel his way back into a family of former prodigies. In Life Aquatic, Bill Murray’s Jacques Cousteau-esque filmmaker welcomes his possible son (Owen Wilson) into the surrogate family he has created with the crew of his ship. Darjeeling Limited focuses on three brothers (Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrian Brody) taking a train trip through India a year after their father’s death. Each film addresses how families manage to function in spite of deceit, distance, and other dubious behavior. The exploration of often dark subject matter is done with a fine touch. Anderson manages to find humor in serious situations. Like a magic trick, his films switch from dramatic to comedic and back again. In all of his movies, Anderson has a way of creating vivid, original settings for the characters to inhabit. He has an astute eye for a production design that is offbeat, but not to the point of distraction. Although he works with different art, production, and costume designers, his vision remains the same. He creates worlds that are recognizable, but slightly askew. Tenenbaums is set in New York, but it is like no New York ever portrayed in film, as Anderson actively sought out strange and different locations. Anderson notes on the commentary track for Tenenbaums, “I could talk about set dressing for the entire commentary.” For people on the same quirky wavelength as Anderson, the choices to give Gwyneth Paltrow a wood finger, to have Luke Wilson always in 1970s-style sunglasses and a headband, and to dress Ben Stiller and his two sons in Adidas warm-ups are inspired. So was the decision to use stop-motion animation for all the sea creatures in Life Aquatic.
Anderson’s most impressive achievement in design is the boat in that film. For this, he built a full size cross section of the boat that showcased each of the richly designed rooms of the ship. His camera moved around the set in beautiful, flowing single takes while the actors freely roamed around as if on the stage of a theater. Similarly, Anderson shot Darjeeling Limited on an actual moving train. He fully embraced the bright color palette of India in the design of the train. Though barely noticeable, there are miniature elephants painted throughout the train, each one completely unique. It is that attention to seemingly needless detail that makes the worlds of Anderson’s films so immersive. As a filmmaker Anderson is undoubtedly mining the same material, but just when the dysfunctional family theme seems exhausted, Anderson grafts it to Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. The stop-motion animated film plays more for the parents in the audience than the kids. There’s plenty of slapstick antics but the tone of the material and the dialogue are pure Anderson. He has transformed the titular Mr. Fox (George Clooney) into his familiar flawed patriarch and added a rivalry between Mr. Fox’s son (Schwartzman) and his nephew (Eric Anderson). There’s nothing wrong with recycling themes and motifs as long as you find new and creative ways to keep them fresh. If Fantastic Mr. Fox is any indication, it will be a while before Anderson goes stale. Bottle Rocket Release Date: Feb. 21, 1996 Writer: Owen Wilson, Wes Anderson Main Cast: Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, James Caan Rushmore Release Date: Oct. 9, 1998 Writer: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson Main Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray Royal Tenenbaums Release Date: Dec. 14, 2001 Writer: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson Main Cast: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwenyth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Release Date: Dec. 24, 2004 Writer: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach Main Cast: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum The Darjeeling Limited Release Date: Sept. 27, 2007 Writer: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman Main Cast: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman Fantastic Mr. Fox Release Date: Nov. 25, 2009 Writer: Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson Main Cast: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray
www.lariverola.com
W W By Alec Kerr I Illustration by Emil Rivera
Wes Anderson’s Festival
MOVIE REVIEWS:
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I’m going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it.” The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou — Steve Zissou (Bill Murray)
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Directory 111 101 3 Blair Productions / Turks + Caicos Productions 212.987.4233 917.544.6977 cindi@turksandcaicos productions.com www.turksandcaicos productions.com www.cindiblairproductions.com
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Bathhouse Studios New York* 540 E 11th St. New York, NY 10009 212.388.1111 manager@bathhousestudios. com www.bathhousestudios.com Brooklyn Studios* 211 Meserole Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11222 718.392.1007 brooklynstudios@verizon.net www.brooklynstudios.net Camart Studios* 6 W 20th St. - 4th Fl. New York, NY 10011 212.691.8840 rentals@camart.com www.camart.com Capsule Studio* 873 Broadway - #204 New York, NY 10003 212.777.8027 info@capsulestudio.com www.capsulestudio.com Cinema World Studios* 220 Dupont St. Greenpoint, NY 11222 718.389.9800 cinemaworldfd@verizon.net www.cinemaworldstudios.com Dakota Studios* 78 Fifth Ave. - 8th Fl. New York, NY 10011 212.691.2197 matt@dakotastudio.com dakotastudios@yahoo.com www.dakotastudio.com Daylight Studio* 450 W 31st St. - 8th-9th Fl. New York, NY 10001 212.967.2000 info@daylightstudio.com www.daylightstudio.com Divine Studio* 21 E 4th St. - #605 New York, NY 10003 212.387.9655 alex@divinestudio.com www.divinestudio.com
Drive-In 24* 443 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011 212.645.2244 info@diveinstudios.com www.driveinstudios.com Eagles Nest Studio* 259 W 30th St., 13th Fl. New York, NY 10011 212.736.6221 eaglesnestnyc@yahoo.com www.eaglesnestnyc.com Factory Studios 79 Lorimer St. - 5th Fl. Brooklyn NY 11206 718.690.3980 www. factorybrooklyn.com info@factorybrooklyn.com Fast Ashleys Studios* 95 N. 10th St. Brooklyn, NY 11211 718.782.9300 shelly@fastashleysstudios.com www.fastashleysstudios.com Gary’s Manhattan Penthouse Loft* 28 W 36th St. - PH New York, NY 10018 917.837.2420 gary@garysloft.com www.garysloft.com Gary’s Loft* 470 Flushing Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11205 718.858.4702 gary@garysloft.com www.garysloft.com Go Studios* 245 W 29th St. New York, NY 10001 212.564.4084 info@go-studios.com www.go-studios.com Good Light Studio* 450 W 31st St. - #9C New York, NY 10001 212.629.3764 manager@goodlightstudio.com goodlightstudio@gmail.com www.goodlightstudio.com
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Greenpoint Studios* 190 West St. - Unit 11 Brooklyn, NY 11222 212.741.6864 info@greenpointstudios.com www.greenpointstudios.com
Neo Studios* 628 Broadway - #302 New York, NY 10012 212.533.4195 mail@neostudiosnyc.com www.neostudiosnyc.com
Ramscale Productions* 55 Bethune St. - Penthouse New York, NY 10014 212.206.6580 info@ramscale.com www.ramscale.com
Home Studios* 873 Broadway - #301 New York, NY 10003 212.475.4663 info@homestudiosinc.com www.homestudiosinc.com
NoHo Productions* 636 Broadway - 8th Fl. New York, NY 10012 212.228.4068 info@nohoproductions.com www.nohoproductions.com
Root Brooklyn* 131 N 14th St. Brooklyn, NY 11211 718.349.2740 folks@rootcapture.com www.rootcapture.com
Industria Superstudio* 775 Washington St. New York, NY 10014 212.366.1114 info@industrianyc.com kslayton@industrianyc.com www.industrianyc.com
Parlay Studios* 930 Newark Ave. - 6th Fl. Jersey City, NJ 07306 201.459.9044 studio@parlaystudios.com www.parlaystudios.com
Shoot Digital* 23 E 4th St. New York, NY 10003 212.353.3330 info@shootdigital.com Sara@shootdigital.com www.shootdigital.com
Jack Studios* 601 W 26th St. - 12th Fl. New York, NY 10001 212.367.7590 info@jackstudios.com mike@jackstudios.com www.jackstudios.com Jewel Street Studio* 94 Jewel St. - Ground Floor Brooklyn, NY 11222 212.967.1029 booking@jewelstreetstudios.com www.jewelstreetstudios.com L Gallery Studio* 104 Reade St. - #2 New York, NY 10013 212.227.7883 info@lgallerystudio.net www.lgallerystudio.net Location 05* 200 Hudson St. - 9th Fl. New York, NY 10013 212.219.2144 info@location05.com www.location05.com Milk/Formula* 450 W. 15th St. New York NY 10011 212.645.2797 bevan@milkstudios.com www.milkstudios.com
Picture Ray Studio* 245 W 18th St. New York, NY 10011 212.929.6370 bookings@pictureraystudio.com www.pictureraystudio.com Pier 59 Studios* Chelsea Piers #59 - 2nd Level New York, NY 10011 212.691.5959 info@pier59studios.com www.pier59studios.com Pochron Studios* 96 Van Dyke Street Brooklyn NY 11231 718.237.1332 info@pochronstudios.com rental@pochronstudios.com www.pochronstudios.com
Scene Interactive* 601 W 26th St. - #M225 New York, NY 10001 212.243.1017 info@sceneinteractive.com www.sceneinteractive.com Shop Studios* 442 W 49th St. New York, NY 10019 212.245.6154 Jacques@shopstudios.com www.shopstudios.com Silver Cup Studios* 42-22 22nd St. Long Island City, NY 11101 718.906.3000 silvercup@silvercupstudios.com www.silvercupstudios.com
Primus Studio* 64 Wooster St. - #3E New York, NY 10012 212.966.3803 info@primusnyc.com www.primusnyc.com
SoHoSoleil Locations* 136 Grand St. - #5-WF New York, NY 10013 212.431.8824 info@sohosoleil.com www.sohosoleil.com
Pure Space* 601 W 26th St. - #1225 New York, NY 10001 212.937.6041 rida@purespacenyc.com frank@purespacenyc.com www.purespacenyc.com
Some Studio* 150 W 28th St. - #1602 New York, NY 10001 212.691.7663 somebody@somestudio.com www.somestudio.com
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Southlight Studio* 214 W 29th St. - #1404 New York, NY 10001 212.465.9466 info@southlightstudio.com www.southlightstudio.com
Sun West* 450 W 31st St. - 10th Fl. New York, NY 10001 212.330.9900 sunwestevents@sunnyc.com www.sunnyc.com
Splashlight Studios SoHo* 75 Varick St. - 3rd Fl. New York, NY 10013 212.268.7247 info@splashlightstudios.com www.splashlightstudios.com
Taz Studios* 873 Broadway - #605 New York, NY 10003 212.533.4999 dwhite@tazstudios.com www.tazstudio.com
Studio 225 Chelsea* 225 W 28th St. - #2 New York, NY 10001 917.882.3724 james@jamesweberstudio.com www.studio225chelsea.com
The Space* 425 W 15th St. - 6th Fl. New York, NY 10011 212.929.2442 info@thespaceinc.com www.thespaceinc.com
Studio 450* 450 W 31st St. - 12th Fl. New York, NY 10001 212.871.0940 www.loft11.com
Tribeca Skyline Studios* 205 Hudson St. - #1201 New York, NY 10013 212.344.1999 bookings@tribecaskyline.com www.tribecaskylinestudios.com
Suite 201* 526 W 26th St. - #201 New York, NY 10001 212.741.0155 info@suite201.com www.suite201.com Sun Studios* 628 Broadway New York, NY 10012 212.387.7777 sunproductions@sunnyc.com www.sunstudios.com
Zoom Studios* 20 Vandam St. - 4th Fl. New York, NY 10013 212.243.9663 zoomstudios@yahoo.com www.zoomstudios.net SET BUILDING Tribeca Set 212.444.2230 tribecaset@gmail.com www.tribecaset.com
STYLIST - PROPS, SET, WARDROBE Atelier Twelve 718.624.5744 sonia@ateliertwelve.com spazticdog@aol.com www.ateliertwelve.com Niki Productions 917.974.3212 studio@nikiproductions.com www.nikiproductions.com SURFACES Surface Studio 242 W 30th St. - 12th Fl New York, NY 10001 212.244.6107 www.surfacestudio.com info1@surfacestudio.com WARDROBE RENTALS RRRentals* 245 W 29th St. - #11 New York, NY 10001 212.242.6120 info@rrrentals.com www.rrrentalsny.com WARDROBE SUPPLY Manhattan Wardrobe Supply* 245 W 29th St. - 8th Fl. New York, NY 10001 212.268.9993 info@wardrobesupplies.com www.wardrobesupplies.com
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WEST COAST LOS ANGELES, CA DIRECTORY Workbook 6762 Lexington Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90038 323.856.0008 800.547.2688 www.workbook.com PROP RENTALS House of Props* 1117 N. Gower St. Hollywood , CA 90038 323.463.3166 info@houseofpropsinc.com www.houseofpropsinc.com
Pix* 217 South La Brea Los Angeles Ca. 90036 323.936.8488 rentals@pixcamera.com sales@pixcamera.com www.pixcamera.com STYLISTS AGENCY Cloutier Agency* 1026 Montana Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90403 310.394.8813 www.cloutieragency.com RENTAL STUDIOS
PHOTO LABS
Belle Varado Studio* 2107 Bellevue Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90026 213.413.9611 andrea@bellevaradostudios.com www.bellevaradostudios.com
A&I Photographic Digital* 933 N Highland Ave Hollywood, CA 90038 323.856.5280 mail@ aandi.com www.aandi.com
Milk LA 855 N. Cahuenga Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90038 323.469.8900 www.milkstudios.com info@milkstudios.com
The Icon* 5450 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90036 323.933.1666 icon@iconla.com www.iconla.com
Smashbox Hollywood* 1011 N Fuller Ave. Hollywood, CA 90046 323.851.5030 sb@smashboxstudios.com www.smashboxstudios.com
PHOTO EQUIPMENT
Smashbox Culver City* 8549 Higuera St. Culver City, CA 90232 323.851.5030 sb@smashboxstudios.com www.smashboxstudios.com
Calumet 1135 N. Highland Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90038 323.466.1238 website@calumetphoto.com www.calumetphoto.com Castex Rentals* 1044 Cole Ave. Hollywood, CA 90038 323.462.1468 www.castexrentals.com
The LA Lofts* 6442 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90038 323.462.5880 thelalofts@hotmail.com www.thelalofts.com
The Studio* 6442 Santa Monica Blvd - #202 Los Angeles, CA 90038 323.791.7757 jewely@thestudiola.com www.thestudiola.com 5th & Sunset* 12322 Exposition Blvd West Los Angeles, CA 90064 310.979.0212 keith@5thandsunsetla.com www.5thandsunsetla.com 8443 Studios* 8443 Warner Drive Culver City, CA 90232 310.202.9044 studio@8443warner.com www.8443warner.com Lightbox Studio* 7122 Beverly Blvd. - #G Los Angeles, CA 90036 323.933.2080 Info@lightboxstudio.com www.lightboxstudio.com Miauhaus* 1201 South La Brea Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90019 323.933.6180 mail@miauhaus.com www.miauhaus.com Pier 59 Studio West* 2415 Michigan Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90404 310.829.5959 erika@pier59studios.com www.pier59studios.com Siren Studios* 6063 W. Sunset Blvd Hollywood, CA 90028 323.467.3559 Monica@sirenstudios.com www.sirenstudios.com
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NATIONAL DIRECTORY Dripbook PO Box 220-295 Greenpoint Station Brooklyn, NY 11222 contact@dripbook.com www.dripbook.com
ORGANIZATIONS
PHOTO-SHARING WEBSITE
APA (Advertsing Photographers of America) PO Box 725146 Atlanta, GA 31139 800.272.6264 www.apanational.com
Fotki 866.268.3991 866.554.8544 support@fotki.com www.fotki.com
Stop Assisting Info@stopassisting.com www.stopassisting.com
PhotoCrew.com 310.855.0345 www.photocrew.com
PRODUCTION SOFTWARE Blink Bid www.blinkbid.com
PHOTO EQUIPMENT
VIDEO -SHARING WEBSITE
The PhotoProductionist www.photoproductionsist.com info@photoproductionsist.com
Bron Imaging Group 800.456.0203 www.sinarbron.com
Vimeo www.vimeo.com info@vimeo.com
GRAPHIC MOTION SERVICES
Profoto www.profoto.com
*Distribution sites.
Space Junk 614-262-7665 contact@spacejunkmedia.com www.spacejunkmedia.com
FOR LISTING OR ADVERTISING INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: 718.801.8448 info@resourcemagonline.com
THE MAGAZINE FOR THE
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