Yesterday I posted an image taken at Cafe de la Presse, a French cafe in San Francisco that I fell in love with. I thought I might share the other images I took on that trip for your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy them.
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
This is the 11th in my series of inspirational people or things that motivate and inspire me to pursue my photographic and artistic endeavors. Today’s post is about Atlanta based commercial photographer Zack Arias.
I first came across Zack Arias in much the same way I come across many photographers: through the blogosphere. In this case it was through his stint as guest blogger on Photoshop Guru Scott Kelby’s blog in February of 2009. Arias, since he was generously given the freedom to choose any platform or subject he liked, simply posted a black and white video.
But what a video. Rendered mostly in black and white and with his wife’s beautifully haunting music as the backdrop, Arias’ video takes the viewer through an intensely personal moving snapshot of one professional photographer’s life. It damn near went viral. It kinda did go viral in the photography world, especially since Arias was reminding people of photography’s proper place in the grand design.
And it is not only pure genius to my way of thinking, it is also pure Arias. He’s a straight shooter, it seems, calling things like he sees them and often bringing photographers back to earth. His blog is as wildly popular as it is full of opinion. Love him or hate him, he’s got something worth saying.
Oh, and he’s a pretty skilled photographer. He’s made a niche for himself in editorial music photography as well as teaching photographic techniques and workshops. His “white seamless” tutorials, available for free on his website, is renowned, as are his workshops. He is especially well known for his OneLight Workshops where he debunks the need for a constellation of strobe lights at photoshoots and shows workshop participants how to get stunning images with one light source.
He is honest, open, transparent and of immense benefit to the craft and art of photography and he repeatedly inspires me to create work, push myself, and (hopefully) create my vision.
The above image is a dyptic shot in 2008 at Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco. I used a borrowed Nikon d80 and a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens. I just loved this cafe, mostly because it reminds me of the cafes in Paris with all the pastries, cafe au lait, and waiters who speak French. I think we went there three times in four days. I love the feeling of Parisian cafes, they seem to embrace and celebrate the simple and important aspects of being alive: good food and drink, community and camaraderie, and quiet time. I never feel more at home than when I am in an authentic French cafe where I can sit as long as I like without worry about taking up a table. This and other images I took while there are some of my favorites because I feel I was successful at portraying my feelings for the environment and my experience. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Best selling author and acclaimed photographer David duChemin released a new ebook on his Craft and Vision website today entitled “Iceland: A Monograph.” With images shot on a recent personal trip to Iceland, duChemin presents the prints and then walks the reader through his process in creating the images. This is the third in a series of monograph ebooks that duChemin has published and they each are enjoyable reads. Being with a professional photographer as they walk you through their creative thought process can be helpful in developing one’s own process and these ebooks do just that.
Filling the book with beautiful and ethereal images of this wondrous land, duChemin also uses the pages to demystify the process of capturing the images and the equipment used to do so. Check out Iceland: A Monograph as well as other photography ebooks available at Craft and Vision for the ridiculously low price of $5 each. Really good stuff.
Special Offer: For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code ICE4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of ICELAND, A Monograph – The Print & The Process for only $4 OR use the code ICE20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST September 12, 2010.
(c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography
This is my tenth in my series of posts about people or works that inspire me to continue pursuing my artistic endeavors. Today’s post is about Chase Jarvis, a commercial photographer based both in Seattle and Paris.
Chase is well known in photographic circles. He seems to be everywhere, all the time. And not just photographically. He seems hell bent to show each of us how absolutely creative we can be. He appears to be the creative energizer bunny on speed given how much work he produces and the sheer number of projects he spearheads. Not only does he operate two studios, in highly creative cities, on opposite sides of the Atlantic serving clients such as REI, Toyota, Reebok, Apple, Brooks, Microsoft, Smith Optics, Volvo, Jeep, McDonalds, Columbia Sportswear Company, and Nike to name a few (phew), he also throws himself headlong into supporting creative endeavors made possible by the advent of the internet and web-based technology.
Chase also gives. In fact, the first time I heard him speak was a video of a keynote he was giving in which he encouraged the photographers in the audience to give freely of their knowledge rather than attempt to secretively protect their hard-earned talent. His thought was that if you give it away you will have to continue to work to grow your style and will subsequently maintain your creativity, freshness, and vitality as an artist. This view, I imagine, comes from his background in philosophy and appears to guide his professional life. You see, Chase Jarvis hides nothing professionally. He gives of his knowledge freely and appears to seek out opportunities to do so. His blog often has video posts in which he takes the viewer behind the scenes of a photoshoot, walking us through every step of pre-production, production, and post production, showing all the secrets, tips, and tricks to being a successful commercial photographer. He also donates images, his time, and sometimes even his earnings to worthy creative causes.
In addition he has also recently spearheaded a project called CreativeLive.com in which he invites creative teachers (photographers, painters, web designers, app developers) to a film studio in Seattle to teach workshops about their craft. The live feed is broadcast on creativeLive.com and is free to the viewer. These web workshops happen most weekends and are just wonderful! In a recent edition wedding photographer Jasmine Star taught a wedding photography workshop and integrated it with a live wedding shoot. It was the real deal and gave the viewer a deeper understanding of what goes into shooting a wedding. The work that must have gone into making that weekend happen was astounding.
He also has started ChaseJavisLive in which he personally interviews somebody he respects and thinks might be interesting to the viewing public, and posts the interview on his blog and YouTube account. Some of these interviews are close to 2 hours long and all provided free to us.
He’s also created an iPhone app called “Best Camera” and been involved in photographic book projects about aspects of Seattle that he loves.
Like I said, energizer bunny. Generous energizer bunny, but energizer bunny!
But what I love about Chase is his willingness and courage to be open and transparent about the work that he does. He’s received some flack about it and his good intentions have sometimes been cynically questioned, but that has not deterred him; he has developed the endurance necessary to maintain a good heart in the world, and we are the better for it. So take advantage of what this man (and his team) have to offer. His intention is to raise the level of photography across the board and subsequently raise each of us along with it. I don’t know about you, but this inspires me.
I recently noticed some changes over at Flickr that have been in effect for a month or two and I got quite excited. You see, I started this blog in order to control how my photographic images were presented on the web. Although I love Flickr as a place for photographers to share their work and perhaps provide each other feedback, I found the relative busy-ness of the page distracting. I felt I could not view or show images in the manner I wanted. That frustrated me. I was much more impressed with how Picasa formats their viewing page.
Well, I am very happy to discover Flickr was listening to me. Well, OK, they probably weren’t really listening to me but they addressed the issues that had become near and dear to me: page layout, optimal viewing environment, ease of use and movement between images. Now there is the option of viewing individual images without all the distracting sidebar links. By clicking directly on an image (when on the image page) Flickr navigates you to an “on black” viewing area they call “lightbox” thereby providing a pleasing viewing experience. On the page are just a few discreet yet accessible buttons. These buttons allow the viewer to navigate forward or backward through the photographer’s photo stream, to start a slideshow of the photographer’s photo stream, or to view the current image in all its available sizes. An example is shown below.
(c) 2010 Brian E. Miller Photography
Other improvements include more streamlined ways to add tags, notes, and people to images as well as ways to share the images through blogs, email and link acquisition. There is even a very easy way to link your Flickr updates to FaceBook making the need for third party apps obsolete. It is seamless and very user friendly. These are all very nice updates and will speed up the way images are viewed on Flickr but for me the improvement in the viewing environment is the biggest thing. Thank you Flickr, you have rescued my enthusiasm for your site.
To view my Flickr stream feel free to click on the photostrip at the bottom of this page or follow the link here.
(c) 2009 Brian E. Miller Photography
This is the ninth in my series of posts about people or works of art that inspire and motivate me to pursue my art and I am beginning to notice the difficulty in consistently posting these posts. It is not just because of a full life with family and work commitments which take precedence over sitting and writing this post each week. It is also due to the very nature of inspiration; it waxes and wanes, probably due to the occasionally overwhelming nature to those things which take precedence over creating these posts.
But I digress. This challenge of dealing with the wax and wane is for another post. Today’s post is about Gerry Ghionis. Ghionis is what I might label the Lance Armstrong of wedding photography. He has not only entered and won every major competition related to wedding photography, he has also dominated and changed the industry earning accolade after accolade the world over. His portfolios continue to set new standards in not only wedding photography but also fashion and portrait work.
I recently enjoyed watching a wedding photographer work and was even able to follow her around with my camera to make some of my own photographs. While not the primary photographer at this wedding, I was still able to get a sense of the pressure and stress involved in successfully shooting such a pivotal event in a client’s life. That Ghionis is able to create high art in the process, consistently, over many years, is a testament to his vision and his dedication.
I don’t plan on becoming a wedding photographer any time soon but I like how Ghionis keeps me thinking about new ways in which to do things. Check out his website at www.gerryghionisphotography.com and especially watch the video promo for the live view of how he makes his images. In addition, Ghionis also has an educational website at www.theicesociety.com where he provides online educational workshops and also markets his live workshops.
(c) 2009 Brian E. Miller Photography
This is my eighth in my series about people or works of art that inspire me to pursue my photographic and artistic passions and this time the person is a bit closer to home: my sister-in-law, Margarita Aragon-Lopez.
Margarita is one of those artists that work quietly outside of the spotlight. Sure her friends and family are aware of her oft present camera, but she seeks neither fame nor attention with her photography. Instead she makes her art for the sake of making it, when moved to do so, according to her desires, and resists any efforts by others (read, me!) to move it along at a rate uncomfortable for her. Her work has not appeared in magazines or been sold in galleries, but it moves me for its simplicity, its purity, and its directness. Repeatedly I am drawn to look at her images for reasons unknown to me. And for me that is the purpose of art: to move me on a level even I do not understand.
Recently she traveled throughout Europe and parts of Asia on a journey whose purpose is known only to her, accompanied simply by her Nikon D80 and her 28-55mm kit lens, and produced a body of work that bears viewing. Working mostly in black and white and cross-process, Margarita’s fine artist’s eye (she has training in drawing and painting) draws the viewer into the image through subtle and powerful attention to light and mood. Often she hints at the internal world of her subjects allowing, as well as requiring, the viewer’s subjective input into the experience of the image. This is not the kind of work to view and say, ” hey, that’s a pretty picture.” Instead this is the kind of work that makes the viewer pause at first to try to discover what she is saying with the image. And eventually the viewer needs to ask themselves what they make of the image.
Margarita doing her thing (c) 2009 Brian E. Miller Photography
Margarita reminds me about the simple nature of art making. Sure, the technicality of it all can become all-encompassing, but the urge to create needs to be respected. And sometimes it is important to sweep the distractions that hinder the expression of that urge aside and connect with the deeper expression, beyond words, of our experience in this world, in this time. She reminds me that it is not simply what moves us externally that should entice us to make images; perhaps it should also equally be what moves us internally. And perhaps that can be reflected in a finished product that moves others to look inwards as well; but that only occurs when we make our images primarily for the sake of moving ourselves.
Luckily for us, while making images for herself, Margarita did post her Asia work on Picasa and some of her European images are in her galleries on Flickr.
(c) 2009 Brian E. Miller Photography
This is number seven in my (sort of) weekly series about people or works of art that inspire me to create my art. However, I would like to apologize for missing last week’s post. I do have a good excuse though: my wife gave birth to our second son and I had my hands, quite literally, full. So no post last week but hopefully one you will enjoy this week.
This week’s post is about travel photographer Art Wolfe. Although I have probably seen Art’s images for many years given how prolifically published he is, he really came to my awareness as a result of his foray into television: namely the “Art Wolfe’s Travels to the Edge ” series he produces for public television. I mentioned Wolfe’s series in my post last week and it is a show I look forward to each week. Each episode is dedicated to a different photography expedition where the viewer gets a behind the scenes look at what it takes to capture the images he does. Wolfe describes the environment and cultures he visits and explains what moves him about his experience all the while taking photographs along the way.
What strikes me the most about Wolfe is his friendly demeanor and willingness to connect personally with his subjects. Often I marvel at the film footage of him in the midst of a group of children, nearly being buried, while showing them images on the LCD on the back of his camera. He is not the kind of man to stand back, voyeuristically photographing; he is the kind of man that pops open his Dell laptop in a yurt in Mongolia to show an elderly grandmother an image he took of her. Wolfe appears to be able to balance a warm and affable nature with an impressive drive to capture captivating images. In fact, in a recent episode showing how the show is made, his production crew unanimously agreed that it is challenging and exciting to try to keep up with Wolfe when he is on the trail of a good photograph. Apparently his penchant for disappearing on his production crew is notorious such is his drive to capture the image.
Art Wolfe’s wonderful images can be found by clicking through to his blog site here. His video series, “Art Wolfe’s Travels to the Edge ” can be viewed on your local PBS/Create station or by visiting Create TV.
(c) 2010 Brian E. Miller Photography
This is number six in my series of posts about people or works of art that inspire me to continue in my artistic endeavors. Last week’s post about Dewitt Jones was well received and I even had some excitement happen: Dewitt read the post and left me a short note! (What a thrill! Thanks Dewitt! It means a lot to me that you took the time to stop by and visit my little online world.) I don’t know Dewitt personally and to have such a well regarded and widely published photographer visit my blog and take the time to comment was particularly exciting for me.
Today I am posting about another photographer for whom my relationship is simply one of “fan.” I first came across Bruce Percy on the iTunes store where he posts video podcasts under the banner “The Art of Adventure Photography” recounting some of his journeys to destinations far and wide: Easter Island, Patagonia, Nepal, the Bolivian Altiplano, Cuba, Iceland, Cambodia, and Norway just to name a few. He is also well known for his work in northern Scotland; an area much closer to home for this Edinburgh resident.
What drew me to his photography was initially his podcasts; they are multisensory experiences. Not only does Percy make stunning landscape and cultural photographs, he also composes the music for the podcasts and narrates them as well. His lilting Scottish brogue, soft voice. and apparently gentle spirit lend themselves perfectly to the otherworldly images he makes of our world. If you like stunning images of wild places and the people who live on the edge of them then do yourself a favor and check out his portfolio.
Another aspect of Percy’s approach that I enjoy is his philosophy on gear. Influenced by Michael Kenna (whom I wrote about here), Ansel Adams (well, who isn’t?), and Steve McCurry (the photographer who made the famous image of the green-eyed Afghan girl that seemed to make National Geographic a household magazine), Percy believes gear should be in service of the work of art. He creates stunning, absolutely stunning, images with a Mamiya camera and three prime lenses shooting exclusively on film. In fact, on his website he makes the bold argumentative statement that “your camera does not matter.”
Alright then. I guess I won’t buy that new lens with my birthday money.
His images and podcasts move me to find something to photograph that moves my soul. It is clear he loves the wild places he visits and does his best to render his experience on film. He is also willing to experience these places and people on their own terms describing photography as a great way to get closer to the land and the people.
A consummate teacher, Percy leads workshops (often in the far north of Scotland), produces podcasts, publishes eBooks, and writes a blog all describing his process; the process of course being what he considers the most important aspect of photographing.
So grab a cup of tea and give yourself a break from the hubbub of daily living. Enter into Bruce Percy’s photographic world here. I’m certain you will enjoy it.
(c) 2010 Brian E. Miller Photography
My brother emailed me today. It was an email I had been looking forward to, both with excitement and with some dread. Excitement because it meant that his company’s website was finally up and all the pictures on it are mine. That is exciting; it was my first photographic gig. Dread because I had, and have, this nagging sensation that the images are simply not good enough; that I had been found out; that he, and others, would now know I am a hack.
It was the best of first gigs: my brother would fly me and my family to his place for a long weekend. My wife and child would enjoy a weekend of really good food and the company of family whom we love dearly. I, in return, would spend 2 days photographing his production plant for his new website. He had a list of shots he wanted and he wanted something better than what he could do with his point and shoot but didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg for a professional photographer. Sounded great! Sounded win-win…
What I learned:
Sounds like a nightmare, right? Well, in a way it was. I got so stressed I hardly enjoyed my visit with my brother’s family and I got really sick while there. I found photographing someone else’s vision very stressful. But you know what, it also pushed me incredibly. I had to move wayyyyy out of my comfort zone and try things I’d never tried before. I also came home thinking about my limitations and ways to overcome them. I’ve spent more time re-thinking that shoot and different ways to accomplish the set list with my limited gear. I’ve learned more from having done that shoot than from the previous few years of photographing my usual subjects. And that has been worth it! Perhaps I am still a hack, or maybe I was then, but at this point I am a more improved hack.
And you know what, it’s my first gig; I got it under my belt; and it is now published for all to see, right here. (This is a slimmed down, initial, version of the website that they wanted to get online due to some impending press releases. I’m told the full site will be up later with more pictures.)
Have you had a first photographic or creative gig? What was your experience like?