Jul/101
new portrait
Greg - co-owner of Bear Garden Farms. In earlier times, he raised quarter horses and was a hunting guide in Texas. Now, he and his wife Terrie raise Alpaca in eastern West Virginia. Weekends, at least; during the week he's an engineer working on disaster relief projects.
Jul/100
First footage of the ballet project
An early edit of our test footage of American Ballet Theatre's principal dancer Michele Wiles.
Shot 6/28/2010 at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center to RED 2k, 3k, 4k formats.
Director: Nicholas LaClair
CO: Michael Cano with Unfolded Films
Gaffer: Katie Vukovich
Sound and moral support: James McCullough
Only a test to get us out of the dark woods of high frame rates with the RED. In the end (because we didn't have enough light to keep the noise down) I decided to retreat to the Aesthetic of Paul Himmel and his wife Lillian Bassman - the pair of fashion photographers who were married for 73 years before his death in 09 and whose work is strikingly similar ...
Paul Himmel - Ballet Sylvia “Pas de Deux“
Lillian Bassman
Jul/100
ballet behind the scenes
footage coming shortly ...
meantime:
Filming Michele Wiles at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center. Photo by Katie Vukovich.
May/100
Short Film Project
I'm really excited to be working on a short film highlighting the spirit and process of ballet - a treatment idea I've had for some time and is recently taking shape. It will feature a principal ballerina with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) named Michele Wiles. She's simply amazing - one of the best in the world. For more on her see her site and her profile on ABT).
She moves like no other, and I eagerly look forward to capturing that on film. Here are a few clips from another video collaboration of hers: | 1| 2 |.
See what I mean?
I sat down with Michele and her fiancee James last week to discuss our treatment and begin the process of logistics with a hopeful shoot date in the fall. I'll keep you posted. Meantime we're going to kick out a small studio project later this month filming her turning - more of an instructional film on proper technique, which will serve as my camera and lighting test and a chance to see what the RED can do at 120 fps.
I'll keep you posted.
May/100
New Intro Reel
Draft one of my flash intro reel for Portlight Productions, LLC ... Hope you like it.
Apr/101
New Book
A few weeks ago I finished printing my new book, custom made by Scott Mullenberg, who is an amazing portfolio artist based in Biddeford, ME. He worked with me in hand-picking the materials and on the back-and-forth of the design in all its iterations. Book and slipcase were collaboratively designed by me and my good friend Kim Karston, and I owe her huge thanks for all her help.
I realize very soon we'll all be marketing ourselves in person and otherwise with the iPad or something like it, but there's still something inexplicable about seeing the work printed. It's well worth the expense. The pages are 12x12 on Moab Entrada Rag paper, which looks amazing when printing B&W 4x5 Polaroids (or anything else, for that matter). I'd post interior photos, but they wouldn't do it justice. Wanna see it? Come on over and I'll make some espresso.
The first two photos came from Scott's studio; the last two are thanks to Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir - taken while we visited friends at Bitfire in Manhattan.
Apr/101
a viable alternative
“The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative.”
-Charles Bukowski
Apr/102
Little writeup in Popular Photography Magazine
It's been a crazy month and now that it's off the newsstands I'm finally getting around to posting the news. Popular Photography Magazine did a feature on me for their "Creative Thinking" section of the March 2010 issue. Click below to see:
Of course, it's primarily for amateur photographers, so it deals more with the process of shutter/aperature and post processing than it does with any broad views of making good pictures - though it's still nice to get attention, especially in a magazine with such a huge circulation. Since it was published, I've been contacted by a handful of photo students wanting to do final reports on me, and a few assistants in the general mid-Atlantic area who want to be on set when I shoot. It's a little surreal. Though it says I'm a New York-based fashion photographer ... I suppose that's the much sexier version of a DC-based editorial photographer ...
Thanks again Larry for getting in touch; it was a really fun interview.
Favorite
NYTimes Photography Blog
- Pictures of the Day: Arizona and Elsewhere 29 July, 2010Protests greeted the dawn of a new law in Arizona. […]By MERRILL D. OLIVER
- Meeting, and Counting, Mountain Gorillas 29 July, 2010Photojournalists often face the challenge of earning a subject's trust. Mattias Klum did it by crawling backwards, Karly Domb Sadof reports. […]By KARLY DOMB SADOF
- 'Step Away From the Camera!' 28 July, 2010Don't study this picture too closely or you may come under suspicion, too. […]By DAVID W. DUNLAP
- Pictures of the Day: Kandahar Province and Elsewhere 28 July, 2010The Associated Press continued its distinguished documentation of Afghanistan. […]By MERRILL D. OLIVER and DAVID W. DUNLAP
- A Vision of Diane Arbus on Juniper Blvd. 28 July, 2010An eerily angelic vision at a dreadful car wreck. […]By ANGEL FRANCO and DAVID W. DUNLAP