women tests

Here are some of the new faces I have shot for Women recently.

Toma Barkova








Julia Oliv








and the amazing...
Paula Bertolini!!!













Did I mention the fantastic Paula Bertolini is amazing?!

supreme tests

I've been busy and not updated here lately. Here are some recent test shots with models from Supreme.

Joice Monback




Kate Herrod






Natalia Schueroff








Sarah Bledsoe




Thaysse Ricci






Zuzana Straska

radio show going forward

I haven't wanted to post much about the new radio show I'm producing, but I wanted to give an update of some sort here. I can't say where the show will be aired yet, or who the first few guests will be, because we're still working out syndication and some other things, but hopefully I can post that information soon. I'm almost afraid to jinx it, things seem to be going so well on this project. Cross your fingers!

The show is going to be called Light and Gravity. It is about photography and cinematography, but more generally about images and applied creativity. The "light" part of the title is pretty obviously relevant for photo and cinema, light is how you record images. The word "gravity" refers not to the Newtonian force, but to the importance of images as communication. We will be talking a lot about artist intent, editorial images, and viewer perception. In other words, it will be some pretty deep stuff.

Sandy Ramirez is going to co-host with me, and has been a big help in working to line up master photographers to interview. Currently looking for a cinematographer to join the on-air team.

The first few episodes should be done and ready for air in late February.

For each weekly one hour show we will have a main guest to interview live on the air, along with discussion of news from the photography, film, and creative arts worlds, and usually a pre-recorded feature or two. I'm up in the air about doing call-ins. We may take questions live from the forum on modelmayhem.com.

Ohrinthel is a fashion Yoda

edit: videos removed at source, broken links deleted from this post

more new faces

Eden at Red

Emily Fox at Supreme

Iris at Supreme

Johanna at Red

Karin at One

model test - Inna

NY Fashion Week is fast approaching, and I know this because of all the new models in town. Yesterday I shot a test with an amazing new model, Inna, from Supreme Model Management. I did the wardrobe styling myself (with a little help from Jimmy at Trash and Vaudville on St. Mark's Place). Hair and makeup were handled by the very talented Ana Sicat.

INNA @ Supreme

This one was shot with my Pentax K10D and a 35mm lens:



I also did a couple Polaroids with my late 1960's-era Polaroid 440 camera on nifty Fuji 100 ISO black and white pack film.

gallery opening - "nudes" - photography by Mark Baptiste

I was at the opening of Mark Baptiste's new gallery show, "nudes," last night. All female nudes in soft light. He did some interesting things with focus and light filtered through glass. Essentially found settings, not particularly controlled environments. Lots of concrete and windows and hotel room sheets.

The party was packed with people. An ecclectic NYC mix. Fun miniature champagne bottles from Nicolas Feuillatte ran out all too soon with the hoarde, by my stylist friend Cameron has saved two of the lanyards which were attached to the bottles for use in a photoshoot at some point.

I was trying to figure out which person Mark Baptiste actually was, because I've heard of him but never met him. Alas, he was elusive, and I still don't know what he looks like.

There were a number of models in attendance, but I didn't know any of them except recognizing the striking face of Jade, a contestant from the America's Next Top Model television series, whose oversized portrait stood out among the collection of images near the bar.

The exhibit is open from May 28th to June 2nd, 10am-6pm, at Milk Gallery, 450 west 15th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues.

Nice pictures. Worth a look.

model test - Cristina

I shot a test with a fantastic new model last week, Cristina from Supreme. I did the wardrobe styling myself, with a little help from the model. The hair and makeup were done by Mark Weiss.

establishing communication with the model is as important as their makeup getting on right

Some of my best recent pictures came when the model showed up early and I made him go with me to the diner while I ate lunch. As soon as we started shooting there was a connection and it all just flowed. Because we'd been hanging out talking for 20 minutes, we had a sense of each other. Communication is of terrific importance. Sometimes the camera is an obstacle to good work, and you have to just put it down and hang out until you click with the subject.

fashion photography theory and concepts #1

I am always looking for formulas and keys so good performances can be repeated. Sure you hit a good shot once in a while, but often it’s on a test and not an editorial so I can’t send the images out. Serendipity is great for art, but it has to be repeatable to be profitable. There is less difference between performing on stage before an audience and walking into your own gallery show than one might imagine. In both cases you must attempt to pre-cognize the experience of others. In both cases, getting it right in the shower doesn’t count. Some artists prefer to satisfy only their own needs and leave the viewer on the wind. I have gone to far too many art galleries and left confused to not give a decently explanatory label to the viewers of my own work, even if I make them look around for it a bit first. I feel indebted to the audience for taking the time and energy to view my work, and therefore strive to satisfy both my own needs as an explorer and to communicate my experiences on the journey to viewers as a reward for their own curiosity. Curiosity should always be encouraged.

There exists a requirement in the fashion photography I favor, that the model should exist in the environment of the image and be somewhat connected to that world. Most often when I find myself believing my work on a constructed image to have yielded a failure, it is the result of an apparent lack of connection between the model and the other things in the frame. If that is not the case, the second most common culprit is having failed to control the light. Both can be improved with practice, as my own work has shown. What I refer to as the model being connected to the world, director Richard Donner calls “verisimilitude,” meaning "the truth of the thing" or "self-truth."

There may be some universal formula for projecting how a model will play off a given prop or costume. I have not yet found it. Perhaps it is too complex and individualized to forecast. Possibly at least some generalizations could be divined, but then would their employment by an artist be detrimental to originality? I think such things are better left to instinct honed by experience, for my own work at least. Yet, still I wonder if there could be a primer written to guide outside of instinct. Can you bracket models and props like they do sports teams in a tournament?

I believe that tension, composition, and detail are the keys to a great image. The viewer must be presented with drama (or the equivalent), context, and a visual focal point in order to relate to most images. Drama is given by any notion of tension within a frame, whether that is interpersonal tension, spatial tension, or implied kinetic tension.

The story of the single frame must have a context, as all stories presented visually do. The context is revealed and highlighted (successfully or poorly) by the composition. In this use of the word “composition,” I mean the juxtaposition of complimentary and contrasting areas of color tone, hue, and saturation (or simply brightness in a black and white image). Void and filling shades and levels between them must be shaped to draw the viewer’s attention to your intended purpose in presenting the image. With multiple frames, a sequence of images, it’s a whole other ballgame.

The visual focal points are also of great importance, and without these details the image will appear totally meaningless. In photographing people, the visual focal points of an image almost always include the eyes. The detail need not be overpowering. It could be as simple as a green dot on two hairlines intersecting. What is important is the presence of an anchor of some sort. An image that is totally unfocused cannot ordinarily hold or even momentarily capture the viewer’s attention.

In most cases, a formulaic approach to fashion photography would be counterproductive. However, if one is conducting some sort of experiment to find the subconscious mechanics of one’s work, looking for patterns in the behavior of subjects would probably be useful. Finding such patterns would be a step in a long path to allowing for a conscious and controlled paradigm shift in production and visualization methods.

ANTM quotation

Twiggy says, "You always must connect with the photographer."

Twiggy gives the best advive on ANTM.

We have to fall in love to get good pictures, if only for a little while.

Advice for new models.

This site has a lot of good information for new models: newmodels.com

Topics covered include: the players in the modeling industry, an introduction to professional modeling, should you go to modeling school, about model searches and conventions, height and professional modeling, all about TFP, all about race, sex and age in commercial print, how to apply to a model agency, how professional agency modeling works, how child modeling works, visa requirements for working in the USA, all about "mother agencies," about "Internet managers" and Internet agencies, the bogus Internet modeling agency scam, the Nigerian scam comes to modeling, and myths and reality about modeling scams.

On models and "the walk."

There is so much pomp ascribed to "the walk" in lesser circles of fashion, but the only logical reason high-end runway models must be trained to walk is that they are gangly 5'9"-6'2" tall 15 year-old girls in 4 inch heels who don't have enough experience in those kinds of shoes to be walking a straight line in odd lighting conditions on a slick surface, sometimes with a 20 foot train behind them, without some serious practice.

Either they have a sense of balance or they don't. If they don't, you cannot send them down the catwalk, they're a danger to the show and to themselves.

The style and presence that make a walk superior cannot be drilled, it has to come from within. A teacher cannot be acting like a deranged drill sargent and expecting the model to come around, because what needs to be reached is a state of mind. Sending a model off to a corner alone for two minutes so they can clear their head will do a hell of a lot more good than bitching at them for 20 minutes.

What is an exotic model?

Someone asked a few weeks ago, on a photography forum I frequent, "what is an exotic model?" This was my response:

When you do a double take, thinking something about a model is makeup and it turns out to be their real face and it is beautiful, that is the "exotic" I look for.

Sofia Loren is exotic, Djaimon Honsu is exotic, Yvonne De Carlo was exotic.

They have sculpturaly breathtaking features that really would shock the kind of person who never leaves their hometown, but even people who get around are surprised when they first see these people.

Exotic must be elegant in form, and exotic must be breathtakingly rare. For me, that is.