How quickly that went: editing, spending the weekends in Bridgehampton and another month flew by

Should be a fun couple of days, roaming my old town, love that everyone now is on bikes. Shooting for 2 days just outside the Periph.

Looking forward to take more pics around town…

Finally I get around to work on the new site. Now it’s all Dreamweaver designed, CSS styled and much deeper than ever before with a bio page, a client login area and links to photoshelter for some art and travel photography ready to license or print purchase, who knew.

Otherwise there’s still room to grow, looking forward to integrate the client preview pages, creating a print room to order some actual prints

Rounded out the arsenal with some more gizmos to get the most out of the fluorescent light. Mostly Chimera boxes.

What a great advantage to crank up the sensibility of the Canon DSLR’s to get a workable f-stop.

It wasn’t too long ago that we needed Fuji’s 800 ASA for KinoFlo sets and still only got an f5,6 on the Mamiya RZ.

The only drawback is that the light bulbs only work at 110V, so I can’t use them international.

Nice, Monday 13th, and I just realize during my cleanup on Friday I erased all my work from the previous week. It was copied over to another directory but somehow never made it.

For the first time I actually am getting mad at something.

Tested some new lighting setups, all with CFL aka Fluorescent light bulbs. Besides a greatly improved and very energy efficient way to light a digital shoot a real joy to work with. One could even shoot video with this setup.

Back to the old “see what you get” Peter Lindbergh sets, just with a very modern twist. And besides the bulbs it all folds and packs very small. Now we have to conceive a kit that can come on location.

Another great step toward energy efficient greener shooting habits.

Back from Japan. I think I get it, all the detailed work, the gizmos, the design restraint, the simple but efficient everything, the stillness of things.

And now whenever I find the time I have to get on those pictures, I love the cherry blossom series form the Royal Gardens in Kyoto…I wish I could spend a couple of days just working with those images and do some prints.

Done with the shoot for Peninsula Hotel in Tokyo.

After roaming the streets I’m really in love with the country and the people. Luckily we get to go to Kyoto for a couple of days. I’m dying to come back.

On the tech side, this was the first shot with the new Canon 5D Mark II. I really start to love the camera, especially for available light and quick run and gun shooting. Besides it’s surprisingly small and weather resistant.

We had a near constant rainy mist all day. The files I saw so far look great and with the Peninsula’s High Speed internet I uploaded the images to the photoshelter servers in no time at all, sometimes even between shoots.

I’ve seen the future…Now I have to work on the video aspect of the little Canon, but that’s another day.

It’s the middle of the night in Tokyo, Berlin was a blast, great people, snow in February and the whole city very pretty.

Annie’s exhibit was a total blowout, 4000 over opening weekend, a record, Saturday morning she’s on all the Berlin Newspapers on the front cover (and I worked out with Depeche Mode’s front man Dave Gahan in our Hotel gym).

Photographically I find Berlin hard to grasp, everything is far apart and I guess growing up in Germany I’m not very impressed but regular and grey scenery.

But then again I should one day revisit the ordinary Germanic, grey and orderly ways…Note to self-read: some Philosophy classics again.

Arrival in Tokyo, coming from Frankfurt.

Had my Frankfurter Würstchen and Apfelwein, finally at the airport on Sunday, all happy.

The Peninsula Hotel sends us a BMW 7 series and a Rolls Royce for the Airport pick up. We obviously all crammed into the Phantom with Annie riding shotgun and had the most unusual welcome to Japan in the quietest car I ever been in.

A nice way to travel and totally relaxing even in the constant rain.

It was like a sold out Rock show, traffic came to standstill, and after the place opened its doors to the public you couldn’t even walk or exit the building. But I finally met Veruschka, who moved from NY to Berlin and loves it. And the space, the old Postfuhramt, is just great. This is now the 3rd hanging of the show that we’ve seen (After Brooklyn and Paris) and they do feel very different. (Still open through May 24.)

And talking about Rock concerts, the Depeche Mode stayed in our Hotel (de Rome, go figure) and I worked out with David Gahan in the early morning…

And I got to stop at my favorite shop: “Manufactum“. I nearly forgot about those guys, but when we travelled to Berlin in 2007 to photograph Knut, the polar bear, for the Vanity Fair cover, we stopped by a coffee shop around the corner and ever since I was itching to go back. They also have a great website and a lot of their products are available for shipment to the US as well. Love it…

Finally got my hands on the new Canon can’t wait to test it out. So much smaller than the 1Ds I usually shoot. And the quality is said to be on par as it uses the same image chip.

Well, at least there no small images anymore I my library.

Serious photography has to hurt a bit, if not it’s just not serious (anybody said Canon G10???)

A new year and it’s time to start the tech upgrades: this time a new Wiebetech RAID box a my primary image storage. It’s quite impressive how for down the pricing for this technology has come.

And the file transfer was done in a few days. Now I upgrade the offsite storage and we’re ready for a great year in photos…

Finally in Washington, DC, saw the Richard Avedon exhibit. It really puts a lot of things into perspective, especially some current photography that are so overly praised, but are just mediocre.

People tend to forget the true greatness and quality photography can and should have.

Makes me want to shoot with 8×10 and/or on white again.

What a great day, i’ve never seen DC so crowded and never seen so many port-a-pottys. This has to be turning point in world history.

I liked my perspective of being in the middle of it all, and my little tilt shift version of events. It’s so interesting how every event is now geared toward TV coverage and people are just snapping pictures of everything.

Sometimes people forget to actually be in the moment, event planers forget to cater to the actual present audience. But then again the images will live on and the memory fades.

Something that was most visible at the Neighborhood Ball, half the room was a staged event, with the crowd being part of the live telecast, the other a dark area with mediocre food and 3 bars that felt straight out of a prom movie, with paper tickets et all.

But we got to see POTUS & FLOTUS doing the very “First Dance” to Beyonce (?, Really no Etta available?) singing “At Last”…

Yeah, i can’t believe it’s been a year. Still in rehab twice a week and still in pain once in a while. I can’t wait to be back in full force and hate the limitations all of this still has on me.

But i do survive the gym now even outside the pool so my progress is mare than fantastic.

And thanks to everyone who supported me during the last very trying year (I think of the jump shoots for Conde Nast’s Portfolio and Departures, what an irony).

Upgraded the system to the new Lightroom 1.4, no changes which is fine with me, as long as we’re stable kids…
And finally got the Kodak Plug in dilemma worked out. Now it’s finally all installed and ready to go, can’t wait for more portraits to be worked on.
I can’t believe that Mac’s 10.5 is still not working stable enough for the Capture one, Epson printer drivers and Eye-One software, i can’t wait to propel my Mac into the year ’08…

What a week this was, had a great meeting to create images for a fashion designer. We actually want to make this a serial mailer and due to budget restrictions we decided to cut out the model, make up, hair department and shoot the outfits on a dress form. Can’t wait to shoot this…I got a call from the principal that night, that she loved my ideas and that i actually should create an Ad agency to do all the work on the project. Funny that there is the other flower client in Connecticut who want me to do the same…just online, we’ll see.
Interestingly enough that’s what happened at the first photographer that i assisted with, a year in we had our own little ad company, doing work for various german Fashion brands, and before you moan, BOSS and the Lagerfeld label was on the client list.

Otherwise we’re busy getting the finals retouched and uploaded for Chestnuts and updating the online system.

Today i met up with my old friend Julian Dufort. We met at Annie’s 10 years ago, he’s doing great now, shooting a lot in the UK and Germany, but published in the US quite frequently. He’s not giving up on film yet, even that he shoot a campaign right now with the P45+. We reconnected last year over an ebay ad, me selling my loved Fuji 690 kit, which he ended up buying. They’re his mainstay bodies and Fuji stopped making them a couple of years ago and i’m happy they found a great home with a friend.

Anyhow, due to Polaroid calling it a day, he now has to switch to Fuji-roid…Am i happy i switched to Canon and keep got so much better at the digital capture and post production early on.

Spend my morning shooting and the afternoon checking out Lightroom 2.0.
Looks great, just as the old one, Clarity got a diffusion direction now, very Hamilton and thus not my cup of tea, the search abilities are much improved but cut into the image area, a little on the negative when only on a laptop.

Otherwise i love that the tools (crop, spotting, etc.) are now neatly on the right side and pop out like the other command items, much clearer and easier to access.
Oh, and i hear there’s now dual monitor support and a dodge and burn tool, very fine with me.

so here we go: on the way to the Hamptons to shoot my friends daughter who just got accepted to Click models NY. Its going to be a fun weekend.
Disney got the Behind the scenes for the upcoming Ariel Ad shot by Annie L. That was a fun and full day at the Universal Studio lot, between Western Town and the tours going by…
And Tasha’s next music production goes into the final remix on Monday. We’ll reviewing artwork next week but we exchanged first impressions on the shoot this week.