Every Valentine’s day, the citizens of San Francisco host a giant, good natured pillow fight in Justin Herman Plaza downtown. For the first time in five years I attended and now I regretting every previous year for not doing so. Next time I am bringing pillows, friends, and leaving my camera at home.
Happy Valentine’s Day!

Job’s is to many people a real-life Willy Wonka, and why not make that comparison? Only Jobs could make objects from Star Trek seem antiquated. Above is photo of my 1st Gen iPod taken with my iPhone 4 using the instagram app.

2007 “What’s crazy about the iPhone, is if I traveled back in time 1-year, and tell people that this a phone from 20-years in the future and they would believe me.”  Dave Chappelle at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco when speaking of the 1st Gen iPhone. I was there, no big deal.

1997 My high school photography teacher pulled me out of the darkroom to have me help him hook up a new Apple computer that our art department just received from an education grant. Shortly there after we pushed the on button on the new power Macintosh I heard that one note sound for the first time. Looking back that was one of the most poignant moments of my photographic career. Since then, Steve Jobs and his vision has played an instrumental roll in my personal and professional life, and needless to say in lives all around me.

_______________________

Apple helped me see that intellectual side of design. That design can solve real world problems while being a work of art. Apple products are honest & intuitive while subscribing to a philosophical discipline that was evident while being intangible. Steve Jobs gave us objects that were so futuristic they grabbed headlines around the world, but because he always had the end user in mind so they were instantly familiar as soon as you touched one.

The moment we all held our 1st iPhone there was an resounding sentiment of “Genius” and simultaneously “Of course a phone should be like this, why would you do it any other way.”

It is important to note the context in which Steve Job’s and Apple Inc became such cultural icon’s. While our country was undergoing some of its darkest moments in a generation between 2000 and 2008, Job’s was a constant and consistent source of good news. With each presentation of a new product, Jobs was incrementally bringing the future a little closer to us. Iraq, politics, terrorism, and the polarization of American’s opinions of each other were all put on pause when Steve took the stage. When he unveiled a new product, we new our future was going to be a little brighter then we expected. Anyone who had ever watched a keynote speech from Jobs instantly felt connected to him because their excitement was only matched by Jobs’ own geeky glee.

Some people saw Hendrix light his guitar on fire, we got to live in a world with Steve in it.

Thank you Steve Jobs.

This past week I had the pleasure of shooting for alley collection, a Men’s Wear label designed by an active firefighter, John Robblee, and made in San Francisco.

The shoot was for their Spring/Summer 2012 Look Book. Alley Collection have the vision to feature only fellow firefighters wearing their pieces as a way to bring the much need sense of altruism to the fashion world and to strengthening ties within the bay-area firefighter community. In the images in this post, you will see Richard, an active firefighter from Marin County who was a real pleasure to photograph. I thoroughly enjoyed the shoot, as well as the immense amount of trust the people at Alley Collection have placed with me. Big thanks to stylists Raquel Ramos for her expertise.

The case when working with many start-ups and indie designers is that the production is on a tight budget and team must be kept lean. For example, with this project I was entrusted to run all aspects of art production, from bookings & digital capture to design & print. If you find yourself in a similar roll, do not be discouraged by the budgets, or a lack of gear, because the most valuable asset to any production is not money, but your time. I say often that planning ahead is free, but rushing a project out the door is expensive. No body looks good running to catch the bus, but sipping on cocktail in an airport lounge while waiting for a your flight says something.

View Alley Collections current line.

Follow Alley on Twitter

Contact me if you would like your own copy of the 16 page lookbook.

Have a great week.

Nature and landscapes are not my forte, but I saw the orange harvest moon and I just had to go for it. All 30 second exposures taken from 9pm-10pm.

Last week I had the pleasure of shooting a ballerina named Elana. As she warms up on set, I am immediately in awe of her athleticism and talent. To be honest I am actually a bit intimidated but let’s keep that between us. Seeing how my knowledge of ballet goes little beyond Black Swan (Great film btw) my direction to her is a “less is more” approach, meaning I keep my instructions simple and enable her to be free and move about the space as she likes. This allows her become more comfortable with the space, and allows me to observe how she moves. For the next hour my direction becomes much more specific and we captured some great shots. Seeing how I am much more about the moments in-between the action, I have posted these few picks as they are some of my personal favorites from the shoot.

Big thank you to the real talent behind the shoot:
Hair and Makeup- @NicoleSurette
Model-Elana Lewis

Featuring Alexandra from LOOK Modeling agency.

Some photographs are the result of being completely present in the moment. Other photographs are the result of being detached and objective to the moment. Which one is best for you and when is your choice, but it is conscience choice that must be made. To not make such a choice is to casually shoot. And to casually shoot will only yield photographs that are casually shot or otherwise appear to be a seemingly random act.

The above photograph was during a job in November where I was booked to shoot a hair & makeup show. If I was any less aware of my surroundings, I would have missed this shot. Mind you, I was only hired to shoot the catwalk from a fixed location during the main event. I consciously choose to arrive early and make my presence known, to get to know everyone well enough so that they would ignore me & my camera, and to learn space of the venue itself. My sense of space, rapport with the models, and anticipation of this moment occurring is what made this shot possible.

Even if you think this image is total crap, my words still matter to the practice of photography, or just about anything. Including chopping vegetables.

Thanks to the wise words of Jordan Sudy for helping me articulate these thoughts.

Alexandra A. from LOOK has only been modeling for 8 months which was such a surprise from the team in the studio.

The great food photographer Michael Lamotte once told me that when he shoots food, he aims to make it appear like it was sitting on your table, next to a window in your chateau in the French countryside. Not that that’s what I’m going for with this coffee cup, but I figured it was a relevant piece of information to know. Even though I have yet to visit the French countryside, a small window in the Lower Haight of San Francisco aint’ to shabby either.

I don’t know what it is about coffee, but I have become enamored with it. Not drinking it per se, but making it. Given the choice, I’d rather make you a cup than drink one myself. I’d rather talk about all the methods, or debate about different coffee shops for that matter. Looking back, I know I have always been focused on the process of art rather than its end result, so I suppose this coffee thing is keeping in step with that.

Anyways, have a good weekend everyone.

Reading about my friend Mark Lukach’s travel exploits as he finds his was through Japan, has inspired me to revisit some of my own photos from that amazing country. In doing so I discovered an ad hoc panorama that I took on a roof top in the Shibuya District in Tokyo Japan.

Please take a look at Mark’s travels as he and his wife Giulia circumvent the globe in the coming months. http://wheretheroadmeetsthesun.com/ www.twitter.com/marklukach http://twitter.com/#!/gsmile9

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Rachel & Isabella from LOOK AGENCY for MOXSIE

Happy Holiday’s everyone.

In Movie news, Zack Snyder is now directing the 2012 Super Man movie, and will not be recasting Brandon Routh to play the man of steel which I think is a mistake.

But for Mr. Snyder’s consideration, I would like to recommend this guy, Matt.

Hair & Make-up by Summer Cygal

Have a great weekend everyone.

In college (some years ago) I made it a point to study and deconstruct film noir lighting. Specifically the works of John Alton, Akira Kurosaw and Ridley Scott really influenced me as I work hard to reproduce their darkness in personal projects.

Some years later, in my bread & butter work that I do for clients, to have such an insight into lighting has hardly come in handy…until now.

Over the past months, I have has the pleasure of conducting a dozen or so beauty shoots showcasing the work very talented MUAs. In more than one instance during our pre-production meetings, a film noir theatrical esthetic was discussed. I tried to contain my enthusiasm but I failed as I exclaimed “I can do that!”.

If you are interesting in achieving this inner darkness in images, I recommend watching many many films, as well as the books ‘Painting With Light’ by the master himself John Alton and ‘The Noir Style’ by Alain Silver & James Ursini.

At first, the thought of doing corporate head-shots does not evoke a whole lot of creativity. For the most part they are pretty standard portraits used for annual reports and company profiles. This does not mean that you shouldn’t leave enough room for spontaneity and some fun.

A regular client of mine, the super hip Palo Alto based fashion retailer Moxsie.com needed updated head-shots of their five department heads and only had an hour to shoot them. Everybody needed one formal and one not so formal shot and it was Jon’s, Moxsie’s CEO idea to grab some props & inventory to incorporate into the images. This idea was so refreshing has it added some fun and personality to both the shoot and the final images.

www.moxsie.com

When speaking of Richard Avedon’s work, Poul Erik Tøjner wrote ” He [Avedon] intensified presence by removing what is surrounding it. ” Not that I am comparing my self to the Avedon, but I do believe I am beginning to understand what Poul was on about.

Jacob Elliott (pictured above) and his family (not pictured above) affectionally known as the The Elliott’s, have been friends of mine for close to ten years. As chance would have it, Jacob & I both ended up moving to San Francisco some years ago to peruse our careers as photographers. Since then Jacob has turned into one of the most intuitive and skilled photographers I have ever known, but it was not until he sat in front of my lens that another side of Jacob showed through.

While testing out a new lighting set up, I asked Jacob pose and soon after I discovered that Jacob was one of more photogenic and uninhibited people I had ever met.

After tinkering with the lights, and some adjustments in post, his portrait easily became my favorite from the photo-shoot that took place later that day.

Technical note: As a matter of principle, a ring light was not used in this lighting set-up, nor will one ever be used in my lighting schemes.

]]> http://photosophic.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=893 2 http://photosophic.com/blog/?p=863 http://photosophic.com/blog/?p=863#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:45:13 +0000 alejandro http://photosophic.com/wordpress2/?p=863

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of shooting the Spring/Summer Look Book for Alley Collection. Alley is run by the soon-to-be husband & wife team of John Roblee and Laura Patnaude. This San Francisco based label goes out of it’s way to ensure that the production of their line remains in the United States, if not San Francisco it self, and they outsource nothing overseas.

Designer John Roblee says “Keeping the construction of the samples and finish production pieces was one of the first decisions we made starting the label two years ago.”

As impressive as the pieces themselves, is the inspiration that John draws from. John has spent the last ten years as a firefighter in the San Francisco bay area, and the influence reveals itself through inspection of the pieces. Each piece is well constructed, with carefully placed details of leather insuring longevity. Masculinely is found in the silhouettes of the pieces rather than overt functionally and their peacoat’s connection is the strongest which is a modern mix between a firefighter’s jacket and Hong Kong business man’s long coat; pictured below.

You can see the current collection by clicking here.

Thank you again to John and Laura.

]]> http://photosophic.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=863 0 http://photosophic.com/blog/?p=842 http://photosophic.com/blog/?p=842#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:03:44 +0000 alejandro http://photosophic.com/wordpress2/?p=842

Not much to say with this post, accept that a little bit of fill flash goes a long way.

Book Kristen here. She is a real pleasure to work with.

Six weeks ago, Stanford student Keith Bechtol (pictured above) decided to run his first marathon so he signed up for San Francisco’s 2010 epic 26.2 mile run. Not only did he win the entire race yesterday, he also broke the previous record by finishing in 2 hours and 23 minutes.

I was there at mile 21 as a volunteer and of course I brought my camera with me. Aside from Keith, this shot is not particularly significant but it did remind me of an important story in scientific and photographic history, two disciplines that often intersect.

When photography was in its infancy, Leland Stanford (founder of Stanford University) commissioned photographer and scientist in his own right, Eadweard Muybridge to use photography to prove that a running horse can have all four of it’s feet off the ground at the same time. Capturing this phenomenon was an achievement onto itself, but this experiment is better known for the resulting iconic image entitled, “The Horse in Motion”.

It should be of no surprise the Muybridge went on to pioneer the motion picture medium.

Congratulations Keith.

]]> http://photosophic.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=822 1 http://photosophic.com/blog/?p=805 http://photosophic.com/blog/?p=805#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:21:04 +0000 alejandro http://photosophic.com/wordpress2/?p=805

A recent trip to Fresno California surprisingly yielded some unexpected inspiration to shoot. So much inspiration infact, that I had to take notes of spaces to return to because I ran out of time. Around many corners I found scenes that are indicative of the plight of the recession in a town stricken with so much poverty, but I also found gems in neighborhoods that inspired moments of optimism. I was surprised by all of this because I lived in Fresno for years without ever being motivated to capture the story Fresno had to offer. The practice returning to old spaces and neighborhoods to shoot again may soon become routine for me. On my next visit I will schedule a whole day or two to shooting, rather than an hour.

If you do find yourself in Fresno California, I have two places that you need to visit:
Iron Bird Cafe and La Reina de Michoacan, then you should promptly leave Fresno.

Sign Reads "ULTIMATE IMPORTS"