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1080P HD video, 12,000 ISO, 65 megapixles and on and on and on. Cameras are getting more and more sophisticated and advanced. So with all this technology available, what do I do? I go out and buy a Polaroid SX-70 from the 70’s that I can barely get film for.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a tech guy… big time. If there’s a new tech gadget, computer gear, HDTV, Blu-ray, stereo, computers, software… anything, I want it. I’m the guy you go to when you want to know the latest and best tech toy to buy. But when it comes to my camera gear, I like equipment your grandpa would be comfortable using.
Here’s a list of the camera gear I’ve bought over the last year or so, nothing even remotely technologically sophisticated:
Polaroid SX-70
Rolleiflex 3.5f
Mamiya RZ-67 Pro-II
Lomo “Meg” Diana
Even my medium format digital setup is old school. When I bought my latest Phase One digital back I didn’t want the newest Hasselblad or Mamiya offering (although the Rolleifelx Hy6 looked pretty cool)… I bought the already-at-the-time discontinued Contax 645. Prior to that I was shooting my previous Phase One digital back on a Hasselblad V system but the hassle (no pun intended) of connector cables and rotating the back when changing orientation was too much for me.
Of course, it’s part of my job to stay up to date on the latest camera technologies and knowing how to use the gear that suits the job. So, I always make sure my digital gear is up to date. But for now, I have this cool new (old) Polaroid SX-70 camera and no film. I guess that means I’m off to ebay to see what kind of deals I can find on undoubtedly expired film. Thankfully the film development over at The Impossible Project is coming along nicely.
The above shot was taken with my iPhone and given the “polaroid look” using Camerabag.
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There’s a lot of talk about email promo’s lately. Here, here, here, here and here. See what I mean. It seems the consensus is email promos aren’t very effective. I think that’s true to an extent. I’ve definitely seen the click through rate on my email promos drop from when i started doing them a few years ago.
Talking with one creative, they said there are days where they will mass delete hundreds of emails in one fell swoop… great and crappy promos judged (or not judged) to be worthy of the same fate. Of course, at the same time I’ve talked to creatives who prefer email promos and mass trash physical promos. This is why, as part of an overall promotion regimen, I think email promos are still worthwhile.
As you can see on some of those links, some photographers like to include a lot of text and stories which seems to work for them. My theory has always been KISS… keep it as simple as possible with as little text as possible. Knowing the creatives are getting a lot of these emails, I figure the last thing they want to do is read. Put up a nice image, let them know what you do, who you are and where you are and they will get the point (isn’t there a saying about a picture being worth something?). If they like your image, they click on through or save you in their favorites list, if they don’t… well, better luck next time.
As I’m typing this my email promos are going out and I’m having a discussion with my friend Emily about the subject line of these email blasts. To me, the most difficult part of the process is coming up with a decent subject line. To date, I think mine have been pretty lame so I need to do something about it. It’s a challenge figuring out how to grab someone’s attention in 50 characters or less and at the same not be too spammy.
How about something like this:
Really, delete all the other emails, this is the only one you need to open!
That’s what we’d like to believe anyway.
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As I posted a while ago, my friend Deirdre has one of the cutest dog I’ve ever seen. Her name is Dingle. Deirdre likes to dress Dingle up in various outfits depicting Dingle as one of the many cultures around the world. Last year was China. The picture is used for her annual Christmas card.
This is the time of the year I get a call from Deirdre with ideas for this years shoot and I always look forward to hearing the different ideas.
The Chinese Dingle shoot was actually quite fun. We were quite the spectacle in the Chinatown district of San Francisco. We had a large crowd of people gathered around us laughing hysterically as Deirdre dressed Dingle in her outfit. At one point it was actually rather tough to work because people insisted on stepping in front of me to take their own picture of Dingle.
You’d be surprised how willing Dingle is to do these photos. In fact, I think she likes it. Any time I wasn’t behind the camera Dingle would wander around and loose focus. As soon as I got behind the camera, she was on her mark and ready. She’s quite possibly one of the easiest models I’ve every worked with.
Happy Halloween.
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My friend Emily said this image is “very autobiographical.” I’m not exactly sure what she meant or how I feel about it.
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No post for three months and then two days in a row. Don’t get used to it.
A while back I posted about my love for guitars. Since then I’ve added a couple guitars to my collection and believe me, it’s a challenge not to stop in and see what’s new every time I drive by Rocker’s Guitars. And since I can’t seem to play them very well, I decided to put them to use in other ways and started photographing them. I’m not really a still life or product photographer, so this was a new experience for me.
For now the images are limited to my guitars, but I’ve got a lead on some more cool guitars. And if something should “happen to them” while I’m photographing them… well, lets hope the owners won’t want to search my apartment.
I just created a new guitar gallery on my website and you can check out all the pics here. I have another guitar related project that I’m hoping to start soon, so check back for that in the coming months.
The picture above is the same Rickenbacker 330 I posted about here.
Gibson Les Paul Goldtop 1957 Reissue:
Gibson ES-175SP
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Yes, I am still here. It’s been a while since my last blog post. I’ve been working on a non-photography project quite a bit lately and now that project is underway I’m ready to get back to the photography blog. I’ve got a few photography projects I’ve been working on and some I’m about to begin as well that I’m hoping to write about here soon.
In honor of getting back to blogging, I decided to update the design of the blog. It’s actually been up for about a week, but I’ve been fine tuning it a bit. I’m happy with it at the moment and I hope you like it as well. But, knowing that I’m never completely happy and like to constantly tinker with things, you’ll probably see some little changes over the coming days/weeks.
I also just realized I basically made this same “I’m back” post almost exactly one year ago. I guess there’s something about the summer months that takes me away from the blog.
The shot above is a Polaroid snapshot of the backyard of the home I grew up in in Stockton. I can’t tell you how many times my friends and I jumped off the roof of the shed into the pool much to my mom’s disapproval.
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Sunrise Flight
05:00am – Leave Home
05:30am – Get to Airport
06:30am – Take off for LAX
07:50am – Land at LAX
08:15am – Rent car
09:30am – Get to location & setup
10:00am – Start shooting
11:00am – Finished shooting
12:00pm – Back at LAX, edit in waiting area
01:55pm – Take off for SFO
03:15pm – Land at SFO
04:00pm – Get home
Total Day: 11 Hours
Total Shoot Time 1 Hour
Airport Editing
Why is the best part always the shortest?
It’s funny, I do corporate jobs that pay a lot more money and take a lot less time than editorial shoots like this. And yet, I still prefer the editorial work*. Now if only magazines would stop dying. Forget the trees, save a magazine.
*I still like the corporate work too.
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I now have a portfolio up on ViisualPro. ViisualPro (yes, there are two i’s) is a cool portfolio website with a great selection of photographers. It’s not like other websites that accepts anyone who wants to put up a portfolio. Here is their approach:
We take a curated approach. To better serve photographers on Viisual, we do not accept every artist who would like
to use our service. We look for work that is more creative and contemporary; and that has an advertising or editorial
focus. We also consider other factors to ensure a good match between your creative direction and ours.
And with my addition to the collection it clearly shows it’s possible to slip through the cracks. Someone was clearly not paying attention when reviewing my work.
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Here’s another Polaroid I took, this time of my mom at her condo in Aptos.
As I’m working on these Polaroid scans, I realize, to get these shots I’m carrying around this fairly cumbersome camera (Mamiya RZ67-II) and ending up with a scanned photo not much better resolution than that of a camera phone… in fact, I think my iPhone takes sharper pictures when comparing the scans. But still, there’s something about the look of the Polaroid that I like. I’ve always thought sharpness was overrated anyway. One thing I don’t like about digital is that most images come out clinically sharp. I like a little softness in images.
More Polaroids here.
Also, check out what’s going on over at The Impossible Project.
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Here are a few more Polaroids taken over the last few days.
I’ve been shooting these Polaroids lately anytime I’m shooting for myself. I’m not really sure where I’m going with them. They don’t really have a theme or pattern. I guess I’m just shooting Polaroid to shoot Polaroid while it’s still available because I like the look. I guess that’s good enough. My friend and assistant Emily say’s to “think of it as a journal..they are personal and it doesn’t need to be consistent. Photograph what you love when you shoot Polaroid and fuck worrying about the purpose.”
Sounds good to me (but watch your language Emily).
See more Polaroids here.
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A while ago I did a post of some interesting search phrases used to find my website. I thought I’d take another look and see what people have been searching for the last couple months.
Confused:
clothed naked photography
Confrontational:
my singer can kick your singer’s ass
Disturbing:
my ass in medium format
Why would you want to?:
jeff in the nude
jeff nude
naked jeff pics
People who are to cheap to pay microstock fees:
how to remove an istockphoto watermark
photoshop remove istockphoto watermark
remove istockphoto watermark
People who want to steal from photographers directly:
how to remove a watermark from a photographer
Looking for love?:
is liz hatch a lesbian
emily merrill lesbian
What does it mean that my site comes up for this?:
dirty photographer
I hope not… So far, so good:
bad times for sf photographers
The restraining order is now active:
i hate jeff singer
And finally, whoever it was… call me*:
love of my life jeff singer
*maybe you should email first.
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Screen grabs from the online version of Viv Magazine. I did the editorial shoot for them a couple months ago at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and the San Carlos Airport. At the airport I was offered to hold up all take offs and landing traffic if we wanted to shoot on the runway. Being someone who hates flying, I didn’t want to potentially hold anyone up from a safe landing, so I opted to shoot somewhere other than the runway.
The article starts on page 156 and pointless blathering by me in the “contributor bio” on page 12. Hair & Makeup by Meaganne McCandess.
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Some Polaroids from this weekend. More in the “Last Polaroid” section of my website.
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Bigger: A little
Better: That’s subjective (but I think so)
Faster: Maybe
More: Yep
The new website is up and running.
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Google Labs has a new application, Similar Images, which will find images similar to a given image.
So, is this making life better or worse for photographers?
Better: Possibly find unauthorized use of your images.
Better: Possibly making it easier for someone to figure out who created the image (important for Orphan Works legislation)
Worse: Someone doesn’t like what you are charging to license an image, find one exactly like it… I mean, not like mine… my images are solely unique.
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Photo Editors, Art Directors and anyone with an email address at your magazine or agency (thanks for the feedback Bob the Janitor), get your SPAM filters ready! Once my new website design is up I’ll be sending out my first promo for the new site. My old Livebooks site has been upgraded and I now have larger images with the old design. I’m still in the process of resizing my images for the new site so there’s a mixture of old and new. The new design should be live sometime this week or early next week.
To date I’ve been doing my own design work, so I hope you like the new site (and promo piece). I think for the next round of revisions and promos I’ll be seeking professional help… and a designer.
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