What had to be one of the most enjoyable shoots I’ve had this year took place a couple weeks back for IEEE Spectrum magazine.  The assignment was to conceptualize a cover for Water vs Energy.  After a few rounds of sketching we settled on this concept of an a bulb exploding with water.  Achieving the effect was quite exciting.  The short of it is that we rigged a pellet gun that would shoot our bulb filled with water causing it to explode.  A sound rigger attached to attached to two Bron Scoro packs set to around a 7200th of a second guaranteeing a precise capture with frozen action.  A hundred light bulbs later my floor was soaked and we were picking up glass for a few weeks to follow.  IEEE posted a behind the scenes story here if you’d like more of the nitty gritty or a chance to see the ugly mugs of myself and my assistants. You can read the article here.

I’m spending the rest of this week knees deep in various productions followed by a two week jaunt off to Italy.  Posting will resume the week of June 7th.

Back in March I was approached by Money Photo Director Ryan Cadiz to conceptualize an image for a story about making yourself better apt to fitting in with a younger work force.  I pitched a couple ideas including the sketch below, the idea being a kit that you could bring to work to help blend in with younger coworkers.

We enlisted the help of stylist Laurie Raab to translate my rough sketch into reality.   We ended up changing the angle to better emphasize the kit as well as giving a James Bond treatment with the foam cut outs.

Below is a variation on the final. Often with these shoots we’ll try different elements to see what works best.  In this case the magazine decided they preferred the briefcase as a opposed to the chrome case to make it more of an everyday object that held a secret identity.  Though for my purposes I’d probably keep the chrome version in my book as I think it tells the narrative much better without having the supporting text that was in the article.

Following the smashing success of what I felt was a very much overrated Avatar, 3D has seemingly become the current trend in the move industry.  With magazines looking for technological gimmicks in an effort to regain readership I’m not surprised to hear that 3D is coming to the publishing industry.  Playboy will be rolling out a the 3D centerfold this Friday marking the day magazine photography crossed into the 3rd dimension.  I’m not even sure what to say here, its all some how very appropriate.  Hugh Heffner  had the following to say regarding the technological leap: ”What would people most like to see in 3-D? Probably a naked lady.”  The magazine won’t be going at it alone, they’ve teamed up with HBO to help cover the cost of the glasses being shipped with the issue.

I’m a big fan of photo editors that think of you for projects outside your normal pigeon holed skill set. Photographers tend to live in categories of genres myself included for the most part.  I’ve managed to position myself from a strictly still life shooter when I started four years ago to conceptual photographer affording me more opportunities.  Anyhow I started with Field & Stream as a still life guy and over the years Photo Editor Amy Berkley has been kind enough to hire me to apply my style to a variety of subject matter beyond products.  Case in point we shot photographed the recent cover and inside package for the “Total Outdoorsman” issue.  Always exciting to shoot outside your usual fair.

I was leafing through Fast Co the other day and came across this great Dan Winters image of an oil well on fire.  I was quite curious how he managed to find an oil rig that happened to be up in flames.  Fortunately I had lunch with Fast Co photo director Meghan Hurley last week and was able to inquire about the image. Turns out Dan built (he was the builder) a pretty incredible scaled model and set it a blaze.  The guy never ceases to amaze.  You can read the accompanying article here.

© Dan Winters

May means the roll out of PDN’s annual issue and this year I’m pleased to say I’ve made the cut.  The winning images are from an annual report I photographed last year for Navigators Insurance through Addison Design.  I’ve posted about the shoot prior here, so I’m not going to go into detail. Let’s just say it was a killer assignment, and the kind you love to get as a photographer.

So its been a few weeks since my last blog posting.  I gather the fire two doors down from my studio was a legitimate excuse for a hiatus as I had to focus my attention to just getting business back to normal.  Well it wasn’t just the fire.  It’s been busy here, very busy.  In fact I gather many of us in the industry have been rather busy as of late as I’ve noticed many of the blogs I check out regularly have been on their own hiatus or much more infrequent on posting.  I have a feeling like myself many others started their blogs during extended down time last year and now that some of the work is back out there flowing steadily said blogs have taken a bit of a back seat.  Well today I’m dusting off the cobwebs officially in hopes of getting back to posting a bit more regularly.

I’m going to start things off with a pair of images I shot on location back in February for Hemispheres Magazine.  I was sent on location to New Hampshire to the workshop of inventor Dean Kamen to photograph a truly remarkable prosthetic arm he was developing for DARPA.  It was a very humbling experience to talk to and photograph Kamen as well gander at such an incredible piece of technology.

This morning around 7:30 I caught a local news report of a 7 alarm fire in chinatown NYC.  I could barely believe my eyes where in the corner of the shot stood my studio.  The fire tore through 4 buildings requiring 250 firefighters to put out.  Fortunately my studio had a buffer of two buildings leaving it unscathed. Despite that due to the precarious condition of the nearby buildings know one is allowed on the block leaving me to turn home and try to salvage a work day.   I got lucky.  I’ve also got backups and insurance.  Many younger photographers and assistants I know make the mistake of putting off insuring equipment and creating a proper backup of their work.  I keep an offsite copy of my archive at my home as well as in another state at my parent’s.  It’s a shuttering thought to imagine all of your work being wiped out in an instant.  And its easy to put off and play the odds, this was a big wake up call for me to get a little more on top of things and keep the archive up to date and regularly backed up.  I was barely spared a terrible loss, but at least would have been protected, make sure you are too.

Some video of the blaze:

© Ilan Rubin

The 2010 T Design Spring Issue featured a pretty fantastic spread from one of my heros of photography and a former employer Ilan Rubin.  Ilan ranks as one of the very top influences on my career and I had the very good fortune to land a gig as his retoucher for half a year or so before setting off on my own.  The experience was an eye opener.  Anyhow the guy is a still life genius and this work is some of my favorite of his to date.  Besides the photos there is a great behind the scenes video showing how the shoot came together.  In an age of tight budgets its a good example of what it takes to make a quality shoot.  Sure we have to be problem solvers and work within certain means, but the best quality work requires production value as well as talent.

Check out the video here.

And the slide show of images here.

© Ilan Rubin

© Ilan Rubin