As David Burnett gave his master class keynote speech to World Press Photo he remarked upon the fact that for many years, as a younger man, he pointed the camera at the things he thought were important, but not the things that are important now. I believe he was speaking of his life versus his work, recording the memories and not the incidents.

I am reminded of this speech tonight as we bury a beloved pet "Trouble" in the cold ground in back of the house. I don't know that I have any photos of him, and to be honest I don't know that having photos would matter in the end (edit|Amie had this photo from a few years ago). His life was brief but eventful, I would like to think I will remember his antics. According to Burnett, I am likely to start to forget sooner than I will want.

Through our little buddy's life and death I am reminded that life changes quickly. I am still surrounded by most of the people I knew as a child. Few family members have passed on, and fewer friends. But life is moving on, and with every late night phone call, there is uncertainty.

So it is, that I must start to record that which will matter in the long run, and not just that which translates to beauty or aesthetic. There is a Japanese term called "aware" (ah-wah-reh) which is a Buddhist concept referring to the fleeting nature of life. In photography we try to immortalize these moments. I just need to make sure that I am immortalizing the moments I don't want to forget.

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This Polaroid test was to be the topic of my blog tonight before events played out as they did. I will talk about the polaroid more in my next post. An interesting medium in the art of photography, the Polaroid, like a slide but even more so, is a singular record of a moment in front of the camera. It will not last forever, the chemicals aren't stable enough, and in its abstraction of the real world is its beauty or character. The Polaroid image is exactly the size of the Hasselblad image frame (2.25"x2.25"). More on that soon.

There is a Japanese term that has been picked up by photographers to describe the out of focus portions of an image. They refer to it as bokeh, which gives me a chuckle to see it written in US magazines because it can be used as a derogatory to describe a klutz as well. But, for better or worse, that is the term of choice. Some people seem to care more about the out of focus that the in-focus.

There is something to it. The quality of the out of focus portions are indicative of the quality of a lens, A smooth "creamy" out of focus effect offsets the in-focus portions and helps lead the eye without being distracting. Now, I don't get to play with very fast lenses much, my lenses tend to start at f2 or slower. The reason this matters is that the faster the lens (faster because it lets more light in at once), the shallower the depth of field (or "in-focus") area. An 85mm f2 and an 85mm f1.4 will let in the same amount of light at f2, but the f1.4 can open up wider and let in twice as much light at f1.4 (which the f2 lens can't do). This requires more glass and engineering, so the lenses are heavier and more expensive to produce.

Not owning an 85mm f1.4, I happened to be talking to my uncle Bill when it occurred to me I should ask him if he had one. He did indeed, so we set out on a bone chilling day to visit the Fog Museum at Harvard University. I borrowed Bill's Contax S2 with the 85mm F1.4 lens. The S2 is a remarkable fully manual camera with a shutter that will fire at 1/4000th of a second and flash sync up to 1/250th of a second. This particular lens, a Zeiss T* coated lens, is a particularly fine optic with world class photographic capabilities.

We visited the museum and wandered through Harvard Square just as the sun was setting. I asked Amie to stand in a ray of light cutting through a tree in front a brick building. Focusing was slightly challenging as the extremely shallow depth of field would allow me to have the tip of Amie's nose out of focus but her eyes in focus. This is a manual focus lens.

So, we continued to shoot around the area, and I was playing with shots just to exaggerate the depth of field characteristics. I was shooting not for composition but rather for the sharpness and bokeh. The light faded so quickly that there wasn't much I could do. The bench was shot in full shadow. The upshot is that the lens being so fast allowed me to use a fairly fast shutter speed.

When I received the film back from the local processor I was equally impressed by the vibrancy of the color and the quality of the lens. I bummed a roll of film off of Bill (his camera, lens, and film - I will have to remember to do something nice), Kodak Ultra Color 400. I hadn't used this print film before and I was truly surprised by the beautiful shades of blue. These images are scans of the prints, so they don't carry the micro-sharpness of a negative scan, but you get a sense of the bokeh and color.

So, the lens certainly held up to its reputation. It is a beautiful lens and it throws backgrounds out of focus with a soft touch. An 85 f1.4 is a must have for the serious portrait photographers (or a good 50mm f1.4 for Digital APC size sensors). It was everything I was hoping to see.

This is the follow-up to my last post. As a recap: I had taken a few shots on two different days of Mark Wooding for an advertisement (Northeastern University). They had requested the shots of him as an Alum, for use in advertising a Masters Program (they asked me if I wanted to be in the shots too, but I declined).

They are placing the ads (designed by a third party) in the Boston Phoenix, Providence Phoenix, and the Weekly Dig (an edgy local magazine). Amie picked up the papers and let me know a few days ago that the advertisements had run in two of the publications.

When she showed me the Dig, I wasn't surprised by the cover, but at the same time it wasn't something I was going to show my grandmother. I gather they are pushing further each cover on what they can do. All these publications are free, and they tend to be targeted toward the young adult, 18-35 range. They cover topical perspectives from the 20's-30's point of view and are effectively the "alternative" media sources these days. The Phoenix is a larger publication than the Dig, which is a little paper with a big footprint.

The ad in the dig was a quarter page placement in the education section. I didn't realize the dig had an education section. The print came out alright, though the designers had decided to reverse the image. I'm not sure why they did it in the first place, but I was told that they weren't going to do it after the Dig run. It hadn't been a crowd favorite.

The Phoenix ad took me by surprise as it was a half-page ad on the inside back cover, top placement. This ad was a design I hadn't previewed, and they decided to crop Mark differently than the previous designs. I suppose it works. I'm not sure of the crop, but as the photographer I don't know that I'm going to thrilled about crops anyway. At least they kept him on the left in this image. Oddly enough this ad ran on top of another half-page ad with almost the same red as the background, taking away a touch from the impact of the top ad. But, you can't control everything.

As a matter of interest I'll check in with NU in a couple of week after the Providence ad runs. I'm curious to know what inquiries may be attributable to the ad. We'll see. Demi Moore nude on Vogue it is not; but it is my first large local ad placement (as a photographer - of course in my job running a marketing company I get to oversea the whole 9 yards placing ads, but this is different).

Next up: the Rhode Island Flower Show, which I will be the official photographer for. I think I'm going to go digital this time.

While walking through the halls of Northeastern University, Mark and I were approached about using his image for the face of the Multimedia Studies Master's Degree program. There was no budget really. They were enthusiastic, so after a moment or two of thought I suggested that we do the shooting. This was great for them, it saved them lining up an out-of-state photographer, and fun for us (NU is in Massachusetts and we are in Rhode Island). The funny thing is that the people we know at NU know us for our design and branding work and not our photography.

So, on a cold cold January afternoon I called up a friend and 5 of us set out to get this shot for their advertising. They requested a couple of wardrobe changes and a dynamic shot. We didn't have the time to get in front of clients and have Mark in action and we had no budget for fancy setups, so we went out real simple with a couple of Nikon SB-800s, a couple of stands, a tripod, and the Fujifilm S5 Pro.

I had an image in my head of shooting a lot exposure in front of rush-hour traffic to get some flowing color in the background. We would pop a strobe to get Mark frozen in the image and well exposed. But, before we did that we looked for an idilic park location. Unfortunately, within minutes of parking and walking outside we were all freezing cold.

So, the experience ended up being more of an endurance contest than a happy-go-lucky shoot. We did a series of shots on a busy street corner, were hassled by confused drunks, and avoided being run over by rushing commuters. It was an interesting experience. Shooting 105mm (roughly 160mm digital equivalent), going for a 3/4 shot of Mark turned out to be difficult just due to space and jitter with low light. Still, we got a couple of shots. Mostly, we froze until we escaped into the warmth of Starbucks to recoup.

We went inside and shot a few images to close out the night.

When I reviewed the captures I was disappointed, I had been thoroughly thwarted by the cold. I didn't get the angles, didn't get the ISO I wanted, and just wasn't enchanted by the light. I think I was most disappointed by the light. Mark was also doing his best to imitate Rudolph with his cherry red nose.

So, we gave it another go on a lazy afternoon a week or so later. I set up inside, used 2 SB-800's again, but this time one was shot into a modifier and the other was used on the background. I used some white cards to bounce the fill and we were moving along. Mark is taller than I am, so I used a stool to give me some extra height for close-ups. It was cold, but this time we had a heater to use.

This time I was able to use a much lower ISO, get some sculpting going with the light, and capture the Mark in front of some images of our work. At first the light wasn't close enough, but as we moved it closer it gave more "glow." I read recently about the concept that any source of light can be a soft source - it is a matter of size and relative distance to the subject.

We got a series of shots, most were fairly close in. I even had Mark hold a white card to bounce some light onto his face, since I didn't have an extra hand.

I don't know when the ads are going to run, but I believe it is this next week in the Dig, and Boston / Providence Phoenix(s). I just received advance copies of the ads, so when they run I'll post 'em here.