The Hilton Trail

I had wondered for a long time how my images were used when they were purchased for the renovation of the Millenium Hilton Hotel (downtown NY). I searched around on the web and found these two shots taken by a guest. Of course, I had no idea it was done as a montage, but it looks like it turned out fine.

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: I'll be at the Mets / Yankees game on Sat. I plan to shoot it with infrared. I haven't seen that done before, probably for a good reason, but I want to see how that field shows up. Hope its a good sunny day and that Pedro is pitching.

: I heard something about a new movie coming out which claims that Christ was married and had kids. You'd think the catholic church would be up in arms about it, but I haven't heard a peep out of them.

I can't remember the name of it though. Sounds interesting. What is it called? Michaelangelo's Road? Something like that. Haven't seen much about it in the newspapers or television. It may have been at the Canned Film Festival. Was it based on a book or something? I'm not sure. A pretty good idea for a story though. Might be a best seller someday.

I figure it must be one of those low-budget indy movies and that the producers will slowly build publicity by word-of-mouth.

Okay, just being sarcastic. I have never seen a movie get such free publicity since - actually I can't think of another movie. It's been documented on the History Channel, The National Geographic Channel, every cable news station, Oprah, The View, and now the Animal Channel is looking for a tie-in.

Well - I wish Opie good luck with it.

Self Promotion

I'm involved in serious self-promotional projects now. These fall under the heading of marketing which I have neglected. This means things like entering photo contests, which I haven't done before; pursuing more commercial venues such as corporate art dealers; and some other obvious things I should have done years ago but wasn't ready to do.

For the first time I'm doing a more formal portfolio with InDesign. In other words, I'm treating what I've created over the years in what I hope will be a more business-like way.

Since I can't write much about these ventures because it would intrude on the privacy of actual people - I'm back to keeping a private journal which may be of interest later on.

Oh -and Paypal and all that - has worked out well. A few orders came through with no complaints and I decided to cut the merchant account which has been charging me $50 a month and taking a very steep cut of the credit card orders over the years. I also added five new prints to the Photography Store. More later...

In terms of

how to make a living in this field that chose me, I'm starting to move away from the web as a commercially viable place (at least on its own) and into the so-called real world.

I've ordered several portfolios from Light Impressions, and I am going to concentrate my efforts on reaching corporate art buyers.

This web site was never supposed to be the sole source of income. Frankly, it's been okay for me - but I've got a big cat to feed and I'm tired of mooching off of family and friends.

It's going to be a little slow in the blog for a while as I work on this project. But of course I can always throw up some political comment which will predictably turn into red v. blue.

Hey, I didn't know you could turn comments off or on for particular entries. Is that new or I just missed it.

THE TITANIC PICTURE

The rage in art galleries (when did it start?) is big prints. Really big prints. While I was printing some of my 5 x 7's for a portfolio, I wondered (as is I always do): why? And it struck me: it's the same phenomenom as the BIG MOVIE SCREEN and the BIG EFFECT and the LOUD SOUNDTRACK.

You can't get it at home on t.v. - though that is changing too. One of my friends has a t.v. which takes up half his living room.

Anyway - the idea is the same.

And according to my theory - the BIG CRAZE will get worse because you can't print that size at home.

A second corollary: JEEZ, IT MUST BE GOOD. THINK OF THE COST TO PRODUCE SUCH A PRINT. JEEZ. Think of the square footage. If you took it down and put it outside on the lawn you could play football on that thing.

If it follows the same path as cinema, there should be 3-d prints soon, but no one will like them much because of the stupid glasses.

Hold on a sec. Let me get these on. Wow - is that Half Dome? Gives me vertigo just to look at it.

Good Bye Old Cart

I fell asleep thinking about the whole cart aspect and decided: what the hell I'm going to switch to paypal payments. Too many problems with my own cart, with the merchant account (they take a monthly fee whether I sell anything or not for an idiotic report that I usually rip up and toss in the garbage). Their transaction fees aren't low either.

I don't want to pay another $300 or so bucks for the SSL certificate. Plus it pissed me off that Thwarte didn't notify me the thing was going to expire.

Plus - this way I don't have any part of the site that relies on ASP.

But the clincher was: if Paypal does "go down" - I won't be the only one complaining. I should have the Paypal cart in place by end of day.

Well - good bye old cart. You were nothing but headaches.

oh, that's nice

my thwarte ssl certificate expired and no one from thwarte notified me.

so i had to find out about it from someone who wanted to place an order today. it expired April 5, 2006. gadzooks. how many orders did i lose because of that?

* * *

the color prints are looking fab. took a little bit of color management settings but i'm in good shape now. along with the infrared shots, i'm going to put some of the painted prints up for sale; and everyone in the family who's seen the painted dad in hot tub wants one (and even a couple of people who aren't in the family. i've been working on other painted ones in my spare time. the one thing i found was that it's better for me to start with a b&w negative or a digital shot that's been converted to b&w. if i try to paint a color shot i'm way too influenced by the existing colors.

* * *

i also think that the tablet / pen (the cheap wacom) doesn't support "pen tilt" and i'm starting to think i need that.

* * *

There are a bunch of interesting commercial photo opportunities coming my way. I'll write about them if they pan out. I am heading in new directions.

* * *

Removed the Google ads from the blog. I think their presence was cramping my style.

The Google Ads in the blog seem harmless at first - when they start to bring in money - I at least - found that the stuff I was writing about became influenced by them. I mean - I know I was writing about colonoscopies for a long time - but I don't think that whoever reads this blog wants to know the best place for a virtual colonoscopy. Well, then maybe I shouldn't write about non-photography stuff. Nah.

Rollei R3 Film

Rollei R3 Monochrome Film (Rollei European Site)

"Film speed is variable from ISO 25 to ISO 6400, allowing the material to be used in practically any light. This is made possible by a multilayer design with cubic silver-halide crystals of different size embedded in the various layers. Spectral sensitivity also covers a wide range from orthochromatic to panchromatic right into the infrared. "

Rainforest Entrance

I printed most of the good infrared shots as 5 x 7 proofs today. I'm superstious enough not to want to jinx it - but there are four or five beautiful, mysterious prints in the set. Bits and pieces in the prints sort of peer out from behind the leaves. For example, my reflection is in the shot below. No, not the large figure on the left (that was a woman on the other side of the glass feeding the Tucans) but just to the left of the doors. And the doors are not a reflection either - they are painted to blend in with the forest - which they really do in this shot. I had to study this shot for a while to figure out how the pieces came together.

So - I know - it's not for everyone. I wonder what I would have thought of it ten years ago when I was in my realism phase. But today - it seems to hold up for me.

My only problem with the IR film is the awful curl that makes it tough to get the strip into the scanner holder. It's pretty funny to watch because half the time the damned thing curls up at both ends before I can snap the holder shut.

There's probably some film uncurler somewhere - or the way things are going with film - maybe not.


Entrance to Central Park Zoo rainforest. IR film.





Version II, Hedges & Woman (ir film)

NSA and Chinese Takeout

So the story breaks that the NSA has been secretly been collecting or trying to collect a record of every domestic phone call (not the content, just the phone number) made in the United States. Qwest is the only phone company that refused to turn over records. We are talking about billions and billions of calls.

What you are telling me is that when I call for Chinese takeout, the phone number of Lili's Noodle House is added to the database. That's right. Every phone call.

Now the idea is that someone at the Noodle House calls their cousin Jun who in turn calls his friend Mary who works at Walmart. Mary has called her doctor to make an appointment to treat her acne problem.

And on it goes. Eventually, 1 million links later - there is an intersection with another 1 million link trail to a terrorist phone number. The NSA is using a supercomputer to spit out the number and it only takes three months. Oh, the terrorist has long ago discarded the phone, but no matter. I don't see this as efficient.

What they should do is put a video camera in every house and be done with it. If you turn the monitor off - then the homeland security police arrive. Or maybe ankle bracelets so we can track everyone's movements. That would work even better. Sure, you'd have to sacrifice a bit of privacy - but c'mon - we are up against a mortal enemy.

Today's slogan: Data mining = Safety

shooting notes

2nd trip to c.p. zoo. meter at 100; 25 filter; bessa (remember that the 35mm with goggles does not fit on the bessa); first couple of shots on 5th avenue were strictly according to meter; overcast; something like f4 & 1/60th

tucan - woman was feeding them - very little sunlight - didn't want to use the flash while she was there i was expecting someone to come over and say "no flash here" and that would have spoiled the rest of the shoot. based on last time i shot the Tucan I opened up another stop to f2 and shot at 1/30th.

then inside. first to the bat cave. very tricky since the glass that encloses them is angled out. mostly shot at f4 with flash full power, manual set to distance i wanted; some shots were with the flash and lens right up against the glass to cut out reflections.

but the rain forest itself was the most interesting because they keep releasing steam (vapor) whatever to create the humidity. now the whole thing is glass enclosed. my theory (will see later) is that some infrared is cut by the glass - but i don't know that.

did several variations with the flash. some assuming that the meter reading was close and just using it as a bit of extra fill; other shots assuming there was next to no ir in the room and going with full flash.

the last few shots were without any flash, just going by meter reading to see how much ir is being radiated in there.

with all the camera bag switching i forget to bring along the finder for the 28mm (which is all I shot with.) in terms of pictorial content - there were some interesting chances.

RESULTS:

First off, the shots I did in the glass enclosure without flash were fine. even over-exposed. so there's lots of infrared in there.

One of the full-flash shots of the bats actually came out - but the bat was flying too fast for the flash (I guess) because it has motion blur.

I blew a couple of interesting shots (flash used) where people were in the scene against glass background. They're just way too blown out. In general, the flash used in wide angle shots where there was lots of distance in the shot gave a really weird - almost super realistic look except for the light fall-off. i would say that unless you need the flash to try and do something like the bats, or this strange fish i was after behind glass - either turn it off or get someone behind me to hold a white card to bounce off. the direct flash kills the softness of the ir. again - though one shot is intriguing. this is good in a way since i can go back next time with the M3 so I can use my goggles / 35mm.

NEXT:

I still have one thing left to try and that's the deeper IR filter. I also think that for outside work - seals, etc. I'm better off with regular old tri-x. Seals (actually they're sea lions) in water - with IR - you don't want to know.

Okay I've Figured

out a bunch of things about using the flash with infrared film. I'm not going to waste another roll on my apartment. Back off to the zoo tomorrow. I'll go into the details after I've gotten some spectacular shots.

Probably a good time to do all this experimenting since sales have been zilch the last two weeks. Just weird inquiries that I'm sure will pan out to nothing.

The Tucan print really is fantastic. It takes me back to some primeval time. That rain forest keeps pulling at me.